Paperless / Neat Receipts / Going Green - Need Help!!!

[Kylereilly]

Hi, I'm going paperless, scanning old documents, papers, tax returns, the whole works, all into PDFs. What's the best way to store it with Dropbox? I have Paperless which is a Mac App, but I want to sync everything with DropBox so I can use it with both Win and Mac Platforms, which means I can't use paperless. What is the best way to organize my digital collection of PDFs, that can be seen and used across multiple platforms????

 

[miles01110]

Why not just use folder hierarchies?

 

[Kylereilly]

I thought about that originally, but there would be so many levels, it would be too difficult to find what I was looking for. Also, with certain folders carrying so many files, how to sort: By category, then year, then month? There are endless possibilities, and some cross platform app would make it easier to search.

 

[TonyK]

That is why keywords are assigned. How to organize depends on the document. For tax stuff, I would start with Year then Category

2009
Medical
Charitable Contributions
Income
etc...

Others need to start with category and then sub-categories

Insurance
Life
Health
Car
Rider(s)

I thought about that originally, but there would be so many levels, it would be too difficult to find what I was looking for. Also, with certain folders carrying so many files, how to sort: By category, then year, then month? There are endless possibilities, and some cross platform app would make it easier to search.

 

[luckylady]

What is the best way to organize my digital collection of PDFs, that can be seen and used across multiple platforms????

Hi, Kyle. I agree that cross platform has many advantages. I use Evernote, which allows me access to my digital collection via Mac, PC, and iPhone. It's a cloud storage, but PDFs remain on my hard drive as well, plus I have them backed up with Time Machine/Time Capsule and Amazon's Jungle Disk.

There are other Mac apps for this like Yep and DevonThink, but if you want PC access too I'd go with Evernote. They have a free account, or you can opt for a premium account for $5/month or $45/year. And sync is built into Evernote so you won't need the extra step of using Dropbox.

 

[luckylady]

I thought about that originally, but there would be so many levels, it would be too difficult to find what I was looking for. Also, with certain folders carrying so many files, how to sort: By category, then year, then month? There are endless possibilities, and some cross platform app would make it easier to search.

IMHO, search trumps folder filing every time!

 

[AndyfromTucson]

I have been paperless for a few years now, and I just save PDFs in a simple folder hierarchy, like house, utility, financial, taxes, receipts. The only folders that have subfolders are taxes (one subfolder for each year) and financial (one subfolder for each bank). I just put a few key words, or the document name, in the PDF name, along with the document date if any (since it may be different than the date the PDF is saved.

As a practical matter I find most things by sorting a folder by date and then scanning the file names, since I can usually remember about when I got such and such document.

 

[dbwie]

EagleFiler

You can store them in EagleFiler, and add tags, etc. to help with search and retrieval.

http://c-command.com/eaglefiler/