Ask HN: What do you use for your personal document hell? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: What do you use for your personal document hell?

50 pointssidarok46 comments

My SO uses iPhone and I use Android, I think we'll both soon go mad with all the pictures of the documents sent to post that we have to take a digital action for.

Contracts, Appliance Invoices, insurance, Kids' documents, Receipts, Fines, government documents, bills, tickets, passes etc. Are basically taking ages to find, even if we were wise to take a picture would take ages to refind.

I have both OneDrive and Dropbox, the UX is horrible for these simple searches. I know that Shoebox exists, but paying at least 18$ a month for wanting to store my documents on my phone in a neat way looks to much of a demand for me. (and that has a limitation). I'm not even asking for a fancy OCR.

Is there an app out there for this? What do you use?

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I use (two levels of) directories, and filenames:

appliances/fridge/2018-01-03-purchase-receipt.pdf

appliances/oven/2019-11-18-repair-invoice.pdf

medical/insurance/2022-02-03-insurance-card.pdf

automotive/registration/2022-09-10-registration.pdf

automotive/tickets/2019-09-10-parking.pdf

phone/t-mobile/2020-01-14.pdf

phone/pixel5a/2021-03-14.pdf

With two directory levels, you should be able to organize it so that all the top level directories fit on one screen of ls output / file explorer or whatever you want to use, as well as each second level.

I always prefix the filenames with YYYY-MM-DD, and I add a suffix with any extra keywords that might be helpful or to disambiguate several things from the same day, but in many cases it's obvious if the directory is just full of one bill per month or whatever, in which case I just do the YYYY-MM-DD.ext filename.

The system is largely optimized for having a place/filename to store things without too much thought, rather than retrieval since 90+% of things you store never actually need to look at again, and I don't mind clicking around for a few minutes for the rare occurrence when I do need something.

If you put this structure in google drive or similar you'll get OCR + keyword searches on the filenames for free, but you can also just sync it to any local filesystem to use "manually", or upgrade to the next latest and greatest cloud storage or whatever.

Kind of similar for me, main difference being that I have a 4th level with the year, like medical/insurance/2022/2022-02-03-insurance-card.pdf. That makes it easier to navigate for me.

This is a great system, I have something similar on OneDrive. But it is still a hell even for me, let alone my SO who's not a geek.

It works OK for archiving - if you really won't ever need it often, like flood insurance etc. and for those I don't complain at all. However i do have items I access frequently: i.e: Tickets, passes etc. I also wouldn't mind paying an app for reminders (fines, event dates, appliance warranty expiration -or even maintenance checks, ...)

I don't have OCR for free with Onedrive but I'll look if that's indeed a difference, I could move to GCloud. But then again, I'm stuck with my nerdy setup (no offense, I love it :) )

Paperless-ng (https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng) is the way to go. I have an instance of it running on a RPI 4 and a network attached scanner. New documents that I need stored are either immediately scanned using the app on my phone (And its free software, get it from FDroid) or via the actual scanner which obviously gives better quality.

Paperless then OCRs the documents and stores the original and a PDF/A version for long term archival. It learns from my tagging and classification and auto classifies them in the future.

The web interface is also pretty slick and allows you to do full text search on all your documents really fast.

Tagging and categories is also a more superior form of organisation than simple folders.

Can only recommend this way.

I'm running paperless-ng on my Synology NAS and I love it. I've additionally bought myself a Brother DS-640 scanner to get good scans also on the go and it works like a charm for the last few months.

Also because it's running on my NAS, it's automatically reachable via Tailscale from all my devices and gets encrypted + uploaded to Backblaze B2 once a week via HyperBackup. Setting all of this up took less than one hour.

How does Tailscale get you the syno files on your phone?

I'm not OP but I'm using the same. Setting up file and network sharing using Tailscales DNS service is trivial.

https://tailscale.com/kb/1054/dns/

Yes, either this one or in my case, I'm just using Tailscale to get into one network with my NAS without having my NAS to be exposed to the internet.

So instead of opening ports and stuff like that, I can just securely go to https://mynas:12345/ (port of my paperless instance) and I'm in there.

There's a reason a lot of us still use computers for documents rather than swamp our phones with documents.

I separate documents that are concerned with income, expenses and taxes into financial-year folders, further subdivided into a tree-structure of named folders.

