Best Document Management "Paperless" Organization Software?

flynz4 · Dec 19, 2014

robgendreau said:
Depends on what the paper is. If amenable to a sheet feed scanner, use that, OCR software, and something like Evernote, Yep, DevonThink Pro, Leap, etc to organize it. I prefer making PDFs and using Yep to organize them.

If not sheet feedable, either a flatbed or a smartphone and a scanner app. They work remarkably well. I think some have OCR, or use Evernote's premium edition and get the OCR from them.

Personally, I think flatbed scanners are obsolete.

Nothing beats (or comes close) to a sheetfed scanner for the vast majority of paper. Just buy a Fujitsu ScanSnap and do not look back.
For anything that does not fit through a sheetfed scanner, then I would recommend a smart phone scanner app. There are several. They will be used infrequently for most people... but sometimes you just need something other than a sheetfed scanner.

Document organization is a tougher question. I think DevonThink Pro Office is hard to beat. The more you use it, the smarter it gets. I think it is impressive.

Some people want iOS device integration. For me... that has near zero interest. I really do not want my entire digital life available on my phone/tablet. Too much risk of sensitive information being pirated if my device was lost or stollen. My data lives safely on my encrypted iMac at home, which is double backed up (locally and remotely). Hence, that data is both safe and secure.

/Jim

robgendreau · Dec 19, 2014

BTW Devonthink Pro is on sale for 25% off as part of the WinterFest 2014 promo. Through that promo you can also get some other terrific software like Nisus Writer Pro and Scrivener and others. Not a bundle; just some applications people use together.

And YMMV on the sheet feeder. I have hard stock and photos that would never make it in my sheet feeder, so I still use a flatbed. Not technically receipts, but still you might need something multiuse. I sold my big sheet feeder a while ago; once you've got you're old stuff in nothing beats the smartphone IMHO since you can use it right away and it's so handy (and cheap). Unless you're stuck in a dinosaur business like law or something.

glenthompson · Dec 19, 2014

ljrkrispes said:
So this is mostly a 2 year old thread. For me, the not-too-computer savvy person, what would be the simplest 2014 approach to organizing household paper so that it is searchable? I have looked at iBook Paperless but have not had good luck with Hazel in the past.

I use the Scansnap with supplied software to scan my documents to searchable PDF. I then file them into a folder structure that mirrors the old paper filing system I abandoned. It works well for me. I rarely search by keyword as I can usually find the document I need by folder and date.

cyb3rdud3 · Dec 26, 2014

Paperless from Mariner creates searchable pdf and hooks into general apple search. Can't be easier than that.

RedTink · Apr 13, 2017

GoCubsGo said:
First, I think it is worth noting that Finder is pretty awesome if you sit down and check it out. The search capabilities, narrowing down fields, etc; it is all very good. If you really want to unleash the power of Finder, you can really enhance it by downloading something like TotalFinder. Finder itself though is pretty great. Before you buy any product check that out.

Document Management:

You may feel as though Finder is "too raw" for you and a fancy UI really makes your day. I totally get that (and probably feel I am that way too). There are apps out there, as you know. Devon Think is nice. One thing I think it does do is when it is searching documents it will correlate a document to another based on content giving you a connection between documents with like content. That is pretty cool but whether you use it is another story.

iDocument is another app you can use. I'd say it is the competion to Devon Think. Somewhere someone said that iDocument is like iTunes for documents. That may suit you well.

Then there is Mariner Paperless. The whole point is to let your "office" go paperless. May be worth a look.

Finally, there is Together. I am not familiar with that app at all but I remember someone recommending it.

For me it would be about ease of use. Finder may be great for some but I'm also a fan of simple buckets where I can store documents and get them fast. I don't necessarily want to have to run various searches just to see what I have, which is why Finder may not work for you either.

