hakembe
asked on
How to efficiently organise own documents
Dear experts,
Before starting to build a solution from scratch, I wanted to ask experts feedback.
My problem is that I am overwhelmed by incoming snail mail. These are invoices, reminders, second reminders, belif letters, ...etc. It happens to me to pay several times the same reminder beacuse I get demoralised looking back to search in tons of letters whether this has been paid or not. I guess I am not the only one with this problematic.
So, my dream idea is to organise functionality documents like this
a. Scan document;
b. Index document;
c. Insert ideally this document into some database which allows to;
d. Run SQL-like or simple language query about this document for instance. If I find string "VAT Number, ..etc", then it is an invoice from provider X ;
e. Enrich each document by running queries around its content and define who is his sendor, what type of document it is, what is total amunt due, is it first correspondance yes or no about this particular service;
f. Anyway, make these dump incoming mails into some searchabe documents that can be structured in a structured database, so I can build an efficient workflow around them;
g. Once these files are searchable, I can even come back 2 years, 3 years later and identify them, organise them through simple commands like SQL commands;
Does any solution exist for these or anything near ( I read document driven databases, ..etc), but not sure. How would you proceed to levarage on existing solutions ?
Before starting to build a solution from scratch, I wanted to ask experts feedback.
My problem is that I am overwhelmed by incoming snail mail. These are invoices, reminders, second reminders, belif letters, ...etc. It happens to me to pay several times the same reminder beacuse I get demoralised looking back to search in tons of letters whether this has been paid or not. I guess I am not the only one with this problematic.
So, my dream idea is to organise functionality documents like this
a. Scan document;
b. Index document;
c. Insert ideally this document into some database which allows to;
d. Run SQL-like or simple language query about this document for instance. If I find string "VAT Number, ..etc", then it is an invoice from provider X ;
e. Enrich each document by running queries around its content and define who is his sendor, what type of document it is, what is total amunt due, is it first correspondance yes or no about this particular service;
f. Anyway, make these dump incoming mails into some searchabe documents that can be structured in a structured database, so I can build an efficient workflow around them;
g. Once these files are searchable, I can even come back 2 years, 3 years later and identify them, organise them through simple commands like SQL commands;
Does any solution exist for these or anything near ( I read document driven databases, ..etc), but not sure. How would you proceed to levarage on existing solutions ?
Paul Sauvé
You can scan documents to OneNote as PDF. They can easily be located using the Search function in OneNote.
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ASKER
Dear all,
My apologies for replying so long. I am not so familiar with the expert exchange system wherby I did not realise all these answers in time.
Dear Paul , thank you so much. You are very right. A book keeper manual solution, I have tried but turned to be unlucky as I did not manage because I am not so organised. A book keeper can only be as good as the input I can give him. I failed to produce reliable document input so far.
After being 15 years self-imployed , I know my strengths and weaknesses. Finding workflow, but operationally unable to make a regular structure work. It is reason, I am trying to focus around a process.
Dear Joe, Thank you for sharing technical info.
I have continued searching for a structured way to organise it all and make job easy for abook keeper or even myself to find it. I am keen on some cloud based solution ( avoid GUI) so that data is accessible anywhere. GUI based solutions impose to be in front of a PC that has license for this.
I take note of valuable tools you mentioned such as dtsearch for next step. In the meantime, I am happy to share my current setup in the meantime.
1-) Scanning: I use a duplex scanner , which works ok;
2-) Software Indexiing:
I have evaluated a few solutions that are able to cerate a searchabled PDF with indexes to facilitate next steps. It took sometime , JHere is my conclusion:
a. SimpleIndex : A fantastic solution that can even take control of scanner and has lot of videos tutorials. Amazing technical support . This allows you to scan for instance a batch of 50 files, simply write a dot in a specific part of a document. It would recognise it as being a (OMR = Optical Mark Recognition ) and from there separate the files into new PDF .
