Every small business owner may deal with paper throughout the day. But not every task has to be printed on paper. Over time, do you feel like you have a myriad of papers and digital files that just aren’t organized? It may be time for you to go completely paperless in your business. This updated 2026 post covers different apps and how they can help you go paperless in your business. Follow along and explore these apps to see how they can streamline your workflow and reduce your paper load.
Estimated reading time: 10 minutes
Who can go paperless?
Any business owner, from a startup solopreneur to a seasoned entrepreneur with employees. It’s just a matter of putting a plan together and gething the steps done to set up the paperless process.
Apps to help you go paperless
- Who can go paperless?
- Trip Travel Apps
- Business Reward card apps
- New for 2026: Digital Business Card Apps
- Have a Password Management App
- Notetaking apps
- New for 2026: Task and Project Management Apps
- GPS apps
- Pick up an Online Bookkeeping App
- New for 2026: E-Signature Apps for Contracts and Agreements
- Create well-organized systems to keep paperless business bills on your computer.
- Scan your expense receipts.
- New for 2026: Go Paperless With Your Mail, Too
- Where to place scanned documents?
- Scanners and External Hard Drives
- FAQs about going paperless
- Conclusion:
Key Takeaways
- Use going-paperless apps to boost efficiency and cut clutter in your small business.
- Core tools include TripIt for travel, password managers like LastPass, and online bookkeeping tools like QuickBooks Online.
- New for 2026: e-signature apps, digital business cards (affiliate), task management apps, and virtual mailbox services round out a truly paperless workflow.
- Create organized digital filing systems to store important documents and receipts.
- Scan receipts with an app and store them in Dropbox or Google Drive for easy access.
- Set clear paperless processes so your whole team (even a team of one) stays on the same page.
Trip Travel Apps
Apps like Tripit hold all your travel information, such as hotel, airline, and car rental. You can even email your itinerary to someone so they have your information too. This is great for sharing your schedule with your coworkers and clients (affiliate).
Business Reward card apps
Some apps are Keyring, Google Wallet, or Apple Wallet. These apps hold all your reward cards in one place. Tip: Save money on your national restaurant rewards cards on the go.
New for 2026: Digital Business Card Apps
Paper business cards (affiliate) are one of the easiest things to go paperless with, and they’re one of the first things to get lost in a coat pocket or junk drawer. Apps like HiHello, Popl, and Blinq let you create a digital business card (affiliate) you can share by text, QR code, email, or a tap of your phone. Most sync straight to the other person’s contacts, so your info doesn’t end up in a drawer with a stack of cards nobody looks at again.
Tip: Add your booking link, website, and social media links to your digital card so a new contact has everything they need in one tap, instead of you following up with five separate links later.
Have a Password Management App
LastPass is one of the more well-known password manager apps for personal and business use, and it offers a password-sharing package for business teams. If you’d rather start with a tool that’s built security-first from the ground up, 1Password (affiliate) and Bitwarden are both solid, small-business-friendly alternatives worth comparing. Whichever you choose, turn on two-factor authentication for the account itself — it’s the single best thing you can do to protect every password stored inside it.
Try 1Password Business free for 14 days
Some of the options you use are:
Scalable, secure password management trusted by over 180,000 businesses
Admin controls to manage employees, permissions, and delegate responsibilities
Advanced reporting for compromised employee emails and vulnerable passwords
Free family accounts for all employees
Friendly, 24/7 support through email, forum, and social media
Available on Mac, iOS, Windows, Android, Chrome OS, and Linux
Notetaking apps
Note-taking apps like Microsoft OneNote or Notion offer you a place to store clients (affiliate) and associate reference information. They function like a digital notebook, and you can use them the same way you’d use a paper one.
New for 2026: Task and Project Management Apps
If you’re still working off a paper to-do list or a sticky-note wall, this is the easiest paperless swap you can make all year. Apps like Trello, Asana, ClickUp, and Todoist let you track client deliverables, due dates, and recurring tasks in one place you can check from your phone, tablet, or computer.
This is especially handy if you outsource any admin work: you and your assistant (or admin support provider) can work off the same board instead of a paper checklist that only exists in one place.
GPS apps
While these apps are on every phone, sticking with one will help you a lot. Store all your client addresses and locations in your GPS app by adding them to your favorites. This helps if you are unfamiliar with a location and need to get to another client. It will be easy to look up the address if you already have it, saving you time on travel and money on gas. I save locations I visit often so I don’t have to retype the address every time.
Pick up an Online Bookkeeping App
Using an online application like QuickBooks Online or FreshBooks (affiliate) will help you keep the paper to a minimum. Ask your clients (affiliate) if they are OK with emailed invoices. Explain that you want to go paperless to help the environment. If they agree, you can collect your clients’ email addresses and add them to the app for easy sending when you invoice.
Keep in mind these apps are subscriptions and will add extra charges.
Try this if you want to download invoices to your computer to keep a digital copy. Ensure each filename has a distinct invoice description, such as 2024-Smith-5. Creating filenames like the year invoiced, the client’s last name, and their assigned invoice number works nicely. You can easily find and print them if needed.