The best thing to do is to download a trial of one, use it. Then download another, use it, etc. If a trial isn't offered then I probably wouldn't bother with the app itself. I just think that the investment into getting what I need on my computer is more important than taking a chance on software that doesn't work the way I had hoped.

[doublepost=1492110428][/doublepost]It looks like I Document may not have good customer support. Their site only has the ordering page that works, Contact Us, About Us, and their blog tabs do not work. Doesn't look like they will be good with customer questions and such. It looks like Doxie may be better than mariners paperless.

rhett7660 · Apr 13, 2017

flynz4 said:
Without a doubt, the Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500M is the gold standard of document scanners. If you are going to move to paperless documents... you need a document scanner. A flatbed scanner (even those with document feeders) will leave you so frustrated that you will give up. Search this site for Fujitsu ScanSnap and you will find many threads.

DevonThink Pro Office (DTPO) is IMHO... by far the best document organization database software. It uses artificial intelligence to gain "knowledge" about your database. The more you use it... the smarter it gets.

My most basic workflow is as follows:

Paper comes into the house (ex mail) and goes one of three places (recycle bin, shredder, "to be scanned" tray)

Every few days, I'll scan everything waiting to be scanned... then immediately shred. Everything is converted to a searchable PDF as it is scanned (using OCR)... and immediately put into DTPO's inbox folder.

Every month or so... I'll open DTPO and file/organize.

This last step is one area where DTPO is amazing. I'll open the inbox, select a document... and DTPO opens a side bar with stack of "relevance bars" suggesting exactly where it should be filed. Side by side you see the document and the places DTPO thinks it should go. The first (top) choice is almost always correct. One click later, it is filed and you are looking at the next document in your inbox.

Many people do not even bother manually filing... they just turn on "auto classification" and it automatically files when you import or scan a document into DTPO. I have not done this yet. It is so easy to manually file using the Artificial Intelligence of DTPO that I just do it manually. I also get a kick out of seeing how well it does suggesting where it should be filed. The search capability inside of DTPO is so powerful that there is no reason you ever really have to file (or keyword) anything if you do not want. You can just leave it one big disorganized mess. DTPO knows the content of all your documents and when you search... it adds relevance bars to the results. Even though I do "file" things away... I typically just search and get to my data faster than looking through my filing structure.

This is the tip of the iceburg of what DTPO can do.

If you really want to move to a paperless world... I recommend the Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M and DTPO. They are not cheap ($170 for DTPO, $400 ScanSnap) but they are unequaled.

/Jim

Just following up on this, was wondering if you still use this system today? Looking to start doing something similar.

Michaelgtrusa · Apr 13, 2017

RedTink said:
[doublepost=1492110428][/doublepost]It looks like I Document may not have good customer support. Their site only has the ordering page that works, Contact Us, About Us, and their blog tabs do not work. Doesn't look like they will be good with customer questions and such. It looks like Doxie may be better than mariners paperless.

That dev has been done for a long time now.

extracampine · Apr 26, 2017

I have tried a bunch of these. I'm looking for something slick to organise my documents - mainly PDFs but also the odd Word, PPT, Excel, Pages, Numbers, and the other odd document format. Many of the documents are scientific articles, many are books and there are loads of letters, receipts, leaflets, guidelines, etc etc. In short, a wide range of documents.

I want something that is fast, looks good, is thumbnail-based and easily searchable. It should be able to sort by date published, date added, title and other fields. Ideally there would be user customisable fields. This is my experience of the following:

Yep (Ironic Software): the one I currently use. Very good app which works well and has a tag-based filing system. The documents can be stored anywhere, and Yep can keep them in their original locations if you prefer. Literally everything is sorted by tags - it uses a "tag cloud" which is a window with all your tags, which you can then search or narrow down. The only downside here is that you have to remember what your tags are (or else search through the tag cloud). You can store tag searches as clickable buttons (e.g. a button called Articles can be pressed to narrow the search down to articles) but the UI of these shortcuts is a bit messy IMHO. It would also be useful to have a few extra metadata fields such as publication date (which is lacking from Yep).

