As a small business owner, you know how important it is to keep track of every little detail relating to your mobile food business. When it comes to owning a food truck, this can be a time consuming task. Not only do you have customer receipts, and inventory to manage, but you also have more supplies than many other businesses, as well as employee and health department records along with compliance documents to track. Over time, this can add up to a mound of paperwork. One way to simplify things is to make your food truck paperless whenever possible.

Not only will this cut down on your truck and office storage needs, but it will also make it easier to sort documents and access them when you need them. In the end, this makes your life as a food truck owner much simpler.

Taking Your Food Truck Paperless

Getting Started

One of the most challenging things about going paperless in the food truck industry, especially if you have been in operation for some time, is simply getting started. Transferring hard copies to a digital format can be time consuming. To make things a bit easier, take a day out of your schedule to tackle the job. Scan all of your important papers and store them digitally on your computer.

Once you have them all scanned, organize them as best as you can. Consider using an online storage system like Dropbox. You will have access to these files wherever you have an Internet connection and will have a protected set of your files.

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Keep Moving Forward With Technology

Once you have digitized your existing paperwork, it’s time to simplify the process for future uploads. There are some things you will not be able to digitize completely, but many systems can be paperless such as accepting credit card payments through an online payment system such as Square.

If you monitor your online reputation, you can use Google Alerts to track what people are saying about your food truck. Consider looking for vendors that offer online ordering and digital receipts. When you get the receipt for your order, simply store it in your online system and never have to deal with a paper copy at all.

There are even online programs that allow you to make a paperless shift schedule for your employees. These programs offer features like requests for time off, shift trades and even mass messaging to your entire staff.

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The Bottom Line

Taking your food truck paperless will eventually help you save a little bit of money. While it may be a bit of a challenge at the beginning, but once you have carefully organized digital files for your food truck’s history, the rewards will be well worth the initial effort.

Have you made your food truck paperless, have you found other ways to do this? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic. Feel free to share them in the comment section below or on social media. Facebook | Twitter