    2022/bills_statements/centrepoint801/801_water_211026.pdf
    2022/bills_statements/centrepoint801/amart_tv_unit_210816.pdf
    2022/bills_statements/centrepoint801/cpoint801_ergon_210731.pdf

I have separate tree-structured folders for documents concerned with (say) real-estate properties, medical (separate tree-structures for me and for my wife), legal documents, motor vehicles, etc, etc, etc.

    medical/jack/jack_respiratory_2019-/bretz_referral_200213.pdf
    medical/jack/jack_respiratory_2019-/jack_bretz_info_consent_191030.pdf
    medical/jack/jack_respiratory_2019-/jack_patient_details_bretz_191030.pdf
    medical/jack/jack_respiratory_2019-/jack_191125_bretz.pdf

    real_estate_ours/marquis/marquis_504_market_appraisal_TS_220203.pdf
    real_estate_ours/kamerunga_6/steel-line_garage_door_user_manual.pdf
    real_estate_ours/york/obrien_real_estate_commision_york_131004.pdf

By making the filenames and the folder-names descriptive, and running a file-name indexing utility twice every day I can find a document quite quickly.

I store most documents as .PDF files, photos as .PNG images. I include a date if relevant using a 6-digit YEAR-MONTH-DAY format which will normally automatically order documents by date when useful.

    2020/antonas/clovelly_even/20cre190731.pdf
    2020/antonas/clovelly_even/20cre190830.pdf
    2020/antonas/clovelly_even/20cre190930.pdf
    2020/antonas/clovelly_even/20cre191031.pdf

It should go without saying that all documents are automatically backed-up into several separate locations at least once daily.

Incoming 'paper' documents are scanned too and stored along with similar computer-generated documents.

The Johnny decimal system is a handy way to organize these type of life admin documents. Can be used with any service since it's just a concept.

I was looking for this. But couldn't remember the name. Thank you for mentioning it.

One of my 2022 goals was to migrate my family's files into a JD filesystem. Photos, scans, music, email archives, everything. I'm already maybe 30% of the way there, and, call me a nerd, but I'm finding it thrilling. Wish I'd done this years ago.

I've also started using it as my personal task/time management system, which is probably crazy. 13.25 Tasks--Inbox, 13.26 Tasks--Today, 13.27 Tasks--Closed, etc. I just make a file for every task and move the files through the process.

No nah nope. You don’t need an app for this. You need the classic hierarchical file system and good folder and file names. I put it all in a VeraCrypt volume so it’s secure if the device is lost or stolen.

> You need the classic hierarchical file system and good folder and file names

Such as?

Options:

1. Make your own according to your own needs (what I do). 2. Copy one of the other comments here. 3. Something yet more structured like https://johnnydecimal.com/

Don't forget about symlinks. They can be helpful

I'm in the process of setting up paperless-ng.

https://github.com/jonaswinkler/paperless-ng

Seconding paperless-ng, have been using it for a while and I am very happy with it.

I use it too. What I found really useful is the OCR feature. It automatically scan the document content and I can search it later via the web UI. Image document like ID card or the like is not really accurate as I found it missed major portion of text or the most important section (the ID number itself), but I can manually edit it if necessary.

It's also one of my main used apps. Love being able to search sanely instead of rummaging through papers. I hate scanning documents in though, that's time consuming.

This is basically what I've done.

1. Buy a Fujitsu ScanSnap.

2. Buy a wall mounted folder rack (something like this: https://www.amazon.com/Klickpick-Office-Organizer-Multipurpo...) and mount it near the scanner.

3. All paper, put in the folder when it comes in.

4. Once a week, scan everything in the folders. Scanner turns paper into OCR'd PDF.

5. Set the scanner to scan to a Dropbox folder.

6. I name my files YYYY.MM.DD_Organization_DocTitle. The rest can be searched for since it's OCR'd.

I use a printer, a filing cabinet, hanging folders and manila file folders. I could never dream of doing anything else.

Don't forget a copier for receipts printed on thermal paper that become blank after a year!

You can make the process much more speedy by laminating the receipts.

Is laminating faster than making a copy? I woulda thought the opposite

I think the joke was the fact that lamination involves significant heat, which would immediately destroy the thermal receipts. Thus speeding up their destruction, not their copying.