The total price for this solution is around 1000 USD including a OCR software . Workflows can be written based on specific keywords, regular expressions. There is Simple Software university , which has lot of videos. The only reason I did not go for it is that it does not do image recognition, which s an advanced feature that helps a lot. It also has intuitive feature to laod all document in format of text to a DATABASE using ODBC ( towards Ms Access , ...etc) ;
b. I have also analysed Abby FineReader Corporate: This is also veyr good for OCR, but in document classification ( separating automatically PDF files from a batch say 50 documents, is limited to rules like split per number of pages, ..etc). I was looking into a way to separate pages based on keywords, or specific DOT I would put on document to ease scanning. For the rest, it is also fantastic software for only 200 USD + -or even less;
c. Irispowerscan : This solution from Irislink is the one I chose. It does all what very god SImpleIndex does. Moreover it has features like FingerPrint, which can compare images to identify a document if you already have a image sample of it. This is very useful for automating considering we most of the time receive same documents every month like utility bills, bank statements from same bank every month. It is like an advanced feature that I did not find in other software. Price is around 700 USD.
I endedup cohsoing IrisPowerscan, which does already:
a. Scan from scanner intuitively;
b. allows automation of tasks by deciding how to split files from a batch scan using character recognition, image recognition , ...etc;
c. It allows to load all the output searchable pedfs into DtropBox, FTP, ODBC, ...
So far , points solved are 1, 2 , 3 . However, there is still some work to be carried out. I will update this post soon as an experience share!
Dear Joe Wino
My apologies for replying so long. I am not so familiar with the expert exchange system wherby I did not realise all these answers in time.
Dear Paul , thank you so much. You are very right. A book keeper manual solution, I have tried but turned to be unlucky as I did not manage because I am not so organised. A book keeper can only be as good as the input I can give him. I failed to produce reliable document input so far.
After being 15 years self-imployed , I know my strengths and weaknesses. Finding workflow, but operationally unable to make a regular structure work. It is reason, I am trying to focus around a process.
Dear Joe, Thank you for sharing technical info.
I have continued searching for a structured way to organise it all and make job easy for abook keeper or even myself to find it. I am keen on some cloud based solution ( avoid GUI) so that data is accessible anywhere. GUI based solutions impose to be in front of a PC that has license for this.
I take note of valuable tools you mentioned such as dtsearch for next step. In the meantime, I am happy to share my current setup in the meantime.
1-) Scanning: I use a duplex scanner , which works ok;
2-) Software Indexiing:
I have evaluated a few solutions that are able to cerate a searchabled PDF with indexes to facilitate next steps. It took sometime , JHere is my conclusion:
a. SimpleIndex : A fantastic solution that can even take control of scanner and has lot of videos tutorials. Amazing technical support . This allows you to scan for instance a batch of 50 files, simply write a dot in a specific part of a document. It would recognise it as being a (OMR = Optical Mark Recognition ) and from there separate the files into new PDF .
The total price for this solution is around 1000 USD including a OCR software . Workflows can be written based on specific keywords, regular expressions. There is Simple Software university , which has lot of videos. The only reason I did not go for it is that it does not do image recognition, which s an advanced feature that helps a lot. It also has intuitive feature to laod all document in format of text to a DATABASE using ODBC ( towards Ms Access , ...etc) ;
b. I have also analysed Abby FineReader Corporate: This is also veyr good for OCR, but in document classification ( separating automatically PDF files from a batch say 50 documents, is limited to rules like split per number of pages, ..etc). I was looking into a way to separate pages based on keywords, or specific DOT I would put on document to ease scanning. For the rest, it is also fantastic software for only 200 USD + -or even less;
c. Irispowerscan : This solution from Irislink is the one I chose. It does all what very god SImpleIndex does. Moreover it has features like FingerPrint, which can compare images to identify a document if you already have a image sample of it. This is very useful for automating considering we most of the time receive same documents every month like utility bills, bank statements from same bank every month. It is like an advanced feature that I did not find in other software. Price is around 700 USD.
I endedup cohsoing IrisPowerscan, which does already:
a. Scan from scanner intuitively;
b. allows automation of tasks by deciding how to split files from a batch scan using character recognition, image recognition , ...etc;
c. It allows to load all the output searchable pedfs into DtropBox, FTP, ODBC, ...
So far , points solved are 1, 2 , 3 . However, there is still some work to be carried out. I will update this post soon as an experience share!
Dear Joe Wino
Hi hakembe,
Thank you for the excellent post — that is very helpful information! I look forward to your future posts and appreciate your willingness to share your experiences. Regards, Joe
Thank you for the excellent post — that is very helpful information! I look forward to your future posts and appreciate your willingness to share your experiences. Regards, Joe
I am also waiting for the next installment on your document handling. Most interesting, thank you.