How Much Does Paper Filing Cost a Company?

In order to maintain and run a successful company, no matter the business practice or services provided, it is essential to strip away unnecessary costs. Whether it is a few dollars here or there or a few hundred thousand dollars, every little penny can go a long way. The old saying of a penny saved is a penny earned is more than true, as the money saved by adjusting outdated practices can be reinvested back into the company, allowing you it to expand and prosper further than at its current state. One of the most expensive practices that may now be considered out of date is paper filing. This includes everything from document based employee records, client information, past order forms, tax content and just about everything else printer on paper. Moving away from this method of maintaining information and more towards actual digital filing services not only can save a company substantial amounts of money in the long rung, but also reduce response and reaction time when contacting clients and potential leads, as digging through an outdated filing system is no longer necessary.

The cost of the paper filing process can be difficult to determine, as it depends on the a variety of factors. Top spot for when it comes to determining how much money a company spends on paper filing is the total number of paper gone through each and every year. A quick, ballpark figure can go towards the overall paper cost of a company during a given year. Although some of the paper is used for inner office work, a vast majority is going to go towards printing off information, filling out bills, keeping track of records and maintaining current records. However, this is not the only overall expensive that comes into play when determining how much money is spent towards paper filing. There is also the file cabinets, the wear and tear done on the printers, copies and fax machines, plus any other equipment used to store, transfer and house the paper information, such as folders and binders. The use of paper filing is not just dependent on the cost of paper, but also the cost of of all the material used to store the information.

Ridding a company of all this unnecessary waste is a step towards cutting the cost of running a business significantly. By exiling everything, it is no longer necessary to spend thousands (if not more) on all of this unneeded material. By storing all information digitally, this is no longer needed. Records can be placed on the network, so any computer can reach the content. And, if there are several different branches running the same information, the data can be uploaded to a cloud based server. With the cloud server, anyone with an account and necessary password is able to access this information, download it and store it locally on a computer (it is always important to back up the information, just in case a hard drive fails). The overall cost of running such a service like this is just the monthly service fee it costs to run the cloud network, and any additional hard drives purchased for the office for internal documents that don’t need to be uploaded to the cloud.

The cost of paper, paper filing and storing the information is astronomical when it comes to the cost of digitally storing information. On top of it all, storing data digitally makes it easier for everyone in the office to have instant access to the needed information, increasing productivity and and bringing in more financial assets to the company.