Ask HN: Tips for a paperless lifestyle?

[mcrittenden]

Looking for things like apps to upload scanned documents to (besides Evernote which lacks good Linux support), general workflow tips, apps for scanning receipts and possibly tracking expenses using them, etc.

Anyone have any tips or web apps you can recommend?

[yan]

If you're serious about this, get a Fuji ScanSnap scanner (I have the S1500). Scans about 15 double-sided pages per minute and converts to OCR'd PDFs.

Any new mail you receive, scan, shred (archive if important) and backup.

[earlyresort → yan]

Seconded.

I have the S1300 - it's slower than the S1500, but about half the weight and you can power it off of your USB ports, so there's no need to lug around the adapter.

Great if you're scanning in multiple locations. I use mine both at home and in the office, and am delighted by the file cabinets I'm no longer steadily filling.

[runjake]

You probably don't use Windows 7, but I scan everything into TIFFs, which gets dumped to my filesystem.

I then have an ifilter (a Windows search plugin for a file format) for TIFF OCR, so I can do text searches on the scanned documents, using the built-in Windows Search functionality of Windows 7. It works much the same as Spotlight on Mac OS X.

Normally, I leave these scanned files in the dump directory, because the current Windows 7 iteration of Windows Search is solid. But occasionally, I use the "Libraries" feature of Windows 7 to organize things when they need to be.

At some point, I need to insert "convert into PDF" into this process but I'm lazy, It Just Works(tm), and haven't run out of disk space yet. PDFs would be searchable, too.

I used to use Evernote, but it's too cumbersome. You could probably do something very similar in Linux.

I'm cheap, so I occasionally bring my stack of papers to be scanned into work, chuck them into the auto-feeder of my work's scanner, and press "Go".

If I wasn't cheap, I'd buy a Fujitsu SnapScan. They seem to be rock solid and I know several people who swear by them. I wouldn't bother with the cheap little units like Doxie, a digital camera might be cheaper, there.

[hallz]

I would recommend using a credit card that lets you download your transactions for tracking expenses. Unless you really need the detail of the individual items from your purchases. I tried scanning all my reciepts and found it was a waste of time, now I just scan reciepts for things that were over ~$100 that I might need to return under warranty.

If you get a scanner make sure it has full-duplex (scans both sides of the paper), A document feeder and is network based (beware cheaper models where you still need a driver to make it work).

I have a Brother 8890DW, which has scan to email and (I believe) scan to ftp.

If you are low volume I would definitely look at the camera based scanning options, then you can just use your phone.

As for management I just have a directory full of pdf's which I can search in windows. Simple but effective.

[russjhammond]

Bills - Make sure every bill you have is sent to you paperless. Some banks and other firms have to send you paper statements until you ask for it to be paperless.

Mail - Checkout Earth Class Mail which receives and scans your mail and even deposits checks for you.

Office drop or Shoeboxed - service that sends you an envelope every month for you to fill up. They scan and send you a PDF.

Regular writing - get an IPad and install Noteshelf, which let's you save everything as a searchable PDF.

[Mz]

From my job: Paperless fax, so documents can be faxed directly to/from your computer.

From my life: Pay bills online, sign up for their paperless option, reduce the number of different bills you are getting overall. (Extremist tip: Living without a car outright eliminates a lot of paperwork in terms of insurance, car payments, tag and title...etc. Those don't replaced with a license to walk, registration to walk, etc. It's been a pleasant "bonus!")

[marksu]

Get the Doxie scanner http://getdoxie.com/ ! It is fast and small, and great for scanning a few documents every now and then. It comes with software that is nicely integrated with the most common cloud services etc.

For me, my "paper load" was not big enough to warrant a bigger purchase of a multiple-page scanner, so if you are still in the paper less minor leagues like me, it is a great choice.

[mhd → marksu]

As far as I know there's no Linux support for the Doxie, so you're out of luck there. The ScanSnaps, while being quite a bit more expensive and bigger do have a decent support.

If we're only talking about the odd invoice, any normal scanner would do, too. If you get one of those printer/scanner combinations, you'll also save some space.

Yes, the app situation for Linux isn't that good. The Evernote web app alone isn't as comfortable as a native application, and I haven't seen anything decent out of the open source sector.

I'd recommend going a bit more low-tech. Create a script that invokes the "scanimage" command with the desired parameters, then moves it to your "cloud" directory (Dropbox, Ubuntu One etc.). There, run OCR software over it, dumping the result in a file. If nothing major has changed, tesseract would be the free OCR software of choice.

For simplicity's sake, I'd recommend that the script automatically chooses the file name, you just add some "tags", e.g. if your script is called "scan_stuff", you'd invoke it as "scan_stuff amazon invoice", and the result would end up as "~/Dropbox/scans/2011-09-13-14-46-amazon-invoice.pdf", alongside a "2011-09-13-14-46-amazon-invoice.txt" file generated from that. This makes it easy enough to search by date or by a rather generic type.

The SANE scanimage command supports batch mode, even if you don't have an automatic feeder (--batch-prompt).

This might not be as automatic as some of the specialized solutions for Windows or Mac, but it does handle special cases a bit better. You can just have a parameter or separate script for that and don't have to mess with Preferences each time something slightly different comes in (e.g. color, higher dpi, different target directory…).

[toot]

I saved a blog post a few months ago about this. http://stevelosh.com/blog/2011/05/paper-free/

I haven't made the jump myself yet, but the $218 result was:

    Doxie Scanner: $160
    JotNot: $7
    PDF OCR X: $30
    Hazel: $21
    Backblaze: $5 per month

[gte910h]

Fujitsu scansnap