My Paperless Strategy & Workflow | Share Your Paperless Workflow | Forum

Greetings, all.  First, I have to congratulate Brooks for reading my mind and creating this wonderful resource.  

As the reluctant inheritor of some rental property 20 years ago, I found myself responsible for maintaining real estate records dating back to 1963.  Being mildly OCD, I have also retained nearly every paper I wrote in college, plus medical records, mortgage & insurance documents, investment statements, etc., along with product owners manuals, technical bulletins, and a variety of other stuff that ends up in my filing cabinets.

My own adventures in electronic record-keeping began around 10 years ago when I decided there was no way I was going to purchase a fourth filing cabinet to contain my ever-expanding paper collection.  As it happens, I've been a Mac user from the very beginning and have always had access to a scanner, first at work, then at home when I bought my first flatbed unit in the early '90s for scanning photos.  I started my document-scanning efforts in earnest on my current flatbed, an Epson Perfection 610 purchased in mid-2000.  My computer at the time had a hard drive smaller than most current thumb drives, so I didn't OCR any of my documents, as that process increased file sizes manyfold.

In 2008, I purchased the Fujitsu ScanSnap S510M and my current Mac has a 2TB internal drive, so life is much better.  I'm a highly visual thinker, so I avoid using smart folders, preferring a hierarchical folder structure that I can physically navigate.  My filing system consists of three major components: Product records (user manuals, spec sheets, car maintenance records, etc.), Permanent records (home purchase & mortgage docs, insurance policies, education records, employment records, etc.), and calendar year records (billing statements, medical expenses, transaction records, etc.).  I don't use any third-party document organizing software—everything is done using the Mac Finder, Acrobat, and the tools that come with the ScanSnap.  I mostly rely on the folder/subfolder structure and naming conventions to retrieve any file I might need to call up for viewing or printing.  (I have a screen shot of my workflow window, but I don't see any way to upload it or attach it to this post.)

My schedule for scanning & filing is rather haphazard, but the process is fairly well organized.  I use the "Spaces" feature in Snow Leopard to set aside a dedicated window for these efforts.  Everything is scanned into a temp folder viewed using CoverFlow.  From here, files are renamed and dragged to the appropriate permanent storage location in separate windows using Column View.

I still don't OCR my files, although I'm interested in starting, now that disk space is cheap & plentiful.  I am also looking forward to Lion, the next version of the Mac OS, since it promises to allow simultaneous, continuous data backup via Time Machine, as well as whole disk encryption.  Right now, we have to pick one or the other.  I use the redacting feature in Acrobat to black out credit card & account numbers, but this is quite tedious.  Still, I'm now down to two filing cabinets, and even those have plenty of empty space.  I'm certainly open to suggestions, as well as any comments or questions regarding my workflow approach.

-Harry

I couldn't figure out a way to squeeze my screenshot down to a size that allowed uploading (51.2kb limit), so I posted it to a gallery page here:

http://gallery.me.com/harry.ka…..;view=grid

The CoverFlow window on the right side of the screen is my default save location for all scans.  This is the only place on my system where I use routinely CoverFlow in the Finder.  My preference for all other windows is usually column view, as shown on the two windows to the left of the scan folder.

The upper window shows part of my hierarchical structure for "permanent records"; things like insurance and mortgage documents where I want a single folder to contain statements & correspondence that might span multiple years.

The window below this one shows part of the structure for a single calendar year.  The only folder that might not be self-expanatory is "eCommerce Rcpts".  I've had more than a few experiences with online purchases where the item received wasn't quite what I thought I ordered, or the price mysteriously changed somewhere along the line.  I got into the habit of printing to PDF at least the final confirmation screen for items purchased through websites, and sometimes I'll PDF several pages and combine them to fully document my purchase.  I don't even bother to do this with Amazon anymore—they've been extremely reliable.  Some smaller companies, not so much.

I also "print" a PDF for things like online bill payments, charitable contributions, and subscription renewals.  It has proven worthwhile on several occasions, so I plan to continue.

The other folders may contain a mix of scanned documents and statements downloaded from my credit card companies, banks, brokerage firms, utilities, etc.  Everything in these folders is a PDF, however.  I have other storage locations for spreadsheets, word processing documents, TurboTax files, etc., although I save several PDF versions of each tax return ("Federal as-filed," "Federal all forms, schedules, & worksheets," "State as-filed," etc.)

The only things in here that aren't PDFs are little reminders that I place in certain folders, such as the one shown in my screenshot ("All dates are DOS"), indicating that dates in file names are date of service for doctor visits, while EOB statements might use the statement date as part of the file name instead of the DOS.  These are just empty TextEdit files with the icon changed from the generic document icon to a blue "information" circle.  I also use these to indicate things like dates when an account was closed, mortgage was refinanced, etc.

When retrieving and working with my archived documents, I make extensive use of Snow Leopard's "Quick View" feature, using the spacebar to blow up a highlighted document.  I know a lot of Mac users who aren't aware of this feature or don't see the value, but I love being able to resize and page through any PDF without having to launch Acrobat or Reader. You can use the arrow keys to see every document as you navigate through the folder structure. Also, the Quick View window always stays on top, making it very convenient for keeping statements in view for reconciling in Quicken.

Hope other forum members find something interesting or useful in this description.  As I mentioned previously, I am open to suggestions, critiques, or questions.

-Harry