Universal Paperless Office Possible?

[torasaurous1]

So here's the deal - my personal home office is a big 'ol mess mainly because of paper clutter. I envision downloading some kind of app that will allow me to scan all of these papers and THEN filing them into some kind of systemic manner much like you would in your documents folder on your Mac/MacBook.

These papers vary from vet/medical records, tax receipts, owners manuals, mortgage, bills, etc. Nothing too crazy but it would be neat to be able to create booklets of the owners manuals because most of them I will never refer to them but if I do.. a search function would be nice to quickly locate what I need within the document.

I also have an iPhone and will be purchasing a MacBook Air in the coming weeks. I don't want to overload the memory on the iPhone or the MBA. It would be neat if I could quickly access the files through a cloud on these devices though.. and download if needed. Or maybe a hard drive? Buy an iPad with an crazy amount of memory? Essentially a digital file cabinet without the clutter.

Anyone undertake something like this? I am in the very early stages of research so I am definitely open to ideas and suggestions. Will I need multiple apps to make this work?

 

[Schismz]

I have a similar situation, with what would amount to a physical warehouse full of documents related to a wide variety of topics, and wanted a similar outcome that you are seeking. I can't say that my methodology will work for you, but I went all-in with DEVONthink in the early 2000s, and I'm still using it.

DEVONthink Pro with Fujitsu's SnapScan scanner are a phenomenal combination in my opinion and experience, and well worth the time to research.

DEVONtechnologies | DEVONthink

DEVONthink is a professional document and information management app for Mac and iOS.

www.devontechnologies.com

ScanSnap® iX1600 - Touch Screen Desktop Scanner - Ricoh Scanners

Simply put, this is the best document scanner for individuals and small business, featuring a compact design, wireless connectivity, and a touch screen display. Combined with great performance and intelligent processing, it's the ultimate personal scanning solution.

www.fujitsu.com

DEVONthink can be as simple, or as incredibly complex and full-featured as you want. It's extraordinarily flexible, powerful, and reliable. It also fulfills the criteria of giving you control over your data -- unlike Evernote -- you can sync it across whatever clouds you want, or have your data go nowhere but your own cloud/NAS, and it syncs to iOS (albeit in my personal opinion the iOS apps are more like copies of your databases on your portable device(s), it's not something I'd want to use solely on iOS).

Cheers.

 

[glenthompson]

I did this when I retired in 2012. Were were planning on traveling extensively in our motorhome and knew that it would be impossible to keep records, books, and media with us. I purchased a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner and scanned everything I could. I filed each document into a file structure that mimicked my old paper system. I looked at DevonThink but found it overkill for my needs. For a lot of the process decisions I used David Sparks’ ebook Paperless.

You will have a lot of decisions to make in this process. Try not to box yourself into any corners. Keep all documents in an open standard like PDF. Don’t use your email as a filing system.

My process for incoming paper is:

• Scan document
• Save it as PDF with name like 2021-08-19 - receipt for UPS.
• It is temporarily saved in a folder named Action
• Every week or so the items in Action are moved to the appropriate folder

For items I receive via email I do the following:

• Move the email to the Action mailbox.
• When I have free time I go through the Action mailbox and save each email as a PDF with the same naming scheme as above and into the same Action folder.
• Delete the email.

Last but not least, make sure you have a rock solid backup strategy. It needs to have multiple backups with versioning. At least one must be offsite (I use BackBlaze). My stuff is synced to iCloud but that is not a backup. Test your backups often.

