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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).
Hell, I find the easiest workflow for me is literally on one computer:
Then you automatically have a 2 location backup (and 3 with 1 off site if you have a backup server implemented) and it is very simple for family to pick up.
I have the low tech physical copy storing: I have one of those fancy stamps which count up 1 after every stamp (called Numbering machine). I just stamp every letter I want to keep a physical copy of, scan it and everything goes into the same folder. When I search for an original I pull it up digitally and search in the folder 👍
Quickest way I figured.
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:
It also does work without those sticker by just putting every document chronologically in a folder. New ones come on the top and if you need a document, you can get the date from paperless. Since most documents have a date printed on them and most people are not getting thousands of letters every year, you will find the document
That's true, but the stickers weren't much work so I figured I'd try them out.
I still like my offline documents to be organized into different binders. Is there a way to have separate binder-specific ASNs?
Edit: Turns out there's no built-in way to do that. https://github.com/paperless-ngx/paperless-ngx/discussions/1841
I guess ASNs are not for me.
I have achieved this by having several number rows for different binders. E.g.. :
Downside is, paperless treats it as a single ASN number row and reports the highest used.
This is OK as long as you consistently use the QR codes to assign ASNs.
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.