Maybe this is the wrong subreddit for this question but I have seen a lot of people talking about document management systems in here so it feels like the best place to get this answered.
But I’m trying to figure out if it is even worth setting up. Right now I mostly just scan in the limited paper records I still get and trust that things like my bank and payroll companies will have these records available for me in the future when I need them. That feels like something I should change.
But my question for the room is what are you actually storing in there and what is your workflow like when you use one of these self hosted apps? Are you downloading and importing everything manually or do you have automation that will scrape it or download the files automatically?
Law suit evidence, payslip/tax stuff and car service history are my main 3
I’m just a hoarder.
In gmail/outlook I have set up rules on coming from x sender with x subject get moved to this folder/label. Then from paperless each folder/label gets its own rule with my tagging requirements and marking them read.
For physical documents, there’s a variable to tag with directories. So if you put a pdf in “/2023/finance/bills “ that document will get three separate tags named those directories. I setup a basic folder structure INSIDE the consume folder and it’s working well. I let the OCR do the rest.
Are you from the U.S? If paperless sees 3/4/23 that’s April 3rd. Nobody tells you that part or I must have skipped over the environment variable.
Every digital document I receive. Manual upload.
I track HSA purchases and car maintenance receipts.
Same as others, everything. I have an smtp rule that sends a copy of any PDF I receive to that other mailbox and adds it to paperless. I also bought a little Epson scanner to do mass scanning of all the paper documents I had.
It’s just super useful to tag invoices and whatnot as “taxes 2023” and when it’s time to send it to my fiduciary, I just have to search for that tag, download it all, zip it and send it over.
Just takes a little bit of discipline and a bit of time here and there to scan documents I received by regular mail and add them to paperless.
Probably one of the most underrated selfhosted app if you ask me in terms of making life easier.