Remember the promised paperless office? Today that seems just as much science fiction as flying cars and holiday resorts on the moon. But DYMO, the labeler company, just took a big step forward in better paper control. (No word from the company on flying cars.)

The only mistake I believe DYMO has made on this product is classifying it as a “document management” tool. Many small businesses hear document management and envision a $25,000 bill for high-end scanners, expensive servers and unending frustration. You can't blame them for that image, because that's too often the situation.

But just as DYMO made it easy for middle school boys to label everything in their classrooms, DYMO makes it easy for small businesses to file electronic documents as easily and quickly as they file paper documents. Maybe that's the hook the company should have used: easier to file, easier to find than paper. DYMO calls its process the easiest way to go from paper to digital, which may be true in today's market.

DYMO File Office and DYMO File Professional software ($199 and $399, not counting the label printer) fix two of the document management issues from the past. First, the tools make scanning easier. Second, they allow you to search and find documents using your own search programs, or theirs, or both.

Old days: put a stack of papers into an expensive, self-feeding scanner. Supposedly the paper feeds automatically, but someone has to watch the scanner to catch the papers that go in askew and mess things up. After you have a pile of electronic documents, someone must go through each document and attach electronic keywords and tags so you can find the document. Then they must physically move the document to the right folder in the file system so the management program can find it later.

Today with DYMO File: pick the piece of paper (or papers) you want to convert and put into the electronic filing system, choose the location folder for storage, hit OK, attach the small label the printer spits out to the paper and set aside for scanning.

When you scan that labeled page, the software reads the label information and puts the image into the folder you assigned earlier. DYMO File automatically performs OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on the page, creating an indexable text file that is attached to the document. The software then changes the page's status from pending to digitized so you know if all the documents you asked to be scanned were scanned. If someone drops one of the 12 pages you sent, the software will tell you that page has yet to be converted and placed in the system.