Devonthink: this seems to be well thought of when reading reviews. I am sure it is very powerful. I tried it out and found it rather unintuitive, and frankly too complex for my needs. I am also a bit of a control freak so any app that automatically starts grouping things based on content isn't great. I did persevere for a while but found the UI a bit messy, complex and unintuitive. Shame as it seems to be the most versatile app out there.

iDocument: website looks quite slick, good name, good icon. The praise stops around there. It seems to do basic things fairly well, but seems very basic and with hardly any customisation possible at all. The website touts the "colourful themes" as being a selling point for iDocument Plus, which tells you enough, really. I also didn't like the fact that there was a main sidebar, and then another sidebar which attaches to that if you want to use the tags or collections. Had it all been nicely integrated into one sidebar then I might have persevered with this one.

Paperless: currently my second fave. What I really like this is the versatility in metadata and organising. You can set your own document types, and for each document type set the metadata that you want. This is all done in a separate "library configuration" window. For example, you can add a document type called "recipes" and then have metadata for title, date, food style, country, etc. You can then add smart groups which groups items by any of these fields. Downsides include the way it displays metadata in the information window (in drop down menus, truncating longer titles or other fields), a bulky toolbar that you have to keep visible if you want to use the search feature and the fact that it has to display the creation date underneath each and every icon/thumbnail. There also appears to be a lot of negative user opinion online, including regarding the customer support. I contacted them and had fairly brief but helpful replies. It also seems that Paperless 3 may be out in the second half of 2017.

Mendeley: too niche. Great if you want to "showcase your work" on an "academic social network", or if you just want something that is good for academic papers, but not so great for a more general document manager.

Papers: probably the slickest UI. Nice looking website. Good name. So far, so good. Like Mendeley, the focus is on academic "papers", but it looks a bit more flexible. There is an option to "copy files to papers library after import" - this is good, as you don't have to have 2 copies of each of your documents (like you currently have to with Paperless, for example). Looking at the app again, it is quite focused on academic papers. You can select from a range of file types, which is good, but there do not seem to be custom file types. There is not even a "letter" file type, for example, which is quite limiting if you are using it to go paperless. I will keep looking into this one further.

Edit: I really wanted to like Papers. It has many good features and looks slick. However I stumbled at the most basic of tasks. I wanted to display the filename below the icons/thumbnails (instead of the default author). It is not possible. I contacted support and they confirmed that it is not possible. A TOP SHELF DOCUMENT ORGANISATION APP THAT CANNOT DISPLAY THE FILENAME BELOW THE FILE ICON. Yes I'm not joking. Yes, even the basic Mac finder can do that. I cannot get my head around this and have given up for now with Pages. There were a few other things too. So back to Yep it is for the time being (until Paperless 3.0 comes out, which will be worth looking at).

Edit 2: Oh dear. I decided to persevere with Papers some more but things got a bit worse. I found the pre-set list of document types extremely limiting. For example, there wasn't a document type for "journal", or "rating scale", or a bunch of other files that I have. There were also a few bugs around the matching that I came across (when I tried to match a file, my documents in the background would disappear and the file wouldn't match). It then started crashing fairly often, having to do a force shut down. Given up on this one.

udontno · Apr 26, 2017

At the risk of sounding totally stupid, what do y'all store in there? I am not in a stage of life where I get a ton of paper in the mail that I need to file or digitize. I pay basically every bill online with the exception of my car payment.

However, I have been thinking lately that I need to get better about saving information that I get online. For instance, bank statements. I know some people download them, review, and file them away. I haven't really kept up with them like that. I also have various things in my email.

I already have a terrible tendency to keep things. I know on my external hard drive that I have things that I wrote for school (think middle school) like ten years ago.

TL;DR: What do you keep? What goes in there?

extracampine · Apr 27, 2017

udontno, are you totally stupid?? hehe just kidding.