 

[fwmireault]

So I did the transfer to a paperless office and home last year. There are the steps I’ve followed:

1. I took all my physical documents and organized them in stacks, trying to identify the big categories and sub categories to organize my documents.
2. From there, I tried to create a coherent and as exhaustive as possible directory. The categories would be defined by a 4 digits number (with the sub categories defined by the three last digits), followed by date. All my documents are labeled 0000_YYYY-MM-DD_Name of the file. Note that your directory will evolve with time, it’s not necessary to do a completely exhaustive listing at the beginning.
3. I created the directory on my cloud service. I used iCloud but you can use whatever cloud service or local storage you prefer.
4. From there I used a scanning app (Swiftscan) and started to scan my physical documents. I labeled them the exact same way as mentioned in step 2, and sort them in the directory. This was by far the longest step, but I did it gradually. I kept the physical copy of only the most important documents. Every document that I knew I wouldn’t by any chance needed a physical copy was going to the shredder. As of today, I have about 10 documents that I kept the physical copy.
5. After that, I provide myself with all the apps and hardware I needed to go paperless indefinitely. I’ve found that to go paperless, I needed something to write on and annotate (iPad and Apple Pencil), something to scan physical documents (proper scanner or app on your iPhone, look for OCR to recognize text content in your document), and something to automate partly the sorting (Hazel, on mac). With all that, I can scan any physical document that I get, some of them who are recurrent (ex.: internet bill) will be sorted automatically in the right folder and with the right name, and for the rest I will sort them myself once a week from the main folder linked to my scanning app to my cloud service, in the right folder.

Of course, I recommend you to find a setup that work for you and not to try too much something that a stranger on internet tell you to do. You can transition gradually to a paperless office, but to keep it that way, you have to be relatively strict on sorting your scanned documents once a week or once a month. If you wait too much before scanning or sorting them, it will be very difficult to adopt the paperless way of life.

Finally, as @glenthompson said, you have to backup all these files at least in one other cloud service or local drive. When you go paperless, you have to take some precautions in case something bad happens to your files.

Good luck!

 

[mj_]

I run a paperless business. Every piece of paper that comes in is immediately scanned and tossed, and I don't let anything linger for longer than absolutely necessary. The trickiest bit is finding a system of organization that makes sense to you, e.g. a separation into business, personal, health and then breaking it down further with cross-references back and forth (e.g. health costs that are also tax deductible need to be cross-referenced from health to business).

Once you have that setup it's a breeze, and I spend less than 15 minutes a week organizing everything, filing it, and tossing it.

 

[NoBoMac]

I've been pretty much paper-free for many years now (10+?). Similar to what others have posted.

Only keep current tax year records on the Mac along with some other documents that are "good to always have": manuals, select spreadsheets and associated records (eg. car maintenance records). Almost all my bills are eBills, so get almost zero USPS mail that needs to be scanned/handled.

If some document has PII/sensitive information, does not hit the cloud until after taxes have been filed: I zip it all up, encrypt the zip with a random generated 26 character key before putting in cloud, remove from the Mac to free up space.

Use cloud for stuff not PII/sensitive and want access from phone as well. Eg. recipes, manuals, airline reservation info/printout, etc. An exception to the PII is some medical information: COVID vax card (in an encrypted iPhone Note and an encrypted scan on a cloud account), file with last date had xyz test/exam, list of medications.

For scanner, keeping it simple: iPhone Notes app does a good enough job and syncs to Mac to make for easier organizing/handling post scan. Eg. receipts, I scan them in, then on the Mac, I will print them out as a PDF using the 4 pages per sheet of paper format. Or take a picture and save to iCloud Drive for access from Mac. Dropbox has a scanner as well, if wanting to scan and save there (and it's fairly feature rich).

 

[alex.hostettler.2001]

I think it's better to stick to paper for important things... it's a very real possibility that the internet fail, and if everything is digital everything may be lost. That's why I don't use cloud storage. I store everything either in paper or on my hard drive, so it actually belongs to me, rather than in some "cloud" in California...

 

[mj_]

I store everything either in paper or on my hard drive, so it actually belongs to me, rather than in some "cloud" in California...

And then your house burns down and destroys your paper copy, your digital copy on your local hard drive, and your backup copy on your local time machine backup drive.

Not hypothetical. Happened to a former client of mine who was just like you and avoided the cloud like the plague until an out-of-control wildfire eradicated his entire existence.

