Zoho Scanner Takes Your Documents Digital

Scan, edit and share receipts and other business documents and free yourself from piles of paper. Zoho Scanner enables this and more.

The company recently upgraded the software formerly called Zoho Doc Scanner with some truly remarkable features.

Consider switching to Zoho Scanner now as Microsoft Lens closes down shunting customers to Microsoft 365 Copilot. But first, look at what Zoho’s scanning option offers.

“It’s a smarter way to scan and share your documents, receipts or whatever it may be and it also provides a way where the scanned documents are available across all your devices,” says Ashok Ramamoorthy, Director of Product Management for Zoho Scanner.

Use Zoho Scanner for Your Small Business

Just imagine. You speak at global business events and live out of hotel rooms and airports. Meanwhile, receipts from plane tickets, luggage fees, car rentals, lodging, meals and wifi keep piling up.

This quickly becomes a nightmare for the most seasoned traveler.

Perhaps you employ a virtual assistant who tracks all these costs for you. Still, you need an easy way to share this information.

Zoho Scanner enables you to digitize all these documents and share it with your virtual assistant without ever leaving your hotel room.

Keep Track of Receipts While Traveling

Or imagine you run an IT business and travel in person to install software systems for clients.

You spend most of your time on the road. So receipts for gas, tolls, lodging at motor inns and meals collect in your glove compartment.

Maybe you need tools on the job site when installing a system. Even assuming your client reimburses you, you must keep receipts of the expenses.

Share Documents Seamlessly in Digital Form

Hopefully someone manages your back office while you are on the road. Either a business partner or employee handles those tasks most likely.

Supply receipts and other needed documents while on the road. Avoid dumping a pile of paper on your office manager’s desk when you return.

Zoho Scanner allows you to scan and share all these documents with a smartphone or tablet and also view them across a variety of devices.

Learn How Zoho Scanner Can Help You

“It’s an all in one digitalizing solution,” says Ramamoorthy. “If you want to scan your receipts or PDFs or printed documents or it may be anything in a printed format, you can quickly scan it and it will automatically upload. It autocrops for you. It has text extraction. It offers a secure cloud sync for free and you can access all your documents anywhere and everywhere.”

Zoho provides this handy app for Android, iOS and MacOS operating systems. And the company also offers a Web version.

Simply scan receipts, IDs, passwords, multi-page documents – and just about anything else – with your phone or tablet. The app “auto-detects” the edges of whatever document, card or other item you are scanning, creating a perfect copy.

Once you scan documents into the app, organize them into folders, tag them for easy retrieval and set notifications for documents that may be time sensitive.

The app even allows you to lock sensitive documents, protecting them from prying eyes.

Zoho Scanner Allows You to Share Documents from Anywhere

Think back to our two hypothetical businesses.

You’re a business speaker attending an event in Seattle. You’ve scanned or uploaded receipts from every latte, every sushi roll, every Uber ride, every luggage and ticket fee from your flight.

Now you need to share those documents with your virtual assistant in the Philippines so she can compile an expense report.

Or you’re an independent IT contractor visiting a client in Boise, Idaho. On the drive from your home base in Portland, Oregon, you saved receipts from every gas station, the drive through you stopped at for breakfast and the diner where you had lunch.

In addition, you have receipts from an extra external hard drive and a USB drive you needed to pick up for the job after you got into town.

Now you need to share these documents with your office manager back in Portland who is tracking spending for your company while you are out servicing clients.

How to Share Documents with Zoho Scanner

Consider how simple Zoho Scanner makes sharing these all important documents with another member or your organization – or anyone who needs them.

First, choose your document’s size. Do you wish to share a document in its original format, larger, smaller or at an established medium size format.

This depends on your preference and the preference of those working with you. What size makes the document easier to work with or which size is most compatible with your book keeping or other software?

Second, decide whether you want to share the document as a PDF or JPEG. PDFs work better when high quality documents are needed or if you plan to reprint the documents later.

But JPEGs work just fine for the Web and take up less space on your computer.

Share Your Documents Or Uploads in a Variety of Ways

Share these documents with your virtual assistant, office manager or anyone else on your team in a few different ways.

For example, you can send files via WhatsApp, Zoho Cliq, email or other services.

Or upload them to software platforms like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, Zoho Workdrive, Zoho Notebook, and Zoho Expense.

Here too, Zoho continues to provide new options for sharing files and soon the company plans to make a team version of Zoho Scanner available. This means members of your team can all jump on the same app and easily share scanned files with each other.

Edit and Annotate Documents in Digital Form

Once you scan your document and digitalize it on Zoho Scanner, you get even more options.

For example, rotate and crop the freshly minted digital document at will. Shuffle documents within a file. Use Grey Scale, Magic Color or Black and White filters built into Zoho Scanner to give each document a distinctive look.

See the pen, pencil, marker and eraser on the app screen below?

Use these to make annotations like notes adding greater context to a receipt. Think “Lunch with New Client” or “Extra External Drive for Boise”, for example.

Or consider highlighting important costs or other critical information.

The app also accommodates Apple Pencil and Android Stylus so use these tools too if more comfortable.

Recognize and Translate Text

Suppose your business takes you overseas. Maybe you find yourself regularly traveling to Europe or Asia.

