Software for paperless office
- What the paper costs a month
- $2,137
- Handling hours a month
- $60
- Hours a month spent finding filed documents
- $6
- What those hours cost a month
- $1,716
Every figure on this page is worked out from the inputs you enter, by the method stated below it. Fitouto publishes no benchmark office cost, no industry filing time and no rent figure of its own: the defaults are a worked example to replace with your own numbers.
The figures above start from a worked example ($2,137). Change any input and the answer updates as you type.
Download the Software for paperless office worked example (CSV)
Software for a paperless office is easy to shop for and hard to justify, because the thing it replaces has never been costed. This worksheet costs it from your own numbers: the documents that arrive on paper each month and the minutes each one takes to open, copy and file, the times somebody goes looking for one and how long that takes, the cabinets and boxes and the floor they stand on, and the rent that floor is on. It prints the hours a month, what those hours cost at your own rate, what the floor costs, and what scanning the same documents instead would give back.
The handling time is the part nobody counts
Opening, stamping, copying, filing and refiling a document takes a few minutes each and happens hundreds of times a month, which is why the total surprises people. Enter the documents that arrive on paper in a normal month and the minutes one takes end to end, from the envelope to the drawer. Use your own timing on ten of them rather than a figure from anywhere else, including us, because the number depends entirely on how your office files.
Finding it again costs more than filing it
A filed document is only worth the filing if it can be found, and the retrieval side is usually the larger half: somebody walks to the cabinet, works out which year it is under, fails, asks the person who filed it. Enter how many times a month a filed document is looked for and how long an average search takes, including the failed ones. The worksheet keeps handling and retrieval as separate lines because they respond to different fixes.
The floor the paper stands on is rent you are already paying
A filing cabinet occupies its own footprint plus the space to open a drawer in front of it, and every square foot of that is on the lease at the same rate as the desks. Enter the cabinets and boxes, the square feet each one really takes with its access space, and your rent per square foot a year. The worksheet turns that into a monthly figure and adds any offsite storage and shredding you pay for.
Software for paperless office: common questions
What counts as a document here?
Anything that arrives on paper and has to be kept or acted on: invoices, delivery notes, signed forms, contracts, letters, expense receipts. Do not count marketing post that goes straight in the bin, because it costs nothing to handle. If you are unsure, count what goes into a cabinet in a normal month.
Does this tell us whether to go paperless?
It tells you what the paper costs and what scanning the same volume would cost in time instead. What it deliberately does not do is decide for you, because the other half of that decision is which of your documents you are legally required to keep, in what form and for how long, and that is a question for your accountant and your own retention schedule rather than for a calculator.
Does this save the worked month anywhere?
Not on its own. The worksheet computes in your browser and sends nothing anywhere. Fitouto Pro saves each worked month against the office, with your company name on it and no watermark, so the figure you took to the finance meeting is still there next year when somebody asks how it was arrived at.
Fitouto Pro
Keeping what you make
The answers are free forever. Pro turns them into the office's own record: your company name on the paperwork, no watermark, and every supplier, contract renewal date, piece of equipment and move task kept against the company rather than in a spreadsheet on one laptop.
- Save a worked month and reopen it later
- Compare two months or two offices side by side
- No Fitouto watermark, your company name on it
- Renewal reminders emailed before the notice date
- Connect your own Stripe account
- Connect your QuickBooks Online or Xero
$49per month, whole team
Start Fitouto Pro PricingRenews monthly at the price above until you cancel. We email you before any price change.
Cite or embed this figure
Software for paperless office (What the paper costs a month): $2,137, Fitouto, worked example.
Cite as: "Software for paperless office, Fitouto", updated 2026-09-05, https://fitouto.com/tools/software-for-paperless-office/.