Document scanning strategies

I’ve tended to stick with paper documents whenever possible but you get snowed under.

Got a Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner after we were burgled a decade or more ago as I had all the paper documents/receipts, just couldn’t find things due to the paper clutter.

That scanner died so I got another and have not scanned for years but am just restarting - most of these things are fairly pointless to scan in the first place but a bit of OCD doesn’t help.

Why am I scanning years old car insurance policies and so forth?

What do you keep?

Would be liberating just not to bother.

Where are you getting all this paper from in the first place? Keep it digital from the start, which is nearly always the default option for any document, and you won’t need to destroy trees to get paper copies in the first place, never mind having to scan them to return them to their original digital form.

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A lot less paper than I used to, but with certain things I prefer a physical copy - crazy, maybe.

I’m really frustrated that with so many services you have to download every monthly statement and can’t just opt to get a ZIP file with the last 5 years monthly statements. I mean how hard can that be to sort out in software?

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I think it’s a good idea to have a paper copy and a digital copy of documents or other though file management is the key to both whether saved on an internal drive or an external drive. For safe keeping, it would be best to store them on an external drive.

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I think I’d just scan the parts of the document that shows, company, subject, date, contact details, premiums, payments. The rest I would bin.

Insurance or legal stuff I’d do all, but not some of the generic stuff.

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Oh! And shred and/or burn after.

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I scan the few paper bills/invoices I still get and store them in the cloud but now I mostly just get emailed PDFs and save them locally and on the cloud. I do have a good few paper copies of bills still, even though I ruthlessly shredded old bills etc before I moved a couple of years ago. I tend to keep paper copies for a couple of years and then shred them, the exception is that I have kept all the paper copies of my cancer treatment for some reason, they just take up shelf space but I feel reassured seeing them there and it is easier to find information about medical history from paper files than online when you need them for holiday insurance. A family member got caught out for not declaring a cancer diagnosis 12 years after the all-clear when the holiday insurance wouldn’t pay up for a claim related to an injury that turned out to be due to a secondary cancer in a leg bone that caused a break when they slipped on some wet steps. I now declare all medical history, most of which will be ignored by the insurance company until you come to make a claim.

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There’s a debate to be had over chopping down trees for paper versus electricity used for scanning and storage but like most people I’ve got a mix. Abandoned a physical scanner years ago and use the Office Lens iOS app for most of what I scan. Nowadays find a shredder to be just as useful.

I’ve a 3 drawer filing cabinet full of stuff and there’s a post retirement task to be done in terms of clearing that out. Much essential stuff in there but much nostalgia too so some decisions to be made.

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Many might find it crazy but I get a mixture of paper and electronic statements/documents.

One company stopped online access to statements believe it or not.

What really frustrates me is how poor all the banks etc are with online statements - some only allow you to go back 6 months or a year for downloads, they’re not sent automatically so it can be easy to miss the download of an electronic document when say statements are all produced at different times of the month - when you check an app frequently for payment dates/details if can be all too easy not to regularly download statements which is often a faff anyway, plus some apps don’t have the option and require a separate website visit.

As I mentioned earlier why on earth do they (or at least the majority) require you do download one at a time? If there are online documents going back 10 years surely it would be sensible to allow you to download a date range of documents or the whole lot if needed with a couple of clicks?

The vast majority of stuff I scan I’ll probably never look at again (same for paper copies in boxes/box files), but I clearly have a bit of an obsessive compulsive trait regarding such things.

Some documents, eg car insurance, I still much prefer paper to read the policy compared to an electronic document - I just don’t get on with reading PDFs on screen compared to paper copies. Same for books which is why I never really got on with a physical Kindle device or desktop/smartphone apps.

In some cases I’m probably pushing back a little too at everything going digital - not everyone can do so but we’re increasingly made to feel obsolete if we can’t do it on a phone or computer.

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As for where to store that’s another issue.

I’m getting more lax about storing sensitive information in the cloud but there is a theoretical risk involved which would require encryption by the user to mitigate - I’ve tended to use encrypted disk images or similar on Macs over the years but have locked myself out of some by choosing passwords which are too complex or cryptic.

Naturally a single physical copy is not sufficient as the media may fail, be damaged beyond recovery or stolen. Keeping multiple copies in sync is a chore to do manually. Have tried some apps years ago to sync stuff say from internal to external or network drives but never found them perfect.

It’s probably something that could be automated with a script or by AI.

Something that may be of interest and be of help to you. 5 simple steps to secure your cloud storage - Microsoft 365
“FUN FACT: Did you know that simply by choosing a 12-character password over a 6-character password, it would take 62-trillion times longer for a computer to hack it?”
Information security vs. cybersecurity

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Armed with a Scansnap scanner I went paperless 18 years ago, and have found it to be both incredibly empowering and liberating; having access to a vast amount of info wherever I am, on my desktop, laptop and phone thanks to iCloud storage & syncing. I couldn’t be without it. Although a bit of a chore at the beginning, the benefits soon kick in and now I can truly reap the rewards.

I only keep originals of “certificates”, but these are becoming few and far between.

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I also use a Fujitsu Scansnap - I started scanning paperwork with one years ago after we were burgled - although I had most documents/receipts it too me age to find them. The scanner lasted a few years but then died.

I got a newer model but hadn’t scanned with it for years as I’d misplaced the power supply until recently!

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@Alley_Cat
Canon LiDE 100 still in use here. :scream:

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Scansnap iX500 purchased in 2013, great multi-page document duplex scanner, incredibly fast:

It’s almost as satisfying as watching a shredder chew up the documents afterwards. It simply hoovers pages and pages through so quickly. Latest software seems a bit convoluted though.

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All my work / documents are stored on a Dropbox account, which is Cloud based. Although there is a folder on my Laptop and PC called “Documents”, I don’t use it.

By using Dropbox, I can see the same folders on my PC, Laptop and access my Dropbox account on my iPhone and iPad, if I need remote access to them. Whenever a document is updated on one platform, it available on the other platforms.

They have many plans on offer, some of them have a monthly fee, but they do offer a Free 2Gb plan, which may be worth investigating.

DG…

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We seem to have very little that needs keeping. We have the house deeds, our wills, birth and marriage certificates, and a list detailing where our money is, in a tin box at the bottom of a cupboard. Then we have a couple of box files for current insurance and financial bits. Once anything expires we shred it. Our lives are perhaps simpler than others, effectively being containable in two box files and a tin box!

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You are probably correct that very little needs keeping let alone scanning.

I think it’s an extension of my hoarding habits such as keeping large boxes of packaging ‘in case’ I need to return something for repair - I cannot recall the last time I did that (hi-fi aside I suppose).

I still have every bank and credit card statement I have had, all my tax returns - and the relevant invoices/receipts…

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Same here probably. I really don’t know why, but tax returns are a particular bugbear as I may have needed historical ones recently and assumed I’d be able to find the info on my HMRC self-assessment pages but they only have details for a couple of years. I have had to request historical information (outwith normal record keeping requirements) from HMRC for pension matters, but it really shouldn’t be so hard, should it?