More Paperless Office Ideas through QuickBooks

In Annette's quest to achieve a paperless office, she has tried many different things.  (Some of them didn't work at all!)  But, something that has been working for her and some of her clients is to scan each document.   You can scan bills from vendors, purchase orders, documents concerning sales, etc.  Just about anything.  The problem is once you scan it, how do you name it?  Well, there are all kinds of naming scenarios.  One which Annette really likes is naming the scanned document as the transaction number of the QuickBooks entry.  This is what she does:

1. Enter the transaction just like you normally would.
2. Save the transaction 
3. Look at the journal entry it creates.  Either click the button named "journal" or hold down the control key on your keyboard and then hit "y".
4. The Transaction Number is listed.
5. Scan the document
6. Name the document after the transaction number.  For example:  Trn. 000250
7. Save the scanned file in a file folder you have created in My Documents.  You could save bills in a folder named "Bills", for example.   Or, you could create a file folder for each general ledger account and save it there.

 Now, I thought this would be a lot of work, but it really isn't.  What happens is that the document is instantly filed and doesn't sit forever in the stack of "To be filed" which takes up a lot of space on the desk.  An added plus is that if you are in QuickBooks and have a question about a transaction and wonder what the actual document looks like, you just check the journal entry and find the file.

Watch for my next blog and I'll tell you some ways that you can even "attach" that document to the QuickBooks transaction.