One of my favorite things about writing DocumentSnap is interacting with all the awesome readers. You all do such interesting things.
One such reader is Clare Kumar from Streamlife. Clare is a Professional Organizer, which in itself isn’t too unusual for DocumentSnap readers, but she is also the Organizing Expert for the Marilyn Denis Show, a lifestyle and talk show up here in Canada[1].
Recently Clare was on the show talking about paper organization. Although I go on and on about paperless stuff here on the site, having your physical paper organized can be just as important. Your paperless workflow will go much more smoothly if your paper is in control.
She has some good tips for paper workflow, and some interesting products in her shopping guide. In particular, the Swingline Stack & Shred Shredder looks pretty cool. Apparently it comes in a 60 sheet version too.
This video on using a highlighter with a Fujitsu ScanSnap to extract keywords is part of a series of quick videos on paperless tips and topics. View more in the series here.
The ScanSnap has a cool but (in my opinion) underused feature where you can use a highlighter on some text on a piece of paper, and then ScanSnap Manager will extract that text as keywords and embed them in the PDF file.
I wrote about doing this with Hazel on the Mac before, but here is how the keyword process works in video format. It works on both Mac and Windows with 2009-or-later ScanSnaps like the ScanSnap S1500, S1500M, S1300, or S1100.
By the way, I forgot to mention in the video, this works best on black & white documents. If a document is too busy or colorful, the scanner will get confused and won’t be able to isolate the keywords.
On the weekend, I returned from Macworld|iWorld. Usually when I go on these sorts of trips, two things happen afterwards:
I end up with a stack of receipts that sit around until I get around to/am forced to scan, organize, and categorize them
I end up with a stack of business cards that I get too lazy to deal with, so they sit around until I get around to scanning and organizing them.
This time, I vowed things would be different, and that I would try to handle these things on a more pro-active basis while on the trip itself, so I don’t get hit with a stack of paper afterwards.
Today’s post is about how I dealt with receipts, and a later post will be about business cards.
The Goal
My goal, which I more or less kept to, was to process receipts as I received them. If I could do it while I was still at the restaurant, great. If not, at least that night in the hotel was the goal.
I could have taken a mobile scanner on the trip with me, like the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1100 or the Doxie Go, but I decided to stick with my iPhone and the free app from Expensify.
Expensify
I need to start out by saying that this is not a comprehensive review of Expensify by any means. The service has much more functionality than what I will be touching on, such as submitting expense reports for approval, receiving reimbursements, tracking mileage, linking up with credit cards, and more.
I don’t cover any of that because I don’t do any of it. I will be focusing on using the mobile app to capture and organize receipts, and the web service to download a categorized report.
There are two components to Expensify: the mobile app for iOS, Android, Blackberry, or Palm, and the website.
The mobile apps are free, and the Expensify service itself is free for the basic plan. If you need more features (you can see the plans here) there are more options.
If you want to use “SmartScan” (I will get to that in a minute), you get 10 free scans a month, and then it is .20/scan after that.
Capturing Receipts
Whenever I received a receipt, I would use the Expensify app to take a picture of it. Most of the time, I did it right there at the table.
Expensify Starbucks App
If you have the feature enabled, the app will upload your receipt to their site, and apply “SmartScan”, which means they will extract the text from the receipt and then attempt to categorize it.
Expensify SmartScan
It takes about 10 minutes to complete a receipt. So, what I did was snap the receipt, to capture it, and then later on I went back in to check it out whenever I was hanging out waiting for something.
Organizing Receipts
Once SmartScan is done, you will see a list of scanned expenses on the Expenses tab. You can then tap a receipt to edit the details.
I have been extremely impressed with the quality of the text extraction. I haven’t had any problems with wrong amounts, and the Merchant is right most of the time.
Expensify Edit Receipt
If you have worked at a company and have done any travelling, you will be familiar with the concept of expense reports. That is how Expensify works too. You create a Report, and then attach your expenses to that report.
You can do all this on the mobile app, or on their website because everything is all synced up.[1]
Expensify Mobile Expense Report
When you are back at your computer, you can log into the website and attach and process any additional receipts. Here I am using the website to SmartScan a cocktail that I had charged to my room in the hotel bar.[2]
Expensify Web OCR
Exporting Your Expense Report
When I returned home, all my expenses were already categorized and scanned. I could Submit the report (to… myself), and print a really nice PDF that includes all the categorized expenses, as well as all the receipt images.
Depending on the plan that you have, you can export billable expenses to FreshBooks, export your report to Evernote, export to QuickBooks, and a bunch more.
I found the whole Expensify process very easy. How about you, what do you do for receipts when you are on the road?
As you can tell, I travel pretty luxuriously when I am by myself and paying for it. ↩
I had to choose between going to talk to a bunch of well-known Mac writers or entertaining a very drunk and lonely Minnesotan at the bar. I’ll let you guess which way I went. ↩
Carbonite Introduces iPhone App
It is funny how we expect online backup services to have mobile access now, but it was such a novel thing for Carbonite to do it back then.
