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The Professional Contractors Group estimates there are already 1.4 million freelancers working across all sectors in the UK. In 2013, the number of businesses hiring freelancers online increased 46% and payments to freelancers increased 37% year on year. Freelancers and self-employed workers therefore make a significant and valuable contribution to the UK economy.

One of the most common grievances of self-employed or freelance work, indeed, one of the principal factors that put people off freelance careers, is the need to self-assess for tax return purposes. Freelance workers spend a lot of time on their tax return self-assessment. The HMRC's all-too-familiar 'tax needn't be taxing' campaign is the evidence of the drive to alleviate the pressures of tax declaration for the self-employed worker, and the need to encourage freelancers to better undertake their self-assessments. The internet is peppered with advice pages, forums and guidelines - both from the government as well as personal finance advisors and consumer rights groups - for agonised freelancers on how to manage tax self-assessment.

Many of us will have heard talk everywhere about the reduction of paper usage in the working environment. As we become increasingly surrounded by laptops, tablets and smartphones it often feels that paper is becoming obsolete. The freelancer doing his or her tax return will know differently. Tax declaration requires a mountain of paperwork - receipts, bills, train tickets, invoices and payslips, to name a few. Given our dependency on digital processes - the simple click of a mouse or swipe of a touch-screen - the management of paper documents is an increasingly challenging task for many. People see the management of paper to be one of the key challenges in day-to-day business life.

There is a range of technology available on the market that can help freelancers through the taxing task of preparing the tax declaration, by helping them to manage their paperwork better. A number of products offer practical scanning software solutions, for example, which can digitise documents like receipts and arrange them in virtual filing cabinets in order to be able to find them quickly when needed. Fujitsu's ScanSnap range of compact scanners which feature intuitive and fast processes fit for the needs of small-scale businesses and self-employed workers, optimising document management processes.

These kinds of technologies are of key importance to freelance professionals and small businesses because the management of paper documents not only means inconvenience and stress, but can also damage a small business or freelance professional's profitability. A paper published by Fujitsu in partnership with the AIIM (Association for Information and Image Management), entitled "Scan More, Print Less - Save Your Small Business a Small Fortune", illustrates the cost-effectiveness of digital filing systems. This global community of information professionals estimates that filing a paper document can on average cost a small business approximately £13. Misplaced and misfiled documents imply an ever greater cost - the AIIM estimates an average of £80 per misplaced document; and ARMA International, a not-for-profit information professional association, estimates that on average businesses tend to misfile up to 20% of their papers.

The costs to a small business or a self-employed worker of poorly managed paper documents could therefore be astronomical. The return on investment of implementing scanning and document management solutions, on the other hand, could be very profitable. Fujitsu's studies into return on investment of imaging technology, including the ROI Calculator, find that one scanner can save a small business around £1,030 per year.

Electronic archiving of documents is therefore the way forward for an area in which paper documents are still necessary. And the approach of the end of the tax year presents a key moment in which the investment in efficient management of paper can determine business efficiency and therefore profitability for the freelance or self-employed worker. Implementing digitised document management processes throughout the calendar year can make this particular time of year much less stressful and costly - and it is the responsibility of the technology industry to continue to improve on solutions for self-employed workers and freelancers to be able to do this.

More info: www.fujitsu.com/emea/products