The Telecommuting Mom

In a previous post I wrote about Pixily, a company I had seen in the Boston Globe. Pixily is a service where users pay a monthly fee to send in documents to be scanned. The company can then shred the documents for you or mail them back.

I have a lot of files in my office. I prefer to search through files online rather than sorting through a stash of papers. I have a scanner with an auto document feeder (ADF) but it still requires a lot of time to turn my papers into digital images. I gave Pixily a try and I plan to continue to use it.

I received two water resistant envelopes in the mail within two days of signing up online. Just a note – I live within 50 miles of where Pixily is located so this may have an affect on timing. I filled each envelope with 50 sheets of paper. After three days I received an email notifying me that my documents were in my Pixily account, where I could review each sheet. I opted to download the files onto my computer so I could create a back-up disk. Having Pixily scan the documents was a huge time saver. I would rather put my working hours to use making money and pay $14.95/month (roughly $3.75/week) to have someone else scan files.

The only downside I can see so far is that it will take me about a year to digitize all of my files on the current program. I would prefer a package, with a flat introductory fee, for home business users that allowed me to send in a large amount of files in my first month, such as 500 sheets. It’s nice to have 100 sheets of paper files out of my cabinets already but now I am waiting for this month’s envelope to arrive. I would prefer to send in the majority of my files during my first month, as to clean up the clutter in my file cabinets quickly, and then continue using the service at the 50/sheets per month rate as ongoing maintenance.

Still, I think Pixily is a valuable service for the home office user (and for personal use such as maintaining receipts). I am including them in my list of Resources from now on.

Details:
Pixily offers other service plan packages which can be found at https://www.pixily.com/ze/user/pricing.The service also allows for online document sharing and will store your files, up to a certain page limit, online so they are accessible wherever you have a computer and internet connection.

Filed under: office tools, productivity, reviews