MOVING to paperless farm offices was a life changing decision for Nikki Egginton, Quairading and Narelle Caffell, Tammin.
Both women run their farm office, while leading busy family lives, and spoke of how they run their offices at the recent Quairading CRC Farm Office Affairs day
Ms Egginton farmed with her husband for 20 years before she decided to go paperless.
"Initially when I married my husband I couldn't turn on a computer," Ms Egginton said.
"Within two years I was working remotely from the office at home, as if I was in an office in Perth and decided a couple of years ago, life being quite busy and the kids being away, that I should be able to work anywhere."
Ms Caffell had the same idea.
She said she needed a mobile office because she wasn't home very often.
"I would travel to Perth with kids at boarding school and I have children who do extra activities," Ms Caffell said.
"Also I do fitness instructing, so I had to be able to work from anywhere."
Ms Caffell started her paperless journey two years ago when she attended an Agrimaster roadshow and was introduced to Receipt Bank and Scannable.
"It changed my digital life," she said.
"I work from three screens at home but I can take my phone anywhere and pay bills."
Since last financial year Ms Caffell has gone 100 per cent paperless, scanning everything important into the computer system.
"It did take six months to scan everything in," Ms Caffell said.
"Our biggest problem was invoices coming in where we had both emails and paper trays.
"You need to fully change and go cold turkey, so in our house if it doesn't come in digital then it doesn't get paid.
"That makes other people change to digital too."
Ms Egginton has a system that isn't as tech savvy as Ms Caffell.
She started her online journey by doing household and community chores, saving them on Evernote and Dropbox.
"I went to the Agrimaster road show about the same time and they said not to use Dropbox, so I decided to look into it," she said.
"I tried OneDrive and I had to pay for the business version to get better security for our system.
"But for the last financial year I have saved everything to OneDrive."
Ms Egginton said it was also important to have a look at the internet and the need for a Wi-Fi router.
"The internet is key to having a successful online office," she said.
"But it really comes down to working out what filing works for you.
"I went to paperless because it's quicker to find things rather than searching through a file cabinet with 20 years worth of paper in it.
"Also our filing system at home wasn't protected by anything and anyone could walk in."
Ms Caffell assured the audience that "the cloud" wasn't as scary as it's made out to be.
"We use OneNote for everything and that was because it's all stored on a cloud base," she said.
"I or my husband can access any part of the business from anywhere."
She also recommended changing passwords regularly to continue the safety of the documents.
"Someone could break into my home office easier than they can break into my cloud," she said.
"Also there are email backups and a internet trail of documents in more places than just the cloud, so if I loose it from one place I can find it in another."