Well for starters, a large chunk of it didn't come through the mail and indeed was never in paper form in the first place. I'm talking about downloaded articles, books, reports, guidelines and other documents. Then there is all of the scanned in academic or work related stuff. Also a load of old papers that I didn't want to throw away but didn't need to keep either if you know what I mean. And then the household stuff (a lot still comes through the mail) - bills, schedules, mortgage papers, insurance documents, etc. Also receipts, invoices, manuals and other bits and pieces. Probably some of it I could read and then throw away but I tend to keep stuff for reference or just in case it is needed. Currently have around 3600 documents stored.

Rigby · Apr 27, 2017

udontno said:
At the risk of sounding totally stupid, what do y'all store in there? I am not in a stage of life where I get a ton of paper in the mail that I need to file or digitize. I pay basically every bill online with the exception of my car payment.

Same here. And I switch to paperless bills/statements wherever I can. I get very few paper documents these days.

However, I have been thinking lately that I need to get better about saving information that I get online. For instance, bank statements. I know some people download them, review, and file them away. I haven't really kept up with them like that.

I download and save all statements and bills, plus everything related to my tax returns (which I do via Turbotax). I keep most documents for 5 years, some indefinitely (e.g. statements and trade confirmations from investment accounts, since they may come in handy to document the cost basis when selling long-term investments). I also keep copies of everything I produce myself (papers, thesis etc.).

That said, I have never felt the need for document management software and don't really like the idea of being dependent on a piece of software that may stop working one day. I just save the documents in a somewhat logical directory structure by year. This way, cleaning up old stuff once a year just takes a few minutes. Electronic statements are usually searchable, so you can easily find everything using Finder if necessary.

I already have a terrible tendency to keep things. I know on my external hard drive that I have things that I wrote for school (think middle school) like ten years ago.

My advice: Keep it. You may enjoy looking at it again some day. I wish I still had some of that stuff, but I went to school when kids were still using pencil and paper and most of that stuff is long gone.

udontno · Apr 27, 2017

extracampine said:
udontno, are you totally stupid?? hehe just kidding.

Well for starters, a large chunk of it didn't come through the mail and indeed was never in paper form in the first place. I'm talking about downloaded articles, books, reports, guidelines and other documents. Then there is all of the scanned in academic or work related stuff. Also a load of old papers that I didn't want to throw away but didn't need to keep either if you know what I mean. And then the household stuff (a lot still comes through the mail) - bills, schedules, mortgage papers, insurance documents, etc. Also receipts, invoices, manuals and other bits and pieces. Probably some of it I could read and then throw away but I tend to keep stuff for reference or just in case it is needed. Currently have around 3600 documents stored.

I guess when I envisioned software like this, I was thinking a specific program designed to work with your scanner to manage physical paper stuff like receipts, bills, business cards, etc.

Rigby said:
Same here. And I switch to paperless bills/statements wherever I can. I get very few paper documents these days.
I download and save all statements and bills, plus everything related to my tax returns (which I do via Turbotax). I keep most documents for 5 years, some indefinitely (e.g. statements and trade confirmations from investment accounts, since they may come in handy to document the cost basis when selling long-term investments). I also keep copies of everything I produce myself (papers, thesis etc.).

That said, I have never felt the need for document management software and don't really like the idea of being dependent on a piece of software that may stop working one day. I just save the documents in a somewhat logical directory structure by year. This way, cleaning up old stuff once a year just takes a few minutes. Electronic statements are usually searchable, so you can easily find everything using Finder if necessary.
My advice: Keep it. You may enjoy looking at it again some day. I wish I still had some of that stuff, but I went to school when kids were still using pencil and paper and most of that stuff is long gone.

I think I have a logical enough file system for the documents that I do have. As it is mostly school work, they are organized by course.

Photo management is my biggest challenge, but that is another thread. As I do not keep my massive library on my computer, photos get dumped onto an external. I mostly shoot sports games, so they are organized by school, team, then year. I can manage the photos well enough when they are on my computer.

