How to scan a 200-page book in just 1 minute?
First check out this book scanner:
So how would you improve upon this?
This is a video from the University of Tokyo where a researcher explains how it works:
DocSnaps – Online Paperless Bookkeeping
Posted by vinkash in accountants and bookkeepers, small-business on January 27, 2010
Wish you a happy and prosperous new year!
The tax season is upon us and customers are bringing in their documents, folders, and boxes filled with paper. Manual data entry from those documents is the most tedious and time consuming process and yet offers the lowest remuneration.
Now consider a solution that would make those paper documents disappear and replace them with a list of transactions on your computer that are linked to the source document. How convenient!
Documents IN –> Transactions OUT
DocSnaps (www.docsnaps.com) is a secure, web-based product that allows you to:
A). capture bills, expenses, invoices, checks, and other documents and store them as electronic records for safe management.
B). automatically extract financial information and creates transactions based on the chart of accounts and historical data.
C). view & drill-down financial reports AND export the transactions to popular accounting software such as Quickbooks, Simply Accounting, or Caseware.
With DocSnaps you save time and thus are able to provide your clients with value added services like tax planning or generating more leads. Meanwhile DocSnaps will automate the manual and repetitive tasks of bookkeeping transaction generation.
The future of accounting and bookkeeping is online. Get ahead of the competition and use the power of DocSnaps automation to grow your business.
DocSnaps has been tested by several accountants and bookkeepers. It is accurate, timely, and cost-effective.
Make this tax season hassle free and efficient. Trial DocSnaps today for FREE.
Bookkeeping and Tax Preparation Help with DocSnaps
Posted by gordonlo in Guest Bloggers on October 17, 2009
Whether you are a sole proprietor or a small business, bookkeeping data entry is a nettlesome problem. DocSnaps helps you solve the paper problem and provides you completed books that you can take to your accountant or export any bookkeeping software like Quickbooks, or Simply Accounting.
Paper Pile
So gather up all your receipts and documents (bank statements, credit card statements, etc) that are needed for your bookkeeping and instead of manually entering all the information into an accounting software, you can scan the documents and upload them to your DocSnaps account. Not only are all your records stored online, but bookkeeping transactions are created for you. Here are the steps:
1. Create a DocSnaps account – First create a DocSnaps account if you don’t already have one. Go to the Signup page and fill in the simple form to get your new account activated. You will get an email to the email address you entered in the sign-up form with a welcome message and your own account on docsnaps. This is an email in the format: xxxxx@send.docsnaps.com. This is the email to which you send all your documents.
2. Upload all your documents – Next depending upon the number of documents you have and the type you can either snap them, scan them, eFax them, or email them. Here is how:
Snap a receipt
a. Snap them – This is ideal for receipts that you encounter on the road – eg. at the gas pump, or restaurant. Use your cellphone camera (resolution should be more then 1.5 MP) to take pictures of individual receipts. Place the receipt on a flat surface and hold the camera at least 1 feet above the receipt until you can see the full image in the viewfinder. Snap the picture keeping the camera steady. Similarly snap pictures of all your receipts – one snap shot per receipt. You can email each of these to your DocSnaps account one by one, or first capture them all, and when you get to computer download them and email to your DocSnaps account as an attachment.
b. Scan them – This is ideal for processing a large backlog of documents. With a good office scanner like Fujitsu ScanSnap scan in all your documents into PDF files. It is very fast and can take in paper of different sizes and thickness – bank statements, telephone bills, store receipts etc. You can get through a full folder of documents in less than 10 minutes. Once done log in to your DocSnaps account and upload the scanned images. You can even zip up all the documents and upload them. We will unzip the file, and split up large pdf files into individual documents.
c. eFax them – Ideal for automatically storing all your faxes, and capturing vendor invoices. If you have an eFax account then set the email address to your DocSnaps account email. This way any vendor invoices and faxes sent to you will go directly into your document repository online, where it will be indexed and processed. You can get an eFax account from eFax, or Octopus IP.
Record list in DocSnaps
d. email them – Ideal for capturing online transactions. When you purchase goods or services online vendors send you the bill to your email account. Services companies also send you monthly bills online (eg. utilities, server hosting, etc.), which can be set to automatically forward to your DocSnaps account.
3. Manage records online – DocSnaps FLY account comes with a set of expense categories. In the SPEED account you can create your own chart of accounts. Once all the documents are in your DocSnaps account, they will be indexed, categorized based on your expense categories or chart of accounts, and transactions created for them. This allows you to search all your records, tag them (eg. Project 1, business trip to new york, etc.), and view them online from anywhere. It gives you a breakdown of all your expenses by category, and generates tag reports.
DocSnaps Overview Page
4. Get expense reports and bookkeeping done – You can then export all this data to Quickbooks, Simply accounting, or a csv file. Select all the transactions you want to export and choose the format and it will generate the file for you. Then open your accounting application and import the data. For example, the Quickbooks export produces and iif file. This can then be imported into Quickbooks which will generate transactions for you. Similarly a csv file can be opened and manipulated by Excel.
