cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/40125235

Picked up an ix500 scansnap and wondering about suggested workflows for going paperless. My intention is to scan a bunch of documents, but haven’t delved deeply into how this will actually flow on the software level. I know I’ll need to OCR the scanned documents, and my base setup is:

  • Pi with SSD storage running compose version of Paperless-ngx to filesystem mounted folders.
    • Folders can also be accessed over Samba
  • ix500 statically assigned over wifi as network scanner.
  • A literal filing cabinet, for things I should keep physically.
  • Ubuntu computer for browsing

I feel a bit overwhelmed, but am excited to get started. Will be scanning personal document, work docs, whatever else I need to digitize and recycle. All suggestions appreciated!

  • a_fancy_kiwi@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    4 hours ago

    I’m not sure exactly what you are looking for but here is my workflow:

    1. 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.

    2. 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.