Michaelgtrusa · Apr 29, 2017

extracampine said:
I have tried a bunch of these. I'm looking for something slick to organise my documents - mainly PDFs but also the odd Word, PPT, Excel, Pages, Numbers, and the other odd document format. Many of the documents are scientific articles, many are books and there are loads of letters, receipts, leaflets, guidelines, etc etc. In short, a wide range of documents.

I want something that is fast, looks good, is thumbnail-based and easily searchable. It should be able to sort by date published, date added, title and other fields. Ideally there would be user customisable fields. This is my experience of the following:

Yep (Ironic Software): the one I currently use. Very good app which works well and has a tag-based filing system. The documents can be stored anywhere, and Yep can keep them in their original locations if you prefer. Literally everything is sorted by tags - it uses a "tag cloud" which is a window with all your tags, which you can then search or narrow down. The only downside here is that you have to remember what your tags are (or else search through the tag cloud). You can store tag searches as clickable buttons (e.g. a button called Articles can be pressed to narrow the search down to articles) but the UI of these shortcuts is a bit messy IMHO. It would also be useful to have a few extra metadata fields such as publication date (which is lacking from Yep).

Devonthink: this seems to be well thought of when reading reviews. I am sure it is very powerful. I tried it out and found it rather unintuitive, and frankly too complex for my needs. I am also a bit of a control freak so any app that automatically starts grouping things based on content isn't great. I did persevere for a while but found the UI a bit messy, complex and unintuitive. Shame as it seems to be the most versatile app out there.

iDocument: website looks quite slick, good name, good icon. The praise stops around there. It seems to do basic things fairly well, but seems very basic and with hardly any customisation possible at all. The website touts the "colourful themes" as being a selling point for iDocument Plus, which tells you enough, really. I also didn't like the fact that there was a main sidebar, and then another sidebar which attaches to that if you want to use the tags or collections. Had it all been nicely integrated into one sidebar then I might have persevered with this one.

Paperless: currently my second fave. What I really like this is the versatility in metadata and organising. You can set your own document types, and for each document type set the metadata that you want. This is all done in a separate "library configuration" window. For example, you can add a document type called "recipes" and then have metadata for title, date, food style, country, etc. You can then add smart groups which groups items by any of these fields. Downsides include the way it displays metadata in the information window (in drop down menus, truncating longer titles or other fields), a bulky toolbar that you have to keep visible if you want to use the search feature and the fact that it has to display the creation date underneath each and every icon/thumbnail. There also appears to be a lot of negative user opinion online, including regarding the customer support. I contacted them and had fairly brief but helpful replies. It also seems that Paperless 3 may be out in the second half of 2017.

Mendeley: too niche. Great if you want to "showcase your work" on an "academic social network", or if you just want something that is good for academic papers, but not so great for a more general document manager.

Papers: probably the slickest UI. Nice looking website. Good name. So far, so good. Like Mendeley, the focus is on academic "papers", but it looks a bit more flexible. There is an option to "copy files to papers library after import" - this is good, as you don't have to have 2 copies of each of your documents (like you currently have to with Paperless, for example). Looking at the app again, it is quite focused on academic papers. You can select from a range of file types, which is good, but there do not seem to be custom file types. There is not even a "letter" file type, for example, which is quite limiting if you are using it to go paperless. I will keep looking into this one further.

Edit: I really wanted to like Papers. It has many good features and looks slick. However I stumbled at the most basic of tasks. I wanted to display the filename below the icons/thumbnails (instead of the default author). It is not possible. I contacted support and they confirmed that it is not possible. A TOP SHELF DOCUMENT ORGANISATION APP THAT CANNOT DISPLAY THE FILENAME BELOW THE FILE ICON. Yes I'm not joking. Yes, even the basic Mac finder can do that. I cannot get my head around this and have given up for now with Pages. There were a few other things too. So back to Yep it is for the time being (until Paperless 3.0 comes out, which will be worth looking at).

