This chapter starts by clarifying the role of the scanning process, which is to convert paper documents into electronic images that can also be converted into "machine readable" content that can be processed by software applications. This may be as simple as being able to search for specific text in the document or going all the way to recognizing data on a form and transferring that data directly into a software application. The chapter discusses the key topics: centralized versus distributed scanning model, alternative scanning devices, image processing software, document processing software and workflow integration. There is a niche category of software applications designed specifically to automate the process of scanning and organizing the supporting documents for 1040 tax preparation. The typical set of features these applications offer include the following: document recognition, automatic bookmarking, document sorting and scraping.