Most companies need scanners, mainly to digitize documents. Doing so will help you secure and manage crucial information such as tax returns. Additionally, most scanners offer a technology called OCR (optical character recognition), which converts clear, high-contrast printed documents into text files you can edit in a word processing program instead of having to retype all the information into a word processing document.

Many companies opt for a flatbed scanner as opposed to a sheet-fed scanner. With a flatbed model, you can scan materials and three-dimensional objects other than paper. With a flatbed, material of reasonable thickness and just about any size can be scanned without fear of jamming the mechanism or losing something in the mechanism of the machine.

In some cases, a sheet-fed scanner is right for you. Here’s one good reason: it takes up less space. A sheet-fed scanner takes up only a fraction of the area used by a flatbed scanner on your desktop. In fact, many sheet-fed models are portable enough to be used on the road with a laptop computer.

The more dots per inch (dpi) you can scan, the better. For most users, a 1200 x 2400 DPI scanner is sufficient. Only if you are doing design and graphic art applications will you need anything higher.

You will also want to look at bit depth. Again, the higher the bit depth, the better the scanner; if you’re buying a new scanner, stick with a scanner that offers at least 36-bit color. Anything more than 36-bit is usually overkill for a typical small business owner.

Both flatbed and sheet-fed scanners start around $35 and can go as high as several thousand dollars. For your purposes, one in the lower ranges will more than suffice.

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