5. Bookkeeping online – Need bookkeeping help? There are several virtual bookkeepers who can help you with your bookkeeping online. Just send a twitter to @docsnaps or email marketing@docsnaps.com, and we will hook you up with a good bookkeeper or accountant.
3 months FREE Bookkeeping Data Entry
Posted by vinkash in accountants and bookkeepers, bookkeepers, small-business, startup on October 14, 2009
Small businesses – Go to the Pricing page and click on the “Beta Signup” button.
Accountants or bookkeepers – Get it free at Pricing page and click on the “Beta Signup” button. For customer referrals and partnership, email us at marketing@docsnaps.com.
What is the most tedious and time consuming task for a small business or start up? While there are those who absolutely love it, the overwhelming response from surveyed business owners is “bookkeeping”. Therefore hiring a good bookkeeper early on is not just a life saver for many but also makes good financial sense.
Work smart! Automate the rest.
A good bookkeeper or accountant understands your business, keeps your books updated, and provides actionable reports. While a lot of this requires skills, there is a part that is repetitive and monotonous. This consists of working with boxes or folders full of documents, bookkeeping data entry and moving data between various applications.
DocSnaps aims to automate a lot of this data entry and provide online access to accounting and tax services, resulting in enormous time and money savings.
Using DocSnaps users can capture and upload any financial document – bills, receipts, checks, etc. – using their mobile phone camera, eFax, or email. A transaction is created for each of these documents by the software. Users can also import data from other applications including their invoice application, bank or credit card account.
Real-time financial reports are generated which allow users to drill down to source documents. Transactions can also be exported to other accounting applications like Quickbooks. The accountant or bookkeeper can conveniently access DocSnaps remotely.
Are you looking for a solution to your bookkeeping data entry problem. Help us beta test our product and give us your feedback. Just go the Pricing page and click on the “Beta Signup” button. We are looking for beta users, and are happy to provide DocSnaps for FREE until the end of this year.If you are an accountant or bookkeeper we welcome you to try out DocSnaps. Eliminate the most boring and lowest paying part of your work. Save time and make money.
You can get a beta – go to the Pricing page and click on the “Beta Signup” button. If you are interested in partnering with us and getting customer referrals in the near future, please email us at marketing@docsnaps.com. This is a limited time offer and is on a first come first serve basis.
Bill Clinton Business Innovation at PanIIT 2009
Posted by vinkash in Guest Bloggers on October 11, 2009
The keynote on the second day was delivered by Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States. He spoke about how innovation by a few sharp minds can be scaled up to bring prosperity in developing countries. He used props, statistics, and his personal experience in countries, most recently in Haiti. Here are a few notes about his speech and general observations about IIT:
- In the middle of his speech he got a call on his cell. He took the call since he said that only Hillary had that number, and told her that he was in the middle of his speech to IIT. He then asked her “Yes or no?” and hung up after that
- I met a recent graduate from IIT (Chemical Eng – 2009 batch) doing his masters at MIT. He was just one of 15 from his batch of 500 to come to the US. During my time it was not uncommon to have 10 times that many come abroad.
- The team that was a runners up to us called ECPS were a group of recent graduates. At a time when most people their age would be looking for their first job, one of them is already running a company with 10 people, they have several clients, and they were able to raise sponsorship money for 3 of their team members to come to Chicago.
Bill Clinton addressing PanIIT
More information can be found at Pradeep’s blog and Christopher’s blog.
It is good to see some real work being done in the area of innovation and entrepreneurship in developing countries. And others that are further along and opening their borders to innovation.
We Won PanIIT2009 Business Plan Competition
Posted by vinkash in small-business on October 9, 2009
It took 2 months of various rounds before we finally won the PanIIT 2009 business plan competition. With accomplished judges and many of our peers in the audience we had 15 minutes to pitch. We went with 12 slides and focused on about 2 to 3 ideas/sentences per slide.
The judges liked the idea and we look forward to talking to the many VCs in attendance as well as others who can help us with their experience and connections. Judges included Kanwal Rekhi, Scott Meadow, and Kapil Chaudhary.
Overall the process itself was very rewarding with feedback at each level.
PanIIT 2009 - Chicago
Free Tools and Applications for Small Business
Posted by vinkash in small-business, startup on October 3, 2009
With web startups giving away free applications with hopes of getting uses hooked, there are a lot of great tools out there that small businesses can use. Add to that open source apps and a plethora of already existing desktop tools and you have a free bonanza for companies. Granted some of these applications are less than perfect, and others fall short of their peers in terms of usefulness and features. But many of them are true gems, and for a cost conscious freelancer or entrepreneur they make life easier and help conserve cash.
We will be featuring one really useful app every week that is free (or has a free offering), saves money, makes money, or solves a real problem for a small business. Other apps in the space with slightly different uses will also be listed.
But first to get started here is a list of lists – websites that feature free apps. Please comment about others that you know and the list will be promptly updated.
Freewaregenius – A list of mostly windows applications, and others from pdf converters to time trackers.
