I’m Scanning My Documents to Evernote!

By in Productivity

Last week I decided to purchase a multipurpose HP Officejet 4500 for our home copying, scanning and faxing needs.  Turns out my new tool now serves an unintended purpose.  I’m using it to scan and upload documents to the cloud!

This past weekend I started scanning and uploading to Evernote business cards, statements, receipts and other paperwork that has been cluttering my desk for weeks.   I’ve been using Evernote for the past year to capture all my notes and web clippings.  I like it for its ease of use, availability on all devices,  search feature and ability to tag every item so I can easily find them later.

I found some free software on the web called, ScanDrop, which I installed on my laptop at home.  So far, I’ve found it to work great.  I place my document in my scanner and initiate the scan from ScanDrop.  I can then crop, rotate and choose my Evernote notebook and assign the appropriate tags.

Scan to Evernote

Photo © by joe.ross

So far I’ve chosen to scan statements, receipts, business cards and other miscellaneous documents that don’t contain sensitive information.  For the time being, I’ve decided not to upload any bank, credit card or investing statements.  While I know Evernote takes security seriously, I know accidents happen and I would never want this information exposed.

I’m really excited about this because it’s my first step to going paperless in our house.  I can reduce paper storage in my file cabinet and not have to worry about purging documents unless I want to use less space in the cloud.    I am paying Evernote $5 per month for the premium account that allows more storage, but I’ve been doing that since day one.  Now I feel like I can get even more out of the product by helping me keep our financial lives in order at home.

Have you tried scanning your documents to the cloud?  If so, let us know your experience in the comments.

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About Jason

Jason started blogging in 2009 when he created One Money Design. Since then it has grown into a group of writers with unique personalities and a common goal of helping people on the journey to true financial freedom. Jason is an IT project manager by day, but you’ll find him blogging about personal finance and exploring web entrepreneurship late at night and the early hours of the morning. He’s also actively involved in a financial coaching ministry in his community where he shares principles of biblical stewardship and helps people learn to manage their money wisely. Jason enjoys spending time with his wonderful wife and two awesome children and lives in north Dallas. Twitter | Facebook | +Jason Price
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  • http://twitter.com/QivanaQueen Amanda Youngblood

    You can create notebooks that are local only (they don’t get uploaded to the cloud).  You can put your more sensitive info in those folders so you can still use the search functions of Evernote.  That’s what I’ve been doing.  Granted, I can’t access the information from anywhere but my computer, but I can search quickly, and that was a major issue before.

    • http://www.onemoneydesign.com/ Jason

       Hey Amanda, thanks so much for this tip!  I haven’t used the local notebook feature but going to check that out.  The cloud offers a nice back up for my documents and the convenience of accessing them anywhere.  But again, some docs probably shouldn’t be in the cloud and the local feature you mentioned may provide a great way for me to still be paperless.