Is Going “Paperless” Always Best in Business?
June 24, 2009 by Mary Emma Allen
More and more banks, credit card companies, and businesses are urging their customers and clients to go “paperless,” to have statements and invoices come to you entirely online rather than through the mail. My husband and I’ve begun to do a great deal of our business online, such as paying bills, corresponding with businesses, and checking on invoices. It’s convenient and immediate.
However, I’m reluctant to have a complete record online with no paper trail for a number of reasons.
- Invoices and payments can go astray online, as well as in the mail.
- The Internet or your computer can go down.
- Your can lose your files and find you forgot to back them up adequately.
- You or the business can be hacked.
- You have records conveniently available when you can’t access your computer.
- Your back-up method becomes obsolete and you can’t access it.
What have you found about “going green” or “paperless” in your business and personal records and transactions? Do you keep a paper back-up trail?
One of my biggest concerns with going paperless is having a dependency on software products, especially products that allow you to add tags and other metadata (think iTunes).
For example, I use a product to index and
search my PDF files (basically my entire digital life), but it would be painful to migrate from that product to another even if I had to.
This is in part because it isn’t in a developer’s best interest to make it easy to export your data from their product.
Here’s a short article I wrote on the subject a couple of months back; hope it is relevant.
http://paperjammed.com/2009/03/24/help-my-data-is-being-held-hostage/
Thanks, Tad, for sharing your concerns and experience. I’m concerned, too, about having my data and files entirely on electronic equipment and gadgets. Some people also recommend you store your data online at a source set up entirely for that purpose. Yet, someone else is holding your financial and business data, your manuscripts if you’re a writer…and would have access to it, it seems to me. I still like some paper backup…even though that’s not “green.”
Thanks to the blogger at Work Shak for calling attention to this post and sharing her/my concerns about going paperless. Is that you, Miranda?