Whether you attend an international business conference in Madrid, Spain or visit a manufacturing plant in Guangzhou, China, Zoho Scanner offers tools to help.

What happens when someone hands you business cards, conference agendas, manufacturing agreements or any other documents in a language you can’t understand?

Just watch how Zoho Scanner goes to work for you.

The app recognizes text in more than 35 languages and can translate to more than 15 languages. These include languages like French, Spanish, English, and Japanese.

So if someone hands you a company fact sheet in Spanish or a nondisclosure agreement in simplified Mandarin, remain calm.

Whip out your phone or tablet and scan that document. Then let Zoho Scanner do its thing.

Zoho Scanner translates your document to your preferred language and allows you to share your newly translated document with your team.

Just send it via email or Zoho Cliq or upload to ZohoWork Drive – or whatever other collaboration platform your team prefers.

Mission accomplished!

Sign Digital Documents with E-Signature

Now, suppose you find yourself in need of a client’s signature.

Maybe you run a pool installation business and need a customer to sign a contract before breaking ground.

Or maybe you work as an independent sales rep. You might need a prospect to sign a sales or service agreement.

In both cases, Zoho Scanner comes to the rescue with the inclusion of an E-Signature feature powered by Zoho Sign.

“Users will be able to quickly add fields like name, email, signature, date and everything,” said Ramamoorthy.

Ramamoorthy added that Zoho Scanner’s E-Signature feature enables business owners to send a document to a client for signature. It also empowers them to sign a document themselves and send it to a client to counter sign.

And these signatures, while digital, remain perfectly legal.

“Since it is powered by Zoho Sign, this is a legally binding digital signature,” says Ramamoorthy.

For those unfamiliar with the Zoho ecosystem, Zoho Sign offers a service similar to Docusign and other electronic signature applications.

It empowers you to send a document to a client or customer for signature, even if that customer lives halfway around the world.

Use AI for Better Understanding and Better Clarity

With Zoho Scanner, the features reach far beyond ordinary digitalization of documents, however.

The application also uses AI in some pretty unique ways to enhance understanding and clarity of the documents you scan.

First off, you need not bother sorting the documents you have scanned with your phone.

Whether they happen to be receipts or invoices, Zoho Scanner’s AI handles all that and more.

The application “smartly” identifies the document as you scan it and auto categorizes it for you, Ramamoorthy says.

Another AI feature allows you to request a summary of a 20 to 30 page PDF document and have Zoho’s AI give you the gist.

Still another feature can remove shadows from a document you scanned and make lettering clearer and easier to read.

Transform Networking Efforts with Zoho Card Scanner

Another feature coming to Zoho Scanner soon transforms the way you network.

Up until now, attending business mixers consisted of collecting piles of business cards while sipping cocktails and making small talk.

The cocktails and small talk remain the same. But now, instead of trying to stuff everything into a card holder – probably behind your own business cards – Zoho provides a better way.

Scan each of these cards with your phone or tablet. Zoho Card Scanner extracts the information and allows you to upload to Zoho CRM, Zoho Bookings or anywhere else you would like to build a contact list.

Zoho plans to fold this app into Zoho Scanner eliminating the need to keep all those business cards. Bet that Harvey Walbanger in your hand tastes better already!

Get All This at a Remarkable Price

Zoho Scanner certainly offers some tantalizing features for any small business owner. But most remarkable remains the price tag.

Because Zoho offers a free download of this amazing software including the ability to scan unlimited documents, crop rotate and sort them into files.

The free version also allows you to sync documents across all of your devices, translate them from other languages, annotate them and more.

A paid version offers the E-sign feature and 1 TB of cloud storage among other things for just $1.99 a month or $19.99 a year.

More importantly, to celebrate the recent upgrades to Zoho Scanner, Zoho plans to offer 50% off that price through Dec. 15, 2025.

Consider Switching Now

Small business owners need to think about trying Zoho’s new application now. With the planned shutdown of Microsoft Lens, similar features may be difficult to find.

You need not have purchased other Zoho products to download Zoho Scanner or purchase the premium package.

Though use of this hardworking little app offers a great introduction into the many other incredible products available from Zoho.

Zoho Scanner’s premium version also comes included for customers already using the versatile Zoho One.

Final Thoughts

Do you already count yourself among Zoho’s many satisfied small business customers? Or do you remain among the small business owners yet to discover the company’s many remarkable products.

Either way, consider starting to use Zoho Scanner now.

With the disappearance of Microsoft Lens, you need another way to digitize the many documents required for your business or risk being buried by them – never to be heard of again.

Stuffing business cards into your wallet, card carrier or pockets makes business mixers an unmanageable nightmare.

And what happens when you get back to the office only to realize you lost or spilled something on the very card you most wanted to keep.

The same goes for the mountains of contracts, service agreements, invoices, receipts and purchase orders taking up an ever larger portion of your desk.

And remember the convenience offered by Zoho Scanner’s paid e-signature feature. It remains a more cost effective option than some popular competitors.

Learn more about what the newly upgraded Zoho Scanner offers your business and get started today.

This article, "Zoho Scanner Takes Your Documents Digital" was first published on Small Business Trends