Make the most out of Receipt Bank and Xero Files with a cloud scanner.

I recently took the Chromebook challenge. However after I purchased the Chromebook I realised I needed a new printer. As part of my challenge to myself to go fully cloud I purchased a wifi enabled printer with scan to cloud and print cloud capabilities. I purchased a Epson Workforce 2540 for $99 from Officeworks. While the cameras on my phone and ipad are great for recording receipts they can be painful for multi-page documents or documents that will need to be printed at a later date. I've always found scanning documents to be a painful chore especially when using a home office printer scanner.

The Epson Workforce 2540 allows the user to scan to a variety of cloud services without the need to be connected to a computer. In other words the printer has it's own connection to the internet and can scan directly to Google Drive, Evernote, Dropbox and Box. Importantly Epson allows you to setup other cloud services provided they a unique email attached to your account. Below is a screenshot from Epson Connect - a cloud based interface for Epson printers. Fortunately, both Xero and Receipt provide email addresses that allow their users to email files into their services. Below you can see I have successfully setup both accounts in addition to my Google Drive, Dropbox and Evernote Account.

Screenshot from Epson Connect

Both Xero Files and Receipt Bank together are incredibly useful tools eliminating hours of data entry work and the need to keep physical copies of source documents. A recent article on Box Free IT discusses in detail how Xero Files and Receipt Bank compliment each other. http://boxfreeit.com.au/2014/05/20/xero-files-receipt-bank-turns-theres-room/

Below I've taken a screenshot from my account. In your Xero account if click on the file icon you will find an email address that is unique to your account. This email will allow you to scan documents directly into Xero.

Receipt Bank eliminates the need to manually enter invoices and receipts into Xero potentially saving hours of works for a companies bookkeeper. In Receipt Bank you can find the email address unique to your account under account settings > Email-In. 

By making a small investment in a cloud printer/scanner. You can make most of the Xero files and Receipt Bank potentially eliminating hours of work and the need for a physical filing cabinet.

The Chromebook Challenge

Yesterday. I took the Chromebook Challenge. I was considering buying a Macbook Air at tax time, however I considered my needs and I decided I only needed a computer to surf the web, check my emails and use Xero. So I decided on a HP Chromebook $399.

The computer industry has been promising a low cost computer without a hard-drive for a very long time. With the emergence of cloud and the decline of desktop software it's finally possible for a such a computer to be viable. Thinking about my needs, I need to use social media, track my calories, manage my finances of Xero, track my time in Harvest, write documents and access streaming media. All of these things I can do on a Chromebook.

The experience so far has been amazing. The computer starts in seconds and everything is very fast. Freed from the need to support a heavy operating system. The Intel Celeron processor is more than adequate for doing everything I need. If the same hardware was running windows 8 the computer would barely work.

The computers comes with a 16gb SSD for downloading files. However, Google provides a 100gb Google Drive account for all your storage needs. This computer needs a connection to the internet to be useful. However that's every computer these days. You can prepared Google Docs in offline mode, so it is possible to travel with this computer.

So far the only thing I haven't been able to do is access my works VPN. Unfortunately, that means I can use it for work. Other than send out emails and viewing my calendar. For use in a small business or company a Chromebook could definitely work it would just be a matter of choosing solutions that would work on a Chromebook. If your business is using Xero, Google Apps and other cloud based solutions I would definitely recommend considering a Chromebook. At a fraction of the cost of most Notebooks it could save even a very business thousands of dollars.

The Bottomline Diet