 

[NoBoMac]

I store everything either in paper or on my hard drive, so it actually belongs to me, rather than in some "cloud" in California...

Down side, house burns down and then what?

(@mj_ beat me to it)

It boils down to the old 3-2-1 backup plan. 3 copies, 2 different mediums, 1 off-site.

That said, I also put my stuff onto encrypted hard drives (3 different ones), should all cloud accounts (I use 3 different ones here too) fail.

If ALL these fail at the same time, there's much bigger problems in my life and probably the world that I'm worrying about vs my records.

 

[glenthompson]

I think it's better to stick to paper for important things... it's a very real possibility that the internet fail, and if everything is digital everything may be lost. That's why I don't use cloud storage. I store everything either in paper or on my hard drive, so it actually belongs to me, rather than in some "cloud" in California...

About the only paper I keep long term are legal documents like birth & mrriage certificates, wills, and anything with an embossed seal. I have them all scanned for easy access and reference but electronic copies of some things like wills aren’t legally usable. They are stored in a fireproof filing cabinet. I have well over 20k pages of documents in my filing system. It all fits easily on a ruggedized thumb drive I carry on my keychain. Everything is backed to multiple destinations and in BackBlaze too.

I feel I’m in a better situation than the people in western states battling wildfires or the floods in Tennessee. I wonder how many of those people lost lol their family pictures. I’m betting any disaster to take out all my safeguards would take me out too and then I wouldn’t care.

 

[alex.hostettler.2001]

And then your house burns down and destroys your paper copy, your digital copy on your local hard drive, and your backup copy on your local time machine backup drive.

Not hypothetical. Happened to a former client of mine who was just like you and avoided the cloud like the plague until an out-of-control wildfire eradicated his entire existence.

You have a point. That's awful, feel so bad for that guy

 

[alex.hostettler.2001]

About the only paper I keep long term are legal documents like birth & mrriage certificates, wills, and anything with an embossed seal. I have them all scanned for easy access and reference but electronic copies of some things like wills aren’t legally usable. They are stored in a fireproof filing cabinet. I have well over 20k pages of documents in my filing system. It all fits easily on a ruggedized thumb drive I carry on my keychain. Everything is backed to multiple destinations and in BackBlaze too.

I feel I’m in a better situation than the people in western states battling wildfires or the floods in Tennessee. I wonder how many of those people lost lol their family pictures. I’m betting any disaster to take out all my safeguards would take me out too and then I wouldn’t care.

That is a smart idea. Yeah I can imagine how awful it must be for those people that lost everything due to natural disasters...

 

[alex.hostettler.2001]

Down side, house burns down and then what?

(@mj_ beat me to it)

It boils down to the old 3-2-1 backup plan. 3 copies, 2 different mediums, 1 off-site.

That said, I also put my stuff onto encrypted hard drives (3 different ones), should all cloud accounts (I use 3 different ones here too) fail.

If ALL these fail at the same time, there's much bigger problems in my life and probably the world that I'm worrying about vs my records.

Good point

 

[Tagbert]

If you do this, I recommend that you make sure you have both a local Time Machine backup setup and an offsite backup like BackBlaze.

 

[alex.hostettler.2001]

If you do this, I recommend that you make sure you have both a local Time Machine backup setup and an offsite backup like BackBlaze.

That's true. It would avoid losing everything in a fire or something

 

[Tagbert]

That's true. It would avoid losing everything in a fire or something

Backblaze has been working well for me for several years. It is easy to login to their site and download small numbers of files. What is really cool is that, if you have a massive data loss on your side, such as fire/flood, you can ask them to load your data onto a hard drive and overnight ship it to you. The cost is only about $100 which seems quite reasonable and is much better than trying to download 2TB of data.