This works well, but perceptive ScanSnappers may have noticed something strange: there are two different settings for enabling searchable PDFs (aka Optical Character Recognition, or OCR). Why on earth would they do this?
Well, I can’t answer the why, but I can at least shed some light on what the different settings do, as far as I can figure out.
The OCR Settings
To access your ScanSnap Manager Profiles, right-click on the ScanSnap icon on your Dock (Mac) or System Tray (Windows). Choose Settings or Scan Button Settings, depending on your OS.
Application Tab
On the Application tab, when you have one of the Scan To Evernote applications selected, there is an Application Settings… button.
Application Tab Button
When you press it, you will see there is a Convert to Searchable PDF checkbox. That is setting #1.
Application Tab Setting
File option Tab
When you go to the File option tab of your ScanSnap Manager profile, you will see there is also a Convert to Searchable PDF checkbox. That is setting #2.
File option Tab Setting
So, What Is The Difference?
Before getting into the difference, I do need to point out one quirk of the way that ScanSnap Manager Evernote profiles work.
When you scan, it will upload your document (or image) to Evernote, but it will also save the PDF in the location specified on the Save tab.[1]
As far as I can tell, here is how it works:
If you only check the Application tab checkbox, the file that is uploaded to Evernote is searchable, but the file that is saved to the folder specified on the Save tab is not searchable.
If you do not check the Application tab checkbox but do check the File option tab checkbox, the file that is uploaded is searchable, and the file that is saved to the Save tab is searchable.
If you check neither checkbox, the PDF that is uploaded to Evernote and the PDF that is saved to the Save tab location are not searchable. At that point, what happends depends on your status as an Evernote Premium customer.
So there you go, mystery solved. Either way, being able to scan to Evernote is a great feature, and I’m glad Fujitsu opened it up to all 2009-and-later ScanSnaps. Thanks to user Leothe3rd from the Evernote forum for the inspiration for this blog post.
I personally wish you could turn this behavior off, but it is what it is. ↩
This video on redacting sensitive text with PDFPen is part of a series of quick videos on paperless tips and topics. View more in the series here.
In the spirit of full disclosure, the subject for this video was ripped off from an ad that Katie Floyd did on the Mac Power Users podcast.
If you have sensitive text in a PDF that you don’t want someone to see (think account numbers, amounts, names), many people just use an annotation tool to put a rectangle over it.
The problem with this approach is that it is not actually removing the text from the PDF, it is just covering it up. If someone gets the document, they can get at the text “behind” the image.
This video uses PDFPen’s great redact tool to remove all evidence of a piece of text from a PDF. You can even remove all instances of text with one command.
I have written about ways to electronically put your signature on a PDF quite a few times (for example, using PDFPen or in Preview), but they have all been on the Mac. Today it is Windows’ turn.[1]
The latest version of Adobe Reader X has added the ability to drop your signature into a PDF. Previously, you needed the rather-expensive Acrobat X for this. Here is how it works:
Go Into Signature Mode
When you have your PDF loaded, the first thing you want to do is click the Sign button in the upper-right corner of Acrobat Reader.
Acrobat Click Sign
If you don’t have a Sign button, you are probably using an older version of Reader. Head on over to Adobe’s site and grab Acrobat Reader X.
When you click the Sign button, you will now have three (ok, four, but we will deal with the fourth later) options:
Add Text
Place Signature
Finalize Changes
Add Your Signature
In our case, we want to add our signature, so we will hit Place Signature.
Acrobat Place Signature
Once you do this, a pop-up window comes up with instructions. Like most of these types of applications, you will need to write your signature on a piece of paper and then scan it in or take a picture of it with a camera or mobile device.
In this example, I used TurboScan on my iPhone to take a picture and then transferred it to my Windows machine.
Once you have your signature file on your computer, select it and hit Accept
Choose Signature
Place, Resize, and Finalize
Once your have added your signature, you move the image to where you want it, and then drag the sides to size it.
Resize Signature
When everything looks just right, click on Finalize on the right-side of the Window, and it will check with you to make sure that you want to embed your signature in the PDF. Once you click Finalize Changes, it will save a new signed PDF that you can send out.
Finalize Changes
Send For Signature?
You may have noticed earlier that aside from the three options under Sign Now, there was a fourth option with a Send For Signature button.
All this functionality came about because Adobe acquired EchoSign, an electronic signature company.
If you want to have a more sophisticated signing workflow where the PDF is securely sent to the recipient and the signatures are tracked, you can click that button and try it out. That’s a topic for another blog post though.
All in all, Acrobat Reader X’s signature functionality works well, and it is nice to have this in a free tool that you probably already have.
Do you have another way that you “sign” documents on Windows? Let us know in the comments how it is working for you.
Since I am hopping on a plane for Macworld|iWorld tomorrow, I figure I should balance it out. ↩
If you have read my Doxie Go review, you will know that I like the scanner but I felt the lack of OCR capability (the ability to make a PDF searchable) was a bit of a stumbling block.
