Our Document Scanning Process

Typical time: Quote within 1 working day of your enquiry; sample review within 5 working days.

Tell us roughly what you have, what the records are and when you need them, and we will come back within one working day with an approach and a quote. For larger or mixed archives we review a sample of boxes, on your premises or ours, so we can price preparation and indexing from what is actually in them.

Before collection we agree in writing:

• The boxes or files in scope, and anything that should not be scanned
• Output format, resolution and file naming
• Indexing fields and the structure files are delivered in
• Where files are delivered, and who receives them
• What happens to the originals afterwards
• The delivery schedule, and any records you will need urgently during the project

Typical time: Within 2 to 5 working days of your order. In London we can often collect at shorter notice.

Our own vetted staff collect your records in tracked vehicles and sealed containers. We collect from anywhere in the UK, and from offices across Central London, the City, Canary Wharf, Greater London and the South East from our Southwark and Orpington offices. If your records are with another storage provider, we can collect from them directly.

Each box is barcoded and logged at collection, and you sign a collection record listing every box we take. Nothing is passed to a courier or subcontractor at any stage.

Typical time: Same day as collection.

When your boxes arrive at our access-controlled facility, we check them against the collection record and log each one on our tracking system. From then on, every box is scanned in and out of each stage: preparation, scanning, quality checks and return, storage or destruction. You can ask us where any box is at any time.

This audit trail is part of how we meet BS 10008, the British Standard for the legal admissibility of electronic information. It shows who handled each record, when and what was done to it, which matters if a scanned copy is ever relied on in place of the original.

If you need a file during the project, we find it from the log, scan it and send it to you, usually the same or next working day.

Typical time: Runs alongside scanning, within the project schedule.

Preparation is everything done to paper before it can be scanned, and on most projects it takes more staff time than the scanning itself. Our team:

• Removes staples, clips, treasury tags, bindings and plastic wallets
• Unfolds and flattens pages, and repairs tears so pages feed cleanly
• Keeps pages in their original order and files together
• Inserts separator sheets or barcodes so each file or document is split correctly at scanning
• Secures sticky notes and small slips with the page they belong to
• Sets aside fragile, bound or oversized items for flatbed or large-format scanning

Anything we cannot prepare without risking damage is logged and raised with you before we go further. Preparation is priced from your sample and shown on your quote, not charged by the hour afterwards.

Typical time: 10 to 15 working days for up to 50 boxes, including preparation, quality checks and indexing. Larger projects run to an agreed schedule.

We scan on production equipment matched to the document type:

Pages are captured at 300 DPI as standard, which gives OCR the text quality it needs; and at 600 DPI for detailed work such as small print, photographs and drawings. Blank pages are removed as standard. All scanning takes place at our own UK facility, and no work is subcontracted.

Typical time: Included in the project schedule. A batch is not released until it passes.

Every batch is checked against the original before release. We check that:

• The number of pages scanned matches the number of pages prepared
• No page has been missed, duplicated or fed twice
• Every image is legible, straight and complete to the edges
• Files are split, named and ordered as agreed

Items we cannot scan cleanly, such as damaged, faded or unusual pages, are logged and flagged to you rather than silently skipped. Any page that fails a check is rescanned from the original, which is still in our custody.

Typical time: Included in the project schedule.

Optical character recognition (OCR) turns the typed text on each page into searchable text. We then index each file or document to the structure agreed at scoping, so your team can find it by the fields they already search on.

You receive searchable PDF as standard, with PDF/A, TIFF and JPEG available, plus an index file in CSV or XML that maps every document to its metadata so it loads into your system without rework. See what indexing costs and our data capture service for field-level work.

Typical time: In batches as each one passes quality checks, so you can start using files before the whole project ends.

We deliver into SharePoint or your document management system, or by secure transfer if you prefer to load the files yourself. Your images are encrypted in transit and at rest, and stay in the UK: we do not use sub-processors or transfer your data outside the UK.

With each delivery you receive the index file and a delivery report listing the boxes, files and page counts it covers, so you can reconcile it against what we collected.

Typical time: We hold your originals for 30 days after the final delivery so you can check the files, then act on your written instruction.

You decide what happens to the paper:

• Return. We bring the originals back in the same secure, tracked way we collected them.
• Storage. We keep them in our secure document storage facility, where any file can still be retrieved or scanned on demand.
• Destruction. We destroy them to BS EN 15713 and issue a certificate of destruction listing the boxes destroyed. See confidential destruction.

We never destroy originals without your written approval. Some records must be kept on paper for a period even after scanning, so check your retention schedule before you instruct destruction.