Edit 2: Oh dear. I decided to persevere with Papers some more but things got a bit worse. I found the pre-set list of document types extremely limiting. For example, there wasn't a document type for "journal", or "rating scale", or a bunch of other files that I have. There were also a few bugs around the matching that I came across (when I tried to match a file, my documents in the background would disappear and the file wouldn't match). It then started crashing fairly often, having to do a force shut down. Given up on this one.

iDocument support has long stopped.

extracampine · May 4, 2017

OK a further update. I went back and persevered with Devonthink and I like it. As with many things, putting a bit of time in to learn it properly pays off. It doesn't automatically group things - so you can just arrange things yourself if you want - but it can. With a bit of investigation I got the UI to how I like it. You can have it with just one sidebar with smart groups for the things you access the most. Hasn't crashed yet. Seems to have some of the best technical support. Think I will switch to this from Yep.

talmy · May 4, 2017

I went paperless 4 years ago. I've found that as long as everything is OCRed Finder has all the searching power I need. Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500 and Hazel do the scanning and filing respectively. Documents accessible from any system at home (they are on a server) or away using VPN. I discussed it all here: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...t-software-and-scanner.1913881/#post-21821210 a bit over a year ago, but it all still applies.

robgendreau · May 4, 2017

Rigby said:
That said, I have never felt the need for document management software and don't really like the idea of being dependent on a piece of software that may stop working one day. I just save the documents in a somewhat logical directory structure by year. This way, cleaning up old stuff once a year just takes a few minutes. Electronic statements are usually searchable, so you can easily find everything using Finder if necessary.
My advice: Keep it. You may enjoy looking at it again some day. I wish I still had some of that stuff, but I went to school when kids were still using pencil and paper and most of that stuff is long gone.

You've got a document management system...it's called The Finder. It may or may not stop working some day. Along with PDF readers like Preview, etc. Some stuff is indexed by Spotlight; some doesn't even have text (like some PDFs).

The value of Devonthink, Yep, Leap, Paperless etc is that they do a better job than the Finder. And even if they went away your stuff would still be there, so you're not dependent on anything other than, again, that whole Mac thing. Devonthink can either copy stuff into it's own library (sorta like Photos) or index (i.e. reference) it in place. The others can also reference documents. So they basically can act like better finders than the Finder.

And with folders, you've got very very very limited organizational ability. Again, like Photos, these applications allow for better tagging and putting stuff into virtual containers that are more flexible than Finder folders, since a file can only got into ONE Finder folder. So I can have say my tax return in a Devonthink group for Taxes, Mortgage documents, Presidential Candidate Disclosures, etc. I don't have to put it in just one. And Devonthink has lots of scripts, services, etc, so I can clip stuff from web pages, other text, etc. Very useful in putting together long documents based on collected research. I use it to collect PDF manuals that may disappear from the web for say camera equipment I own. Or collections of web pages, PDF maps, photos and stuff for researching travel.

Rigby · May 4, 2017

robgendreau said:
You've got a document management system...it's called The Finder.

Well, duh.

The value of Devonthink, Yep, Leap, Paperless etc is that they do a better job than the Finder. And even if they went away your stuff would still be there, so you're not dependent on anything

It depends on how they organize the documents and to what extend they rely on their own indexing.

other than, again, that whole Mac thing.

A directory tree with PDF files is in no way Mac specific. You can copy it to a Windows or Linux machine and it'll be just as usable.

Devonthink can either copy stuff into it's own library (sorta like Photos) or index (i.e. reference) it in place. The others can also reference documents. So they basically can act like better finders than the Finder.

One would hope that they offer something that Finder doesn't have. But the question is if the user needs any of the additional functionality, and if they are willing to learn using the software (DevonThink isn't nearly as intuitive as Finder or Windows Explorer).

