notes-on-sorting-paperwork.md (5929B)
1 --- 2 title: "Notes on sorting Paperwork" 3 date: 2020-06-23T15:29:00 4 lastmod: 2020-07-01T11:12:00 5 tags: ["Formats", "Guides", "Minimalism", "Notes", "Snippets", "Software", "Windows"] 6 --- 7 8 # Intention 9 10 The purpose of this whole project ties in with digitally having copies of things. This makes searching and sorting much, much easier. 11 12 The only physical paperwork I keep are certain important documents (like birth certificates, physical driving licence, etc). 13 14 # Hardware 15 16 I'm using a [Fujitsu ScanSnap iX500](https://www.fujitsu.com/global/products/computing/peripheral/scanners/scansnap/ix500/) as my scanner of choice, it was recommended by the Paperless project and it folds away neatly when not in use. 17 18 I initially intended on this hardware being used wirelessly, which I'm sure it is capable of; but for the once a month or so I go through my paperwork I doubt it's worth the hassle setting it up. 19 20 # Software (or the lack of) 21 22 *Preface:* I'm doing all of this on Windows. I've attempted to get this working nicely on Linux, but my results scanning with `sane` were terrible, even when tweaking input it was slower, with worse quality, wouldn't feed multiple sheets and had to be manually initiated from the command line for every scan. 23 24 So, on with the software. The only real software that's required is the [ScanSnap Manager from Fujitsu](http://scansnap.fujitsu.com/global/dl/). It's a little bulky but for it's girth it will (attempt to) auto-rotate and OCR the document with pretty high rate of success. Only around 5-10% of documents require any manual intervention in my experience. 25 26 One point worth noting is the ScanSnap software will add two autorun entries to your system startup. They can be removed with the following commands: 27 ``` 28 reg delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" /v "ScanSnap WIA Service Checker" /f 29 reg delete "HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run" /v "ScanSnap OnlineUpdate Watcher" /f 30 del "%programdata%\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\StartUp\ScanSnap Manager.lnk" 31 ``` 32 33 In the past, I used [Paperless](https://github.com/the-paperless-project/paperless) to automatically OCR and pseudo-sort my documents, but this had a high failure rate (~75% of documents couldn't be parsed), was quite _heavy-weight_ software and was complete overkill for what I needed. 34 35 Nowadays, I just scan the files to a single PDF document and organise away in a folder structure. Files are generally sorted well enough that I don't need to ever manually search for file contents as I always have an idea of what I need. Worst case scenario I believe you can grep strings from OCR'd pdf files anyway. 36 37 # Naming 38 39 When it comes to naming my files, I follow a few rules to help keep things organised: 40 41 - Include a brief summary in the filename (e.g. insurance-renewal-invitation) 42 - Always use lower case characters 43 - Replace spaces with hyphens 44 - Use ISO dates where possible, or if you receive a biannual statement, name it 2019a and 2019b 45 - For cars, reference the registration number 46 47 # Duplicates 48 49 If you've read my [notes on sorting pictures]() post you'll know that I try to remove duplicates, however with paperwork I don't bother de-duplicate the files for a few reasons: 50 51 - Time/bandwidth taken to download files during duplicate search 52 - Scans vs identical scans vs digital copies will never be identical 53 - OCR isn't perfect and will produce different results base on the above 54 - My files are generally sorted well enough that I'd be getting duplicate filenames. 55 56 # File manipulation 57 58 Once scanned, I rename all my files to their titles are applicable (see above), then I manually check each one for blank, rotated and out of order pages. I upload these to my server and then manually sort any files that require attention using `qpdf`. Below are some basic commands to work with documents: 59 60 ## Deleting 61 ``` 62 qpdf input.pdf --pages input.pdf 1-9,26 -- outputfile.pdf 63 ``` 64 65 ## Splitting 66 ``` 67 qpdf input.pdf --pages input.pdf 1-2,4 -- outputfile1.pdf 68 qpdf input.pdf --pages input.pdf 3,5-6 -- outputfile2.pdf 69 ``` 70 71 ## Merging 72 ``` 73 qpdf second_file.pdf --pages first_file.pdf 1 second_file.pdf 1 -- output_file.pdf 74 ``` 75 76 ## Rotating 77 ``` 78 qpdf in out.pdf --rotate=180:1,4 79 ``` 80 81 ## Decrypting 82 ``` 83 qpdf --password=yourpassword --decrypt input.pdf outputfile.pdf 84 ``` 85 86 ## OCR 87 For files that I didn't scan myself, sometimes they will require manual OCR'ing. For this I use [OCRmyPDF](https://github.com/jbarlow83/OCRmyPDF): 88 ``` 89 ocrmypdf -l eng input.pdf output_ocr.pdf 90 ``` 91 92 ## Lower case filenames 93 ``` 94 mmv '*' '#l1' 95 ``` 96 97 # Folder Structure 98 99 Lastly, and the key to keeping things easy to work with, my folder structure looks something like this: 100 101 ``` 102 . 103 |-- computing 104 | `-- provider 105 |-- finances 106 | `-- bank-name 107 | |-- correspondance 108 | `-- statements 109 |-- household 110 | |-- appliances 111 | | `-- appliance 112 | |-- council 113 | |-- insurance 114 | | `-- year provider 115 | |-- purchase 116 | |-- recycling 117 | |-- renovation 118 | |-- utilities 119 | | `-- sorted by provider 120 | `-- voting 121 |-- personal 122 | |-- business-cards 123 | |-- certifications 124 | |-- driving-licence 125 | |-- gym 126 | |-- travel 127 | | `-- year location 128 | `-- workplace 129 | |-- contracts 130 | |-- interviews 131 | |-- p60 132 | |-- pension 133 | |-- tax 134 | `-- wages 135 `-- transport 136 |-- insurance 137 | `-- startyear-endyear registration provider 138 |-- mot 139 | `-- year registration 140 |-- purchases 141 |-- repairs 142 | `-- registration 143 |-- roadside-assistance 144 | `-- year provider 145 `-- road-tax 146 `-- year registration 147 ``` 148 149 This is all kept backed up on cloud storage, as you'd expect. So finally, at the end of all this, we have sorted, digital-only paperwork, backed up online. 150 151 * **Edit 2020-07-01:** Updated vehicle insurance and tax structure 152 * **Edit 2022-02-17:** Added merging pdf instructions