Why must we take physical media (paper W-2’s, 1099’s etc) and convert them to digital media (OCR’d PDF’s) to then be extracted for tax prep software? Aren’t the majority of these returns already being submitted in digital format to governing bodies???

Its like sending somethign to the printer to then scan it and shred it?!

Seems like a real opportunity for at least our federal government to spare us the pain of going through this backwards conversion to save us some key strokes…which while useful is still flawed….

I realize I’m asking for something that isn’t widely available, there are a couple payroll providers doing downloadable W-2 info for the fly by night tax prep services, but I’ve got to imagine its in the works on a large scale somewhere?

I couldn’t agree more about the ease and quality of the ScanSnap.

In addition to the points you mentioned, the ScanSnap also creates a searchable PDF using imbedded OCR (Optical Character Recognition) from essentially any document. This increases the utility of the document immensely in that now when you open it in Acrobat you can quickly search on any text string using the built in Find command. But even more interesting, is the ability to leverage this within a tool to help manage and track scanned documents.

The ScanSnap beautifully performs the first step of getting paper documents into electronic format. The next step is how to efficiently organize the scanned documents so they are easy to find and track. Anyone who uses computers can likely identify with the daily, maybe even hourly, challenge of trying to decide where to store and find files. Did I put it in this folder or that, or should I put this invoice in a folder for the customer, or one for the invoices that month, or both? In companies with multiple people doing this the result can be a confusing folder structure with lots of redundant information, or at best, within which is is difficult to locate documents.

My company Motive Systems also recently began working with Fujitsu after discovering how incredible these scanners are. We develop a software product called M-Files that provides easy management of any type of electronic document, especially those just scanned in with the SnanSnap. The idea is that once a file is scanned you simply save it to the “vault” and tag it with a few descriptive keywords, the customer or project it is associated with, and so on.

The ScanSnap can be easily configured to save to any folder which M-Files will then check and automatically deposit recently scanned files to the vault for you. You never worry about folders again, all files are saved to and opened from the vault, and all Windows commands are supported. So now any time you need to access the scanned document you just launch acrobat, choose File Open, select the M-Files vault (which looks like any other hard drive) and type in a descriptive term — or any text string that was in the scanned document (another benefit of the searchable PDF). And this can be done with one employee or thousands. You can even set up workflows to help with processing scanned documents. For instance, the person responsible for processing an invoice would get an email indicating a new invoice was available with a link to the invoice in the vault.

This type of document management software used to be complicated and expensive, but not any more.

Here are some links to an interesting case study and more information on M-Files at the ScanSnap community site:

The Cure for Clutter Case Study: http://scansnapcommunity.com/features/1754-the-cure-for-clutter/

While this happens to be for a medical office, we have thousands of customers in a number of industries including accounting and finance, retail, architecture, manufacturing, etc.

How M-Files works with the ScanSnap: http://www.fujitsu.com/downloads/COMP/fcpa/scanners/m-files.pdf.

I hope my post wasn’t too long or promotional, but this type of solution is a key part of the recipe to truly achieve the paperless office.

-Greg

Oxygen helps users easily share all scanned documents. It creates a folder on your desktop that can be used as a scan-to destination. You can invite others to the folder to share all scanned documents,
and all shared users have direct access to the scanned files from their own desktop. Users can share and collaborate on scanned documents in real time, without the hassle of emailing back and forth. All scanned documents are also automatically and safely backed up in the cloud, and encrypted to protect confidential information.

http://scansnapcommunity.com/tips-tricks/1583-how-can-i-scan-and-share-my-documents-in-the-cloud/

ScanSnap and Oxygen creates a complete Paperless Office Cloud solution. Let me know if you have any questions Scott!

Handwriting - writing messages and phone #s on your hand as there are no message pads

Throw out - no longer used in the office, term stays on the baseball field only

Trash Can - no longer used for paper scrap, now a plant holder

Ink - a declining industry

File cabinets - available on eBay in large volume

Thanks for your input and for sharing about your experience with the Thomson product. I’m a little confused as to what you are disagreeing with me on. The purpose of my post was simply to make an announcement that a vendor rolled out a new product in an effort to educate the profession. I made no mention of the quality of the product and even noted that it was, in part, a little PR spin. I certainly understand that there are some frustrations with this and many other products, but I’m sure you’ll agree that any time there is competition in the marketplace, it’s a good thing for you and me as practitioners. And it’s notable and encouraging to see that more and more tax and accounting professionals are adopting advanced technologies and exploring the world of tax document automation.

I couldn’t disagree with you more. Thomson Reuters (Creative Solutions) OCR technology is not nearly where it needs to be to support a true paperless tax workflow. As a dedicated Thomson user, I feel it is my responsibility to provide a valid critique of their Source Document Processing Service to the profession. I started off tax season using Thomson’s newly released product and I couldn’t have been more disappointed with their attempt at file organization and OCR. Technology is complex, I understand, but I feel that this product was simply released too soon—as it does not come close to supporting the needs of their core professional user base.

At the time, I was very excited to hear Thomson’s announcement that scan and organize functionality would be available within my CS product suite…that I would be able to press the little red plug and have my documents returned to me indexed and organized. What I received back was a garbled mess. The little red plug has done nothing for my workflow. I save far more time investing a few extra clicks to send my PDF’s through Copanion’s GruntWorx, and what I get back is a logically indexed file…complete with editing tools attached. My overall opinion is that just because the Source Document module is part of my product suite, it doesn’t mean it’s the best or most reliable solution. In fact, I am somewhat insulted that this product was pitched to me as a premium solution.

There are many professionals who want to invest in technology to better their firms, but they don’t have the confidence to explore technologies outside of their software suite. If I had any clue to the inadequacy of the Thomson’s Source Document Processing Service, I would not have bought it and I would tell my colleagues not to buy it either. Part of my issue is that firms that are resistant to change will become even more resistant if they get a taste of bad technology. It’s up to the vendors to make sure their products work before launching them to the profession. We all have the right to know what technologies are the best in order to increase efficiencies in our firms and move toward a true paperless work environment. Thomson should not have released this product. Period. In order to give the profession the tools required to work at max production levels, a better choice would have been to partner with someone who has the technology correct and build on it. Lacerte did it with E-sort. Brilliant!

Thanks again!

Byron