New for 2026: E-Signature Apps for Contracts and Agreements
If you’re still printing contracts, signing them by hand, then scanning them back in, an e-signature app will save you real time. Tools like DocuSign, Dropbox Sign (formerly HelloSign), and Adobe Acrobat Sign let clients sign service agreements, contracts, and W-9s from their phone in a couple of minutes, and the signed copy is automatically saved and dated for your records.
This is one of the fastest ways to look more professional to a new client while cutting a printer-scanner (affiliate) step completely out of your onboarding process.
Create well-organized systems to keep paperless business bills on your computer.
If you decide to keep bills in PDF form only, make a folder for each payee so you can keep all bills from that payee in one section when you need to reference them. Not all sites keep bills accessible for more than six months, so keeping them on your computer gives you a backup. Visit our post to learn how to create digital filing systems for your home. How to Make a Well-Organized Business Digital Receipt Organizer
If you want information on organizing paper and digital file systems, check out our ebook. The Best Practices for Digital and Physical Filing Systems
Scan your expense receipts.
When you have receipts that are physical papers, you can scan them into your system using an app like:
Android version:
Apple:
Tiny Scanner – You will need to purchase it; the free version doesn’t allow many scans
If you’d rather have receipts pull straight into your bookkeeping, apps like Expensify and Dext can scan a receipt and log the expense automatically, so it’s ready when you reconcile.
New for 2026: Go Paperless With Your Mail, Too
Scanning receipts is only half the paper problem — physical mail is the other half. A virtual mailbox service like iPostal1 or Anytime Mailbox gives your business a real street address, then scans the outside (and, if you ask, the inside) of every piece of mail you receive so you can view it from an app. You decide what gets opened, forwarded, shredded, or held, all without a trip to a P.O. box.
Leave it to AI to find these services, They are pretty cool! This is great for new solopereneur startups!
This is especially useful if you work from home and don’t want your home address listed on client invoices or business filings.
Where to place scanned documents?
You can connect these apps to Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, and Evernote, where you can create a folder just for this year’s receipts.
A digital file structure will help you keep your documents organized and easy to access. Always start with the calendar year as your primary folder. Rename the file so you know what it’s for. Using the payee name and date makes it easy to retrieve the digital document.
If you physically need a scanner (affiliate) in your office, check out your printer. It may have a built-in scanner (affiliate). If not, you can purchase a small scanner for your office. I found these on Amazon (affiliate) (affiliate).
Also, instead of keeping these scanned images on your computer, you can easiliy move them to an external drive like Seagate brand I show below.
Scanners and External Hard Drives
Scanner: Epson WorkForce ES-50 Portable Sheet-Fed Document Scanner for PC and Mac
Buy Now →
Buy Now → 
Seagate Portable 2TB External Hard Drive HDD
Buy Now →(affiliate)
Disclosure: At no additional cost to you, if you click through and buy something on Amazon (affiliate), I will receive a small referral fee. Thank you for supporting my small business.
FAQs about going paperless
A well-rounded paperless setup typically includes a receipt scanner, cloud storage, an online bookkeeping tool , a password manager , and an e-signature app for contracts. Most solopreneurs don’t need all of them at once — start with whichever is causing the most paper clutter right now.
Scan each receipt with a phone scanning app as soon as you get it, name the file with the payee and date, and save it into a cloud folder organized by year. Apps like Expensify or Dext can automate this further by scanning and logging the expense directly into your bookkeeping software.
Cloud storage from reputable providers like Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive is generally secure, especially when paired with a strong, unique password and two-factor authentication.
Storing documents in the cloud is also safer than keeping the only copy on a single computer or in a paper file, since cloud files are automatically backed up.
Costs vary, but most paperless tools are inexpensive month to month, and many (like Google Drive or Dropbox at lower storage tiers) offer a usable free plan. Expect to pay a small monthly subscription for bookkeeping software, a password manager, and possibly an e-signature or virtual mailbox tool once you outgrow the free tiers.
Let Someone Else Handle the Setup
Going paperless sounds simple until you’re the one comparing seven apps, migrating years of files, and building filing rules from scratch on top of running your business. If you’d rather hand that off, my Recurring Admin Services can set up your digital filing system, organize your inbox and receipts, and keep everything running once it’s in place. Let’s talk about which part of your paper pile to tackle first.
Conclusion:
Well, there you have it. Going paperless may be easier these days, but be careful — not having a system when going paperless can create more of a stressful workplace than having papers stacked in your office. Keep your system easy to use, and make sure everyone in your office knows and understands the process.
Note: I’ve used these apps in the past and recently. If you wish to use any of them, be sure to do your own research to make sure they’ll work for you too.
Disclosure: I will get a small commission at no additional cost to you if you click through and purchase from Amazon (affiliate) and other Associates.
Let me know how your paperless transition went. I would love to hear from you.
Still have questions about setting up a paperless system for your business? My Recurring Admin Services include digital filing and document organization — reach out and we’ll figure out where to start.
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Please note that these are affiliate links through Amazon, and at no additional cost to you, I will earn affiliate fees if you decide to make a purchase.
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