Moving closer to a paperless world
For many years now, I have been trying to move toward a completely paperless world.
This is hard in a world that loves paper. Many people love paper because it’s tactile and they can feel it and see it. Not me. I hate little pieces of paper all over the place, and trying to organize and make sense of it all. I got a phone many years ago that allows me to write everything in it. All my notes are digital, I can sync the phone to the computer and vice versa, and all these notes can be modified and organized digitally and archived. I can copy and paste, and edit without having to re type things.
So that is just in terms of notes and general use of paper, it goes far beyond the unnecessary use of trees. I’m not even going to get into purchase receipts, 3 words: tax time nightmare.
But there is another use of paper that annoys me to no end: Checks. The whole idea of writing, sending and depositing paper checks for business transactions seems to me so 20th century. It is the only reason I use a bank machine. I am even thinking of giving clients incentives to use electronic means of payment, and attaching links (to my now electronic invoices) to pay electronically. I know big businesses won’t go for this in the near future.
Would you use electronic methods of payment if you got 1% off your bill? I would love to get your feedback on this. Paypal and similar tools are very easy to use, even if you don’t have an account.
So if you use paypal, please let me know I would love to pay you this way, and I would do it for free!
Do I want the world to progress faster than it is ready to? Maybe, it’s all about simplifying life for me, is that so wrong?
Tags: bank, bill, Business, electronic payment, invoice, paper, paypal, transaction
November 5th, 2007 at 1:31 am
Hey Jarome,
Completely agree – the bank is not where you want to spend your valuable time.
All our clients (save one) pay us electronically, and that ranges from the one-man operation to the largest organisation in Europe (the UK’s national health service). They all pay by BACS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BACS), which apparently is going to take between 1-3 hours in the future (it currently takes a few days). The UK is very advanced when it comes to these things. I think I’ve received about 12 cheques in the last year and written fewer.
November 5th, 2007 at 1:30 pm
Wow, you’ve really put a lot of thought into this. So do you never use paper?
November 5th, 2007 at 6:26 pm
It is so completely ironic that you should have a blog about NOT USING PAPER!!! Today to be exact I was trying to solve an issue regarding the workplace that would involve just that—-USE THE PAPER—-WE NEED SECURITY—-AND WE CAN NOT GET IT BECAUSE OF A GLICH IN THE COMPUTER SYSTEM FIVE BOROUGHS WIDE—OR AT LEAST QUEENS WIDE!!!! I have been calling, and talking over the phone and on my side of the issue there is no room for this stupid computer glich!
Here’s the problem in a nut shell—In order to have “actual security” personnel for an afterwork job centered activity the request has to only be input through the computer that is linked to a specific office program. However the building and the name of the building have a distinct issue—0123 keeps imputing as 0789 which is an entirely different boro and entirely unrelated worksite and/or building!!!! No one can access the correct worksite or gain “security personnel” due to this glich! This has been a problem for three months. No one is permittted to submit a request by paper—so the problem remains unfixed—ridiculous!!! So I beg to differ with your desire to have a paperless world—computer gliches need paper and there are too many of them in the world. Computers are run by human beings and human error can be based on multiple causes(i.e. lack of sleep, sickness, stress, domestic issues on the brain, At least with paper you can correct the error simply when you find the mistake—it takes a computer programer the time and money to correct the glich that is plaguing my current organization—and believe it or not—NO ONE KNOWS WHAT TO DO???? ughhhh!!!! I believe that paper and computer can have a marriage of a sorts and maybe like a 60/40 kind of thing—let the computer handle everything—but when things get screwy—let a little paper jump on the problem until the bugs get cleaned out!!! Ya—-know!!!!???
Thanks for that blog—this hit right to my stress of the day!!! —-which still goes unanswered!!!
November 6th, 2007 at 2:26 am
Well Rod, I envy you guys over the water, The UK is always more advanced with music tastes and other developments. I guess North America has too much fear as illustrated in the above comment to adopt these new systems swiftly.
In my opinion, The solution to flawed computer systems is better systems, not reverting to paper! My bank can’t even be bothered to build a points site that works on popular browsers = ignorance of management and laziness of IT and web programmers.
Thanks to progressive companies like http://www.lessaccounting.com , small business is putting big corporations to shame when it comes to business and finance innovation!
November 17th, 2007 at 10:38 am
Hey Jarome. You could visit buy some of my art (http://www.erikahastings.etsy.com) and pay with paypal. Heh heh. Only problem is that the art is one paper. Oops. What now?