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

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

#14

Post by sidarok »

tacostakohashi wrote: post #4

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…

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 :) )

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

#15

Post by afandian »

jimmygrapes wrote: post #5
evanlivingston wrote: post #2

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.

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

#16

Post by sidarok »

stormbeard wrote: post #8

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.

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

#18

Post by simonblack »

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.

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

#19

Post by deanmoriarty »

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.

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