If you run a business that’s buried under a mountain of financial documentation – like a law practice or an accounting firm – you know how complex things can get. It takes a lot of experience to run a back office with efficiency and success, but we’re sharing some tips to make this process much more seamless.
Running a business takes time, and a lot of it. We’re sharing a few of our favorite tools below to help save you time, including:
- Hubdoc: This nifty SaaS product absorbs traditional financial paperwork, and through artificial intelligence and computer vision, turns old-school invoices and receipts into pure data that can easily be processed. It also works seamlessly with ScanSnap document scanners. By pairing Hubdoc with ScanSnap, you can make short work of your receipts, and invoices, saving you precious hours.
- Bookkeeper360 is a small business accounting solution. Their 100% US-Based team offers full service bookkeeping, CFO Advisory, tax prep, and payroll & HR to business owners who want to focus on growing their business instead of managing their accounting. Want to learn more? Click here to get started and receive a free Hubdoc subscription.
Using ScanSnap Home
What is ScanSnap Home? This software, specifically designed for ScanSnap scanners, can assist you with easily managing, editing and utilizing various types of scanned data. Once you have ScanSnap Home installed and your ScanSnap is connected, getting this connected and working HubDoc is a seamless and straightforward process - you’ll be automatically sending documents to your cloud storage in no time!
Your first step will be to open the application and click on “Scan Settings.” If you’re on MacOS, you can save a bit of time by pressing CMD+S. Then, tap the ScanSnap Cloud button in the top-right corner (this looks a bit like a grey cloud with an “S” in the middle). Under “Modify settings for each document type,” select the category of document you wish to send to HubDoc. ScanSnap can process documents based on their type. This can include anything from documents and receipts to business cards, photos and more.
Next to the field that says “Service Name,” you’ll see a button called “Selecting.” Tap this and then scroll down to where it says “Hubdoc.” Then click “Select.” It’ll ask you to log in and approve the connection.
Once you’ve done this, Hubdoc will ask you to set a nickname for your scanner. Give it something descriptive, like “Office ScanSnap Scanner.” Then press “Allow” and finally “Add.” And you’re done! After this point, HubDoc will receive any of the documents you scan, provided they’re in the correct format.
Working with ScanSnap Cloud
The second approach to using ScanSnap scanners is with ScanSnap Cloud, which makes it delightfully easy to upload paper documents to several popular online cloud services, including Hubdoc.
Connect your ScanSnap scanner to your computer and enter the ScanScap Cloud control panel. Within ScanSnap Cloud Settings, check the box that says: “Save by Document Type.” Next to each document type you want to send to Hubdoc (like receipts and documents) click the box that says “Change.” Then scroll down until you find Hubdoc and select it. Repeat this process as required.
You’ll then be prompted to integrate your Hubdoc account into ScanSnap Cloud. It’ll ask you to log into your account and it the required permissions to connect. Proceed through the rest of the screens within the configuration wizard, and then disconnect the scanner.
And that’s it. You’re done. From this point onwards, any documents you scan will head straight to Hubdoc, provided they’re in the format you specified.
Get Scanning
What makes the ScanSnap line so compelling is how much time it can save people – from small business owners and entrepreneurs to office workers and freelance creatives. If you’ve used a conventional scanner in the past, you know that you’d have to manually scan and upload your documents one-by-one, which can be unbearably tedious.
But with ScanSnap, the hard work happens automatically, giving you the space and energy to work on the pressing items you need to. It can handle tasks that otherwise would consume office workers’ time, like rotating documents to ensure they’re in the correct orientation, or giving scanned files meaningful names, allowing them to be found later on.
ScanSnap automatically rotates documents based on an intelligent computer algorithm. It also intelligently creates file names for documents based on their content, so you know what invoice relates to what customer, or where a receipt originated from.
And, as you now know, you can easily integrate ScanSnap with your favorite business applications, like Box and DropBox. And for accurate recordkeeping, Bookkeeper360 users can use ScanSnap to automatically forward important accounting documents, such as invoices and receipts. You can read more about how to do that here. And you can configure ScanSnap to forward documents based on their category, saving you another tiresome job.
This scanner really will save you time. If you haven’t already invested in a ScanSnap scanner, you owe it to yourself and your business to get one.