 

[torasaurous1]

Lots of good suggestions! Keep them coming. Feeling pretty overwhelmed. My current cluttered office is going to have to transition into a baby's room next spring. So would a scanner be preferable vs an iPad or iPhone? I just want something that has software that's so easy that I could do it sleeping and isn't tedious to use.

 

[torasaurous1]

I run a paperless business. Every piece of paper that comes in is immediately scanned and tossed, and I don't let anything linger for longer than absolutely necessary. The trickiest bit is finding a system of organization that makes sense to you, e.g. a separation into business, personal, health and then breaking it down further with cross-references back and forth (e.g. health costs that are also tax deductible need to be cross-referenced from health to business).

Once you have that setup it's a breeze, and I spend less than 15 minutes a week organizing everything, filing it, and tossing it.

This is exactly what I am looking for.. something that will be super easy once I get it all set up. Do you use a scanner app or an actual scanner?

 

[torasaurous1]

I think it's better to stick to paper for important things... it's a very real possibility that the internet fail, and if everything is digital everything may be lost. That's why I don't use cloud storage. I store everything either in paper or on my hard drive, so it actually belongs to me, rather than in some "cloud" in California...

Absolutely I have my important documents stored in a fire safe box. Everything else I'd like to be able to store on a hard drive or on a cloud (if it's not sensitive information). I'm just ready to get rid of all of the clutter around my house and most of it is paper.

 

[glenthompson]

Other areas of paper reduction are in books and magazines. I’ve only bought 2 or 3 physical books in the last 10 years. The rest are e-books. The majority of books I check out from my library. They have e-books, audiobooks, and digital magazines. Amazing how much paper that can reduce.

I think it would be tedious to scan a large backlog of paper using an iPhone or iPad. Once the amount of incoming paper is reduced the ongoing scans can be done on the phone. You might consider picking up a used scanner on eBay. Models of the ScanSnap S1500M which I have go for about $100.

 

[mj_]

This is exactly what I am looking for.. something that will be super easy once I get it all set up. Do you use a scanner app or an actual scanner?

I use an actual scanner, a Brother DCP-L2540DW that I purchased around five years ago. I have also recently developed a workflow using Brother's iPrint&Scan whereby I can initiate a scan from the scanner itself by pressing the Scan button. It scans the document and automatically transfers it to my iMac, where Textify is launched to perform OCR and save the document as PDF with embedded text. For double-sided documents I have to revert to using Acrobat Professional with its brilliant fake duplex feature since the scanner itself doesn't support duplex.

Do yourself a favor and get a real scanner, preferably a ScanSnap, that does duplex scanning. I wanted a compact all-in-one printer/scanner/copier to avoid unneccessary clutter in my workspace but I know that Fujitu's ScanSnap scanners are supposed to be the creme de la creme of digital document management.

 

[Schismz]

Same, have multiple all-in-ones, one in office + ScanSnap which really makes everything else seem ridiculously slow and clunky, they're amazing scanners for OCR of any/all text documents. For images, it's gonna do nothing much, so use the all-in-one ;-)

 

[marmiteturkey]

I’ve been paperless for years. Originally I was in Evernote, which does a good job and is very searchable - but I got scared by proprietary document repositories and the regular chat about Evernote being in trouble, plus their update a couple of years back really borked the app; and as I have to pay for iCloud storage and an office365 license for my business, I resented an additional subscription.

I now have a fairly simple system that uses a ScanSnap (which I really don’t like tbh - when it dies I’ll find something else), that scans a searchable PDF into an inbox folder which is then auto sorted through a set of Hazel rules into a nest of iCloud document folders. Works well, has an offsite backup (as secure and trustworthy as I think it reasonably can be), is searchable and takes minimal time to digitise. It’s worth taking the time to get it right; but my filing cabinet is now a single drawer that contains only a few things that I can’t digitise (like my vehicle ownership documentation, some house ownership docs, birth certificates etc).

Going with iCloud makes things very easily accessible from phone and iPad, on demand. You can store a LOT of documents in a small amount of storage - they don’t take up much space tbh.