And Devonthink has lots of scripts, services, etc, so I can clip stuff from web pages, other text, etc. Very useful in putting together long documents based on collected research. I use it to collect PDF manuals that may disappear from the web for say camera equipment I own. Or collections of web pages, PDF maps, photos and stuff for researching travel.

I keep PDF manuals in another folder.

I think all of this is overkill just for managing a "paperless" household with things like bills and banking statements. I do use Papers to index scientific papers though, since it makes citations a lot easier.

infantrytrophy · May 4, 2017

udontno said:
At the risk of sounding totally stupid, what do y'all store in there? I am not in a stage of life where I get a ton of paper in the mail that I need to file or digitize. I pay basically every bill online with the exception of my car payment.

However, I have been thinking lately that I need to get better about saving information that I get online. For instance, bank statements. I know some people download them, review, and file them away. I haven't really kept up with them like that. I also have various things in my email.

I already have a terrible tendency to keep things. I know on my external hard drive that I have things that I wrote for school (think middle school) like ten years ago.

TL;DR: What do you keep? What goes in there?

Udontno,

Good questions, I'll give it a go. If you're only 10 years out of middle school, then I'm a lot older than you

First, I'm almost completely paperless, making a major effort over a couple of years to get rid of boxes and boxes of old papers.
Banking and credit card statements: Downloaded from the bank each month, named with bank name and date for easy retrieval. It's invaluable to go back to old statements, even years later, to look up proof of payment or get information. I have successfully made warranty extension claims on purchases made with certain credit cards 2 years after purchase. Records needed, of course.
Bills/invoices: Utilities, HOA statements, contractors, insurance
Medical: need these for medical records and for tax deductions
Home records: keep track of improvements for tax purposes when you sell your home. If tax laws change (they have many times in the past) or if you ever rent out your home, you will need to calculate your cost basis and previous depreciation and other costs.
Tax records: self-evident. Keep backup for deductions for 3 years or so, and your tax returns forever.
Investments: Keep cost basis information until you sell the investment and record on tax return; then 3 years afterward. If you buy mutual funds or DRIP plan stocks periodically, you need to keep investment statements indefinitely for cost basis calculations.
Receipts: Keep 3 years' worth or so for proof of purchase, warranty claims, etc. Returns to Costco (and other retailers with good return policies) are easier with receipts. Scanned receipts are fine; it's impossible to keep track of those flimsy "paper" receipts.
ID cards: Social Security, Health Insurance/Medicare cards, Rewards/Loyalty cards, Passports, Military/Veteran's ID, voter registration, TSA Known Traveller number. I keep all of these in Dropbox so they are available on mobile devices.
Car registration, proof of car insurance, Driver's license - save in Dropbox, available on mobile device.
Instruction manuals, model numbers and serial numbers for appliances, electronic devices, etc.
Records of security freezes on credit bureau accounts. I have a security freeze with Equifax/TransUnion/Experian. Keep records of these and the PINs required to un-freeze with needed.
Pictures and paper records for home inventory - in case of fire, theft, etc.
Travel documents: tickets, reservations, contact information. Keep in Dropbox for access from mobile devices when traveling.
Birth Certificates, Marriage licenses, etc.

All of this information is easily backed up to local inexpensive disk drives and cloud backup (in my case, BackBlaze).

Trust me, as you get older your record keeping requirements increase. In recent years I have taken over finances for an elderly parent. Most of the above records are needed for her also.

Make sure to keep things simple. Don't use proprietary data formats - plain PDF files are great; they will probably never be obsolete. OCR'd documents help for search lookup. Remember that storage media become obsolete also. Don't use CDs or tape. Remember floppy disks? Good luck trying to read data from them these days. For now USB-connected external disk drives and cloud backup are good. When these media and services change, you can copy data to future media and services.

Let us know if this helps. I wish I had been able to start the digital record keeping started early in my life. Couldn't do without it now.