Yes, putting thermal paper through a thermal laminator will turn it all black. Don't try it at home!

Ah! Got it

paper gusto is under-rated :P :)

Scan everything to searchable pdf, store it in a simple folder structure.. and use Mac or iOS spotlight to search for things. To make it a little less work for some things I have Hazel (Mac file automation app) watch my downloads folder for pdfs. If the contents match a set of unique things, like my electricity account, provider name, number and so on.. then the file gets renamed and moved to the correct folder. I download the pdf version after paying the bill, so there’s never any confusion. I used to have Hazel rename and move to desktop and I’d file manually once paid. As for folder structures and file names, I use 2022/Hydro/2022-01-26 Hydro bill.pdf Everything lives in sync.com (similar to Dropbox etc, but better security) and accessible on all my devices.

We've tried keeping our hundreds of docs organised to no avail but what has worked for us for some time now is to describe that document as well as possible in the title :

Eg: Ju brazilian Birth cert translation + original 2019.pdf

Then we just have Everything running in the back ground and search for whatever we need using that as it indexes all your files in real time and is very lightweight.

Everything is lighting quick when it comes to filtering a list of file names so we usually find what we need in a couple of seconds... Super easy to pull up too as they offer a global short cut key. Ctrl-Alt-Shift-E in our case...

https://www.voidtools.com/en-au/support/everything/

I don’t know if there’s an Android version, but I use “Scanner Pro” by Readdle on my iPhone to scan physical documents, then use airdrop to move them to my Mac where I later file them under ~/Docs/ORGNAME/YYYY-MM-DD with some description of what it is by at the end of the file name.

Looking at the settings just now, there’s an auto-upload option in there I haven’t taken advantage of yet, that allows for popular sync services as well as WebDAV. Which means I could configure this to auto upload docs to my NAS. I need to get on that…

Anyway, that app is pretty great in my experience. I think it even does OCR when converting to PDF automatically.

I often want to build a camera app that makes sub-foldering easy. Such that when you open the app, a folder icon is there and quickly allows you to set the folder for pictures your about to take. It would have a timer option too, so you can save 'the next 4 hours are so-and-so's party.

But primarily, the icon brings up a quick menu of favorite folders, more folders, or new folder.

Do you think that would that be of use to you?

> Do you think that would that be of use to you?

Yes, and I would pay for that usefulness. I'd pay even more if it integrated well with existing file-sync systems (one or more of dropbox, syncthing, google drive, onedrive, etc.) such that foldered photos were synchronized soon after taking them onto that same folder structure on all of my devices.

I use Google Drive for everything in a simple folder hierarchy with meaningful folder and file names. I keep everything there once scanned: medical, financial, taxes, housing, legal, … The folder structure makes it very easy to browse when search doesn’t work. The iOS app works great.

Backup every couple months with Takeout in case I get locked out.

I put document scans in a directory and name them something relevant, like "2021 state tax return". Only takes a few seconds to find anything I need.

I have both on-site and off-site backups; I have no desire to put personal information of that sort on anyone's web server.

I have this article by a Czech coder named Vas3k: https://vas3k.com/blog/nocode/

I saved it for another reason, but in it he solves for "X". Maybe it will help you.

He is most propably Russian, not Czech.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to start anything. It was my initial observation. But was it really the point of my post? Or are you just poking to poke...

I personally store everything in I cloud following a similar directory structure as tacostakohashi (elsewhere in the thread), though it seems like Google Drive might work for y'all as your split across iOS and Android.

I just scan everything into a folder on iCloud Drive with SwiftScan (which also does OCR) and use macOS and iOS Spotlight to find stuff.

Seems to work pretty well. I have to refer to receipts in it all the time.

Swiftscan maybe the solution! They are still not well in the organizing segment,but seems to do the job on the digitizing part at least. I'll check,thanks a lot for making me aware.

My photographed documents go on Google Photos and I can just use the image search. I pay for it and don’t really care if Google sees it all- I get what I need.

Google seeing it is also not my concern, my main problem is that it is not user friendly. I have to organize things as albums and have a structure in place to be able to find them back easily. This structure is implicit, so I have to talk to my SO everytime I have to change something and/or reeducate her.

Mac only solution but I just use DEVONthink and their mobile app. Works like a charm.

Mainly a reference folder on a webshare. But was considering paperless-ng lately

Evernote

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