We’ve all been there — allowing filing cabinets, copy boxes, and storage shelves to take over office space — and dealt with the bulky, often messy, and difficult to find the information you need without spending hours trying to find it. You’re interested in scanning all of your documents, but how much does it cost?

The Average Cost of a Document Scanning Project

The cost of a document scanning varies based on the type of document you want to scan. The average price range for scanning paper documents is $0.06-$0.11 per page. For other document types, the price ranges you can expect to see are:
Document TypePrice Range
Paper$0.05 - $0.10 per image
16mm Microfilm$0.02 - $0.05 per image
35mm Microfilm$0.02 - $0.05 per image
Wide-format$1.25 - $1.85 per image
Each project requires a detailed analysis to provide you with an accurate quote. The most significant factors that affect the price of a project are the level of effort (labor cost) to prepare the files as well as the total volume of images.

Important Factors To Consider With Document Scanning Services Prices

Our document scanning service prices vary according to the type of project, the amount of document preparation required and added special service options you choose to complete the task. The most common line items you will find in our quotes include a setup fee, packing boxes (if necessary), pickup and delivery, scanning, indexing, and shredding (if required).

Page Volume

In order to provide a detailed quote, we need to know the number of pages that require scanning. Our document scanning prices per image are based on the size of the task. If you don’t know how much paper you have, the table below can be a helpful place to start:
  • Loose paper | 150 – 180 pages per inch
  • Copy box | 1,800 – 2,100 pages per box
  • Banker box | 1,800 – 2,000 pages per box
  • Lateral file cabinet | 5,000 – 6,000 pages per drawer
  • 4 drawer file cabinet | 2,500 pages per drawer
  • Photographs | 100 – 125 per inch
  • Linear foot | 1,800 pages per linear foot
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Material Preparation

Before your documents are ready for our high-speed scanners, our technicians will remove staples, paper clips, bindings or anything else that fastens the documents together. The price per image you might find in a document scanning services quote largely depends on the level of effort required to prepare your documents.

Data Storage Requirements

The number of documents produced by each employee on a daily basis can result in having an overflow of information that can easily be misplaced or lost along the way. Once your documents are scanned, ILM converts them into digital files such as TIF or PDF which can be imported into a user-friendly database, content management system, or ongoing workflow. Many of our prospective clients will ask how much digital space their new electronic documents will take up. The table below can provide a starting point for knowing how much space to expect: document storage table
 

Determining Document Scanning Services Prices

In order to provide an accurate document scanning service, our skilled and experienced team will ask certain questions to see to it that you receive exactly what you need in a timely manner.

Do you require reassembling materials after scanning the documents?

Once the documents have been scanned and transformed into electronic data, we need to know whether the hard copy materials should be re-stapled or placed in their original folders. This may require an added charge and will affect document scanning prices per page.

Are there certain index fields that need to be captured?

One of the most basic ways of indexing your scanned documents is by naming each electronic file by the tab of the folder from which it came. We call this folder-level indexing. Sometimes it will be necessary to index each individual document depending on how you plan to use the digital files. If you want to improve search capabilities, we offer optical character recognition (OCR) services too.

How many documents would you like to scan?

This is one of the first questions we’ll ask, and essentially, your answer guides the overall estimate. On average, each scanned image will cost approximately 7-12 cents, but prices vary and largely depend on the volume of documents and level of effort to prep them for scanning. In most cases, the more documents we have to process, the lower the cost.

What type of materials require scanning?

The document scanning services prices for photographs may differ from that of paper, for example, so it’s important to know exactly what we’re working with in order to provide you an accurate quote.

40 Years Of Proven Success.

With over 40-years of experience, working with repeat customers from state agencies, the federal government, and organizations across the country, we’re proud to provide expert document conversion, data entry, and information management services to those who simply want to improve their document workflow and gain greater access to mission-critical data.   Get A Free Quote

If you digitize your documents, you will need GB of storage space.

That's GB Flash Drive(s), GB External Hard Drive(s), or GB of Cloud Storage.


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