Mashup – Has a list of useful apps for everything including twitter, business help, blogging, and money & finance to name a few.
Manage Money – Accounting and Bookkeeping
Invoice –
Expense Reports –
Bookkeeping –
Data Entry –
Payroll –
Create a Product or Service
Create a Website -
Design an Application -
Hire Talent –
Shopping Cart –
Online Billing –
Manage Customers – Marketing and Sales
Get Beta Users –
Survey Users –
Manage contacts -
Manage website analytics –
Blog –
Newsletters –
Do PR
Twitter – Twellow – Twitter yellow pages, Bit.ly – URL shortening and twitter analytics
Customer Forum –
Manage Partners
Legal
How to deliver Online Bookkeeping Services
Posted by vinkash in accountants and bookkeepers, small-business, startup on September 23, 2009
Online bookkeeping is nothing new. There are products and services available that tackle different aspects of the solution. For businesses it promises to save time and money, and deliver several soft advantages including efficiency, faster actionable information, and agility.
Scanning of documents, remote work, and risks associated with sending important documents online pose adoption problems. But those who overcome these problems can reap rich rewards. The phenomenal growth in the number of tech-savvy companies drives demand for this service. Similar to email, a steady adoption of online bookkeeping is inevitable. As an accounting or bookkeeping firm, how do you plan to tap into this large lucrative market?
How does it work?
Online bookkeeping services can be delivered online if three main functions can be done entirely online:
1. Sharing of source documents
This includes receipts, bills, checks, account statements, reports, etc. to be transmitted to the service provider. There are several ways to capture electronic images of source documents:
- Inexpensive scanners like the Fujitsu ScanSnap can be used by clients to quickly scan documents.
- Smaller documents like receipts can be captured by a cellphone camera (resolutions of > 1.5 MP is recommended). ScanR is a cool app that helps you scan, copy and fax from your cellphone.
- Services like Shoeboxed and Pixily will digitize all your documents for you if you simply mail it in.
2. Performing bookkeeping
This includes creating transactions, printing checks, bank reconciliation, generating reports, etc. Several applications are available for small business to do this.
- Specialized applications for invoicing are available – Freshbooks and Blinksale are the better ones.
- Xero, Quickbooks online, and Sidomac are some applications that provide online bookkeeping functionality that includes bank reconciliation and check printing.
3. Communication and process
Especially while working online it is easy to lose control of the work being done. Communication is very important to be able to hold the team together and focus on the next set of tasks that needs to be done. For effective online collaboration contextual information exchange and processes are very important. At present there is no good tool, save for SIDOMAC that offers a good framework for online bookkeeping services delivery.
Online bookkeeping also has the following disadvantages:
1. It involves an extra step – that of scanning and uploading documents.
2. The documents need to be indexed and somehow correlated to transactions to be useful in any way.
Should I use it?
Whether you are a good candidate for online bookkeeping services depends upon how clearly the work is split between you and your bookkeeper. If what your bookkeeper does can be easily done using the tools listed above then go for it. If it entails transmitting documents, exchange of information and time critical information then make sure to find an all encompassing solution to your problem that includes strong processes and a competent and experienced online bookkeeping services company.
(Summarized version of a white paper published on a partner website - Suitesonline.com, Inc)
5 Great Business Plan Resources
Posted by vinkash in small-business, startup on September 10, 2009
DocSnaps has made it into the finals of the Pan IIT Business Plan competition to be held in Chicago in October. In writing a business plan for investment it is always good to access the most recent and pertinent resources for your industry. Here are 5 great resources to help you get started.
1. Guy’s business plan advice – Why write a business plan? It is important to answer this question first before putting pen to paper.
2. Sequoia Capital’s business plan outline – This provides an outline of what makes a business sustainable and the company fundable. It also includes an outline of what to include in the business plan.
3. Market research – A general idea of the size of the market is essential to get started. This is a great starting point with statistics and numbers to give you a general idea of the market. Other resources for qualitative research – BizShark, Crunchbase.
4. Competitive Strategy – A viable business is all about competing. If the idea is good then it safe to assume that somebody is already working on it. And to be successful a strategy has to be devised that makes you more successful than the other. Micheal Porter a university professor at Harward Business School helps you to analyze competition and create a successful strategy. Without a great strategy even the best business idea will fail.
5. Financials Basics – It is important to understand the basics of startup finance and take into account all startup expenses. A business might be profitable but for investors to be interested they would want a healthy return on investment for their risk. Your financial plan should provide general trends and ratios which helps answer these questions.
Biz plan competitions are always wrong – According to Seth Godin pundits are always wrong at predicting the future. So do not worry if your biz plan does not win any competitions.
DocSnaps wins Biz Plan Competition
Posted by vinkash in Guest Bloggers on September 4, 2009
DocSnaps was named runners up at the IIT Roorkee Heritage Fund business plan competition 2009. The objective of the competition is to “foster entrepreneurship among IIT Roorkee alums, and to provide an integrative learning experience for the community”.
DocSnaps Logo
Now onto the Pan IIT competition in Chicago in October!