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I organized paperless in the beginning but not so much anymore.
I have given it access to my email inbox and to add attachments automatically. I can then search for receipts and more without having done the work to import it manually
it works relatively well. for sites and services that actually include pdf receipts
Do not overthink it. Set up paperless, create a watched folder. Paperless does the OCR for you. Scan your stuff and check if it was scanned as you want it to be. If yes, drop it in the folder. Tag as you go, paperless will learn and tags will get more accurate. If something reaches a level where you can trust paperless to always tag it correctly, let it tag that type of thing completely automated.
And file away your scanned papers separately, because scanning old things takes a lot of time and will most likely not be done in a day or two. Even with a scanner which can pull through stacks of pages, you still have to check if every page really was scanned (scanners can pull in two pages at the same time, only one page will be scanned then) and you have to merge multi-page docs (or scan them that way immediately).
And file away your scanned papers separately,
I'd recommend using ASN (archive serial numbers) for documents you store a physical copy of, following the recommended flow
I printed ASN QR code stickers, using the smallest Avery labels I could find (Avery 5267 in the USA, L4731REV-25 in Europe) along with their free online design app.
For documents I want to keep, I stick a QR code sticker on them before scanning. Paperless-ngx automatically detects the QR code and sets the ASN. I then file it away in a folder that's sorted by ASN. When I need to find the physical copy again, I first look in Paperless to find the ASN, then find the document in the folder (pretty quick since all documents are sorted).
You'll need to set the following settings:
PAPERLESS_CONSUMER_ENABLE_BARCODES=true
PAPERLESS_CONSUMER_ENABLE_ASN_BARCODE=true
PAPERLESS_CONSUMER_BARCODE_SCANNER=zxing
And file away your scanned papers separately
This^. No matter how many layers of backups I have for paperless, I'm still keeping the most important physical documents in a file cabinet.
I'm not sure exactly what you are looking for but here is my workflow:
Laptop - This is where I do most of the uploading to paperless. When I get an important document over email, buy something online that's expensive enough for me to want to save the receipt, or buy something that comes with a digital manual, I download the PDF and upload the document to paperless in the browser.
Phone - I have an iPhone and use Swift Paperless to upload physical mail, physical receipts, or physical manuals I can't find online.
I know I can set up Paperless to pull documents from my email automatically but it's not very good at guessing the tags and correspondents in my experience, and because it's not good at guessing the correspondents and tags, I have to manually edit the documents anyway so I might as well upload them myself. I've just got into the habit of getting a document, knowing I might want to view it later, and upload it right then or later that day. The built in OCR works great.
Edit: Oh, my behavior has changed a little because of paperless too. I now ask everyone for a receipt, email confirmations when talking with customer service, or if I'm dealing with a business that only hands me paper documents, I ask them to email them to me too. I'm pretty annoying about it. Basically, if the transaction is important enough to me, it doesn't end until I get proof that I can upload to paperless.
@kiol Here is my workflow(s):
- I set up an email-address. Any attachment to emails are imported to paperless and the email deleted. I can simply forward emails with invoices or other docs to this address.
- Scans are saved locally (because my printer does not support network storage) and I have a bat file in that folder, moving all files to the folder on my server that is watched by paperless and all documents are imported.
From time to time I check and correct the automatic tags.