MacGizmo · May 5, 2017

DevonThink or YoJimbo (BareBones Software) are the only two I would consider... That is, if the Finder didn't already offer drag & drop, folders, tags, info input boxes, and support for every format in & out that I can come up with.

danrudy · Mar 24, 2018

MacGizmo said:
DevonThink or YoJimbo (BareBones Software) are the only two I would consider... That is, if the Finder didn't already offer drag & drop, folders, tags, info input boxes, and support for every format in & out that I can come up with.

MacGizmo.,

I was really tearing my hair out trying to figure out which document filing system I wanted as I prepare to abandon by rack2filer system that I purchased with my fujitsu scanner a bunch of years ago. I really liked that interface. But, I read that they will not be supporting it going forward so I figured I better get an alternative now.

I was looking at Paperless 2, eaglefiler, devonthink etc. I had downloaded trials and was playing with them all. Basically, I wanted a virtual electronic Binder system much like I had with rack2filer. However, that was originally on my PC and now that I was running my pc via parallels on my mac I figured if I was going to create a new system might as well do it native on the mac. There was a virtual Binder program that seemed like it would do what I want but it was pc only. My goal was just to have a place to put financial documents, insurance, manuals, health and loose papers without a filing cabinet. I always prefered a binder system but had abandoned that with rack2filer. I am not looking for it to calculate numbers for me and prepare my taxes. I just want to be able to file everything and know where it is so I can give it to my accountant or keep a manual handy. So, in doing research for a new system I looked at some of the ones I mentioned. Devonthink seems to have a loyal following but was way more program then I needed. I was not interested in getting involved with something with a learning curve. i wanted something intuitive and which would allow me to hit the ground running. I liked the interface with Paperless 2 and the GUI. However, I had a few questions and still had not heard back from support. This seemed like a ding against it in the blogs I was reading. Eaglefiler seemed to me to be a souped-up Finder. However, I did not like the GUI and also did not like the way Libraries were separated in the drop pad. I know it had a good following and reputation but it wasn't doing it for me.
After reading your note, I decided tp revisit the idea of just using the Finder. It is simple, intuitive and basically is doing everything I wanted an organizer to do. I set up a folder on my desktop as my scansnap inbox and now just sacn my documents to there and then file them as I am able. I will setup the Automator shortly to automatically open the folder whenever documents are scanned into it to ave my self the 1 second it takes to double click on the folder before I begin dragging items to their respective folder but it is just something I think will be fun to do. It really isnt necessary.
Basically, I settled on using the Finder. It is simple, elegant, robust and allows me to do the occasional tagging of items. One benefit I like is that I liked to make notes on PDF's in the past occasionally and opening the PDF's in the Finder allowes me to mark them up and simply close them with the occasional annotation that I wanted to make. Again, simple and elegant. I will probably watch a video online about organizing with the finder to see if there are any other good ideas to use it more fully but for now, I am very happy with it and glad I decided to give it another look

talmy · Mar 25, 2018

danrudy said:
MacGizmo.,

After reading your note, I decided tp revisit the idea of just using the Finder. It is simple, intuitive and basically is doing everything I wanted an organizer to do.

You should also consider Hazel to sort documents into folders, something Finder won't do. For paperless I don't think anything beats Finder + Preview + Hazel. I've been doing this (with a Fujitsu iX500) for over 4 years now: https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...t-software-and-scanner.1913881/#post-21821210

Since that post I've now got over 10,000 statements cataloged and over 6000 other documents, all in PDF format.

Best Document Management "Paperless" Organization Software?

macrumors 68040

macrumors 68040

macrumors demi-god

macrumors 68040

macrumors newbie

macrumors G5

macrumors 604

macrumors newbie

macrumors 6502

macrumors newbie

macrumors 603

macrumors 6502

macrumors 604

macrumors newbie

macrumors 601

macrumors 68040

macrumors 603

macrumors regular

macrumors 68040

macrumors newbie

macrumors 601

Our Staff