How to Prepare Documents for a Scanning Project — Boxing, Labeling, and Chain of Custody
A backfile scanning project succeeds or struggles before the first page hits a scanner — in how the files are scoped, boxed, and labeled. An afternoon of smart prep gets you faster turnaround, cleaner indexing, and a digital archive organized the way you actually search. Here's exactly how to do it, from the people who receive the boxes.
Decide What Goes — and What Doesn't
The cheapest page to scan is the one that doesn't need scanning. Define the project by record type and date range — "all client files 2015–2022," "all HR records for departed employees" — rather than by "that closet," and two things happen: the quote gets accurate, and the digital archive comes back organized by the same logic you'll use to search it.
Worth Excluding
True duplicates, printed emails that still exist digitally, expired marketing material, and records already past your retention obligations (see the warning below before shredding anything). Every purged box is money saved.
Not Worth Micro-Sorting
Don't spend a week pulling individual blank pages and separator sheets — page-level cleanup is what production prep is for. Your job is deciding which files belong in the project; the granular cleanup happens on our side.
Prepping the Paper — What Helps, What to Skip
High-speed production scanners are remarkably tolerant, but a few things genuinely slow the line or hide information. The rule of thumb: fix what covers text or binds pages; leave the rest to us.
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Staples & Clips: Ask Before You Pull
Staple and clip removal is a standard part of professional prep — you don't have to do it, and on large projects, you shouldn't spend your staff's week on it. If you'd like to reduce prep effort on a smaller batch, removing binder clips, rubber bands, and hanging-folder rails helps most; individual staples matter least. Whatever you remove, keep the pages of each document together — a paper clip's job can be done by a folded sheet of paper around the group.
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Sticky Notes: The One Real Menace
Sticky notes cover text, fall off in transit, and confuse feeders. If the note matters, stick it to a blank sheet and file it directly behind the page it annotated — it gets scanned as its own page, right in context. If it doesn't matter, toss it now.
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Straighten, Unfold, Mend
Unfold dog-eared corners, flatten folded documents, and mend significant tears with clear tape (tape on the back where possible). Pull pages out of binders and report covers — the pages scan; the plastic doesn't. Fragile, bound, or oversized items (ledgers, blueprints, photos) don't need surgery — just flag them, per the labeling step below.
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Above All: Preserve the Order
This is the prep commandment. Files are scanned in the order they arrive, and folder labels become your index. Don't re-sort documents into new piles, don't consolidate folders, don't "helpfully" alphabetize loose papers into one stack — keep every document in its original folder, every folder in its drawer order. Existing organization is information; destroying it costs more to rebuild than any prep saves.
Boxing It Right
The humble banker's box is the industry standard for a reason — uniform, stackable, and it holds a predictable ~2,500 pages, which is also how projects get estimated. A few rules make the difference between boxes that survive shipping and boxes that arrive as confetti:
- 01Standard letter/legal banker's boxes, files standing upright, facing the same direction, in their original order. No loose stacks lying flat.
- 02Remove hanging folders — the metal rails snag, add weight, and don't scan. Transfer contents into their labeled manila folders.
- 03Full but not stuffed. The lid must close flat, and you should be able to fit a hand beside the files. Overstuffed boxes burst; half-empty boxes let files slump — fill gaps with crumpled paper so nothing shifts.
- 04Weight check: a properly packed box runs about 30 pounds. If you can't lift it comfortably, neither can anyone else in the chain.
- 05Number every box on two sides: "Box 3 of 12" plus a one-line description ("AP invoices 2019–2020"). The numbering ties directly into the manifest below — and into how your digital files come back organized.
- 06Flag special handling on the box and manifest: fragile paper, bound books, photos, oversized items. Flagged items get routed to the right equipment instead of surprising the production line.
The Manifest and Chain of Custody
Your records are about to leave the building — the manifest is what makes that a controlled process instead of an act of faith. It takes twenty minutes and it's the single most professional thing you can do for the project.
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Build a One-Line-Per-Box Inventory
A simple spreadsheet: box number, contents description, date range, approximate folder count, special-handling flags. Keep a copy, send a copy with the project. This is your receipt, our intake checklist, and the skeleton of your digital folder structure — one document doing three jobs.
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Seal and Photograph
Tape every box shut and photograph the sealed, labeled boxes before they leave — sixty seconds with a phone documents exactly what shipped and in what condition. Professional providers do the mirror image on arrival: at ABT, incoming boxes are received under a documented protocol — tamper-evident seals, photographed on receipt, with box and content counts reconciled against your manifest — so both sides hold matching records from door to door.
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Ship It or Have It Collected
ABT accepts projects two ways across the continental US: ship your boxes to us with tracking, or arrange courier pickup for larger projects. Either way, the manifest travels with the boxes and the count reconciliation happens the day they arrive — you're notified when everything is checked in, not left wondering.
What Happens on Our Side — and What You Get Back
Once boxes are checked in, prep teams handle the page-level work (staples, repairs, separators), documents run through production scanning with OCR — making every page text-searchable — and quality control checks the output against the counts. Turnaround scales with volume and indexing depth; as a benchmark, a 10-box project typically completes in about 3–5 business days.
Indexing Depth: Your Main Decision
Box- and folder-level indexing mirrors your labels — economical and usually sufficient. Document-level indexing captures fields (names, dates, IDs) per document for instant retrieval — more prep-side labor, priced accordingly. Legal projects can add Bates numbering. Your folder labels from Step 2 are what make any of it accurate.
Delivery & the Originals
Searchable PDFs come back organized to your manifest structure, delivered on a hard drive (or the secure delivery method your project calls for). The paper originals are returned or handled per the plan you set at kickoff — decide their fate before the project starts, not after the boxes come home.
The Pre-Shipment Checklist
Everything above, compressed to a list you can tape to the first box:
- 01Scope defined by record type and date range — not by closet.
- 02Retention checked before anything was purged or destroyed.
- 03Sticky notes moved to blank sheets behind their pages (or discarded).
- 04Binders, report covers, hanging-folder rails, rubber bands removed; document groups kept together.
- 05Original folder order preserved — nothing re-sorted, nothing consolidated.
- 06Folders clearly labeled — they're the index.
- 07Banker's boxes packed upright, full-not-stuffed, gaps filled, ~30 lbs each.
- 08Every box numbered on two sides ("3 of 12") with a one-line description; special items flagged.
- 09Manifest built — one line per box — copy kept, copy sent.
- 10Boxes sealed and photographed before pickup or shipping, with tracking on every shipment.
Boxes Ready? Or Not Sure Where to Start?
Either works. Send us your box count and record types for a fast, accurate quote — or tell us "it's a storage room and we're overwhelmed," and we'll help you scope it. Ship-in and courier pickup available across the continental US, with documented chain of custody from your door to delivery.