You don't need a scanner. Your portal lets you capture a document with your phone camera, and most people send documents this way.
Photos do get rejected sometimes, though, and it's almost always for one of a few reasons. A minute of care here saves you uploading the same page three times.
Getting a photo that's accepted
- Put the document on a flat surface, not in your hand. Holding it causes curl and shadow.
- Use daylight or a bright room. Avoid your own shadow falling across the page — stand to the side rather than directly over it.
- Get all four corners in frame. A cut-off edge is the single most common reason a document is sent back, because the firm can't tell what's missing.
- Shoot straight down, not at an angle.
- Check it's readable before you upload. Zoom in on the smallest text. If you can't read it, neither can they.
- Turn the flash off unless the room is genuinely dark. Flash usually creates a bright spot that hides text.
Multi-page documents
Photograph every page, including ones that look unimportant — blank backs of pages often carry terms, and firms frequently need the whole document rather than the interesting part.
Upload the pages in order, and keep them as separate images rather than one giant file. That also avoids the file-size problem described in My upload isn't working.
Documents with a shiny surface
Laminated cards and glossy paper reflect. Tilt the document slightly, or move away from the light source rather than towards it.
What not to do
Don't crop so tightly that edges are lost, don't apply filters, and don't upload a screenshot of a photo. Send the original image.