Tax Document Scanning 201: Using Software Provided with Your Scanner
Posted by Ed Jennings on Tue, Oct 06, 2009
So you’ve gone out and purchased a scanner—now it’s time to figure out how to use it. The purpose of this entry—courtesy of Sarah Smith from Fujitsu—is to make sure that you are getting the most out of your scanner and the software that comes with it.
Guest blogger Sarah Smith writes:
In a perfect world, we would be working with perfect documents all the time. But, like most users, you probably have old documents and new documents—of all different sizes and all different qualities—and really do not want to go through each and every one in order to make sure they are all facing the right direction.
If this is the case, you are going to want to dust off the image enhancement software that came with your scanner. Because I know Fujitsu scanners best, this entry is going to focus on the software that comes bundled with Fujitsu scanners. But keep these image enhancement features in mind when making purchasing decisions for new scanners, or when using scanners that have already been purchased.
All Fujitsu fi-series scanners (beginning with the fi-6130 and up) come bundled with a few basic pieces of software that will make your life easier when it comes to document imaging. The two most important pieces for scanning tax documents are Kofax VRS and Adobe Acrobat Standard. These software licenses come free in the box with every Fujitsu scanner, which is a HUGE value to you.
First, let’s talk about Kofax VRS. VRS stands for Virtual ReScan. Translation to you: amazing software that does all of the heavy lifting when it comes to scanning documents. VRS works behind the scenes to perfect the image quality of every document you scan.
Here are some of the significant “I can’t live without” features included in Kofax VRS:
- Crop – The software crops images so that no matter what size document you scan, all you see is the document—no borders
- Rotate – Images are automatically rotated to face the correct direction/page orientation
- De-skew – If a document is scanned at an angle, the software will automatically de-skew it
- Blank Page Deletion – If some of the documents are double sided and some are not, the software will automatically remove the blank pages from the finished set of images
- Advanced Clarity – Wrinkled and other imperfect source documents are no match for VRS! Advanced Clarity will process documents with complicated, textured backgrounds.
- To read more detailed descriptions of the features included with VRS software, visit: http://www.kofax.com/vrs/features.asp
Basically, image enhancing software does all of the prep work so that all you have to do is throw (or place) your documents in the ADF (Auto Document Feeder), and your messy, unorganized paper has been transformed into picture-perfect electronic files.
Next up, Adobe Acrobat Standard. You probably already know what this is and have Acrobat viewing capabilities (Adobe Acrobat Reader)… but do you have a full version of Adobe Acrobat Standard that allows you to actually create and edit PDF documents? Adobe Acrobat Standard makes working with electronic documents easy by creating an environment where scanned documents can be processed, edited and shared electronically.
Among other capabilities, Adobe Acrobat Standard allows you to:
- Create and edit PDF documents
- Add tick marks to electronic PDF workpapers
- Add comments and other annotations from multiple users on PDF documents
- Add, edit, and move bookmarks (electronic links) to any page within a PDF file
- Combine PDFs from multiple sources or scans
(Editor’s Note: Detailed tutorials on working electronically with PDF source documents will be covered in later blog posts. Stay tuned!)
In summary—some say that they don’t need the functionality provided by image enhancement software, but that is probably because they have never used it! Once you begin using document scanning software with these features, you will never want to scan tax documents without them again.
Learn more about using scanned client source documents to prepare returns. Read our free white paper, Five Essential Techniques for Preparing Returns using Scanned Tax Documents.
