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May I also suggest trying this for the individual files? For instance, for a receipt/invoice of a value of date be `2025-06-04 $42 Description of the File.EXT`.
by Brajeshwar 1y ago
May I also suggest trying this for the individual files? For instance, for a receipt/invoice of a value of date be `2025-06-04 $42 Description of the File.EXT`.
That way, for a tax year `2024` containing expense receipts, the accountant or us can just look at the file name to confirm. If you still need to look, then opening the file works.
- kstrauser 1y agoAbsolutely! I have a document scanner that names inbound files with the (ISO, of course) date and title of the doc (as gleaned from OCR), but once a week I process its inbox to fix up name problems and move files to their forever home. I use Hazel on my Mac to auto-rename bank statements etc like “$closing_date Visa statement.pdf” and move them to the right place automatically as soon as I save them to the ~/Downloads folder. All my new files look exactly like you’re describing. I give my accountant a set of files like “2023-06-08 Goodwill donation receipt.pdf” It’s slightly more effort to do this work up front, but pays off in spades when I need to actually retrieve something. Even without any fancy search software, just looking for files named like “2023receipt*” locates them.
- Brajeshwar 1y agoJust before the Pandemic, I consulted for a company. I had to keep the receipts while on work travel. I gave them the zipped folder and when it expanded, they loved the organization and the naming convention enough to adopt it for their small team. :-)
- kstrauser 1y agoI’m sure! Even if I abandoned Johnny Decimal and went all in on search vs sorting, I’m keeping the file naming convention. It’s clearly superior in practice.