Having your PDF documents with you on the go can be extremely handy, and a growing way to do that is with a tablet. However, when I say tablet, I am not just talking about the usual suspects like the iPad, Android, or even the new Kindle Fire. Many people don’t realize that you can store and view PDF documents on a normal Kindle as well.
I picked up a Kindle 4 a few months ago, and while it has been fantastic for reading books, I wanted to see how it does with PDFs.
I’ll be using this Kindle in the examples below, but I believe the workflow is similar for most recent E Ink Kindles.
But First, A Note
I don’t want to give the impression that the E Ink Kindle is as good as, say, an iPad. For starters, there is only 1.25 GB available for user content. Additionally, the screen is not color[1], so your PDFs are not going to look as nice as on an iPad.
There are no “apps” in the modern sense of the word, so you are limited to the Kindle’s built-in ability to display PDFs, and finally, the screen is only 6", so you may need to do some zooming if you want to read a PDF closely.
Having said all that, PDF display works surprisingly well on the 6" E Ink Kindle 4, and the documents are very readable. The device is extremely light, and many people carry the Kindle with them anyways. Why not use it for going paperless?
There are two main ways to get your PDFs on the device:
Connect via USB
Send via Email
Copy PDFs To Kindle Via USB
The Kindle comes with a USB cable that is used for charging, but it can also be used to copy content over to the device. When I plug the Kindle into my computer, it mounts it as a drive[2].
Kindle Drive Mounted
The magic happens in the documents folder. In the Finder, take a PDF and drag it to that folder.
PDF In Kindle Documents Folder
When you eject the Kindle from your computer, you should now see the PDF on the device.
Kindle PDF in List
You can view the PDF like any normal Kindle book, and it will display on the screen.
Kindle Display PDF on Screen
I am not sure if you can tell in this screenshot, but this PDF looks a bit faint on the Kindle screen. I chose that on purpose, and we’ll get into that in a bit.
Email PDFs To Kindle
Amazon has a great service whereby you can email documents to your Kindle’s email address (did you know it had one?), and the documents will appear on your device.
Find Your Kindle’s Email Address
The first thing you want to do is find your Kindle’s address. To do that, from the home screen, hit the Menu button, then choose Settings, then hit the next page button on the side.
You’ll see your Send-to-Kindle email address.
Send To Kindle Address
Note: Before you go crazy sending documents to yourself, you need to be careful of Amazon’s charges.
If you have a 3G Kindle and download your PDFs to your device over 3G, you will want to see Amazon’s Personal Document Fees. If you download over wi-fi, it is free.
To be safe, you will want to use the @free.kindle.com address. Let’s say your Kindle’s address is [email protected]. If you send your documents to [email protected], it will only transfer them if you are connected to wi-fi, and you don’t have to worry about getting nailed with fees.
Make Sure You Are An Approved Sender
If your email address that you will send documents to is the same as your Amazon account, you can skip this step. If you are like me and have different addresses, you need to add your address as an approved Sender.
Go to Amazon.com
Click on Your Account at the top
Click on Manage Your Kindle under Digital Content
Click on Personal Document Settings on the left
Add yourself under Approved Personal Document E-mail List
Add Approved Kindle Address
Email Your Documents To Your Kindle
You can either attach PDFs directly to an email, or zip up a group of them and attach the zip file.
Don’t forget, if you are on 3G, make sure to send to your @free.kindle.com account to avoid nasty bills.
Email To Kindle
When you are connected to wi-fi, your document will appear on your Kindle ready to view.
Kindle Emailed PDF
If you have a long PDF that you want to read, you may find it nicer to have Amazon convert the PDF into the Kindle’s native format. Then it will be just like reading a normal Kindle book.
To do that, when you email the PDF in, put the word convert in the subject line. Amazon’s servers will then convert it to Kindle format before sending it to your device.
For more than you could possibly want to know about getting personal content onto your Kindle, check out Amazon’s help page.
Improving Reading
When you view a PDF on screen, it may be too faint or small to read. Hit the Menu button on the Kindle and then choose Zoom & Contrast. You can adjust the contrast to make the text darker, and adjust the zoom so that you can read it more comfortably.
Adjust Kindle Zoom and Contrast
Organize PDFs
The Kindle doesn’t have the concept of folders, but it does have Collections.
Amazon does a much more thorough job of going through this than I could, so check out their Organizing Your Kindle Content help page.
Searching
If your PDF is searchable, searching within the PDF does work.[3] Unfortunately, it does not appear that PDF files are included in the system-wide Kindle search. Too bad.
Conclusion
All-in-all, I was pleasantly surprised by my 6" Kindle’s ability as a PDF reader. I wouldn’t want to give up my iPad for it, but if I didn’t have one, it is a nice alternative. For $79 USD[4], it is pretty hard to beat.
Do you use your Kindle or other e-reader to store and read PDFs? Any tricks or workflows that I have missed? I’d love to hear about them in the comments.
One of my favorite things about writing DocumentSnap is interacting with all the awesome readers. You all do such interesting things.
Join the forum discussion on this post
On the weekend, I returned from 
