AS computers became widespread, it was predicted the paperless age had arrived — but in many offices the reverse happened as they became swamped by paper files.

But not in Nick Hulme’s case. He has operated a truly paperless office for the last 18 months and, apart from financial papers needed to be kept for legal purposes, he neither stores nor uses paper.

The Bolton-based corporate financial adviser and chartered accountant runs Nick Hulme Corporate Finance as a sole practitioner, and maintains he has saved on the cost of printer paper: He said: “I have never bought any paper in the last 18 months.

“But, more importantly, I save on time and do everything I need to do by email, copying people in who need to know what’s going on.

“You have to be brave to get rid of paper but I decided I wanted to do this when I set up my officer here at The Atria in Spa Road.

“I don’t have any paper client files, everything is stored on my powerful laptop, backed up regularly to a hard drive and I send a mirror copy of my laptop every day to a remote site.

“When the post comes I recycle the marketing literature and scan the documents I need to my laptop and then recycle the papers.

“In effect, when I go to see clients, I take my whole office with me, my computer with all my files, portable scanner, portable projector and screen and I have everything I need.”

He says most businesses do not need to print out emails or receive or send letters and documents when an email would suffice.

He keeps legal contracts where he has to but in virtually all cases he will ask a client to sign the relevant document and then email it to him and keep that stored and backed up.

Married with two children, 46-year-old Mr Hulme’s background is in chartered accountancy, having worked for KPMG and other large companies.

He decided to work for himself as a sole practitioner and since then has enjoyed success in advising and helping promote management buy-outs, acquisition of companies and other corporate financial deals.

He recently won the Deal of the Year Award for North West deals up to £5 million at a Business Insider ceremony in front of 700 of the region’s financial elite.