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[Eric Senf]

I just thought I'd start a thread for some discussion about a paper to digital workflow that I am starting today. I'd be extremely interested in thoughts, feedback, questions, and comments.

To start, I love paper. I generally use a Levenger Metalist (with black needle point) coupled with a Levenger Shirt-Pocket Briefcase. Most of my note taking is on 3x5 cards, one card per engagement, one bullet per action/information item (using Patrick's -/+ system). Paper is simply too reliable, convenient, and non-invasive for me to abandon it.

The problem is amassed paper. I travel extensively and want my notes for reference though do not want the physical bulk of hauling paper. Both the tools used and the ultimate paper store created need to be able to fit nicely into my Tumi bag I drag.

My solution will be roughly based on Neat Receipts scanner, my trusty MacBook Pro, and Evernote. I plan to scan all 3x5 cards as PDFs something, upload into Evernote and appropriately tag.

I'm curious if anyone else has gone down this path before and can provide any guidance or tips. If not, I will use this thread to share my experiences.

-e

[Nathan Hale]

Sounds like a good plan...I'm eagerly waiting to see how everything works for you and how you might end up adjusting your workflow process.

I currently use a hybrid system as well, however I "sync" up manually every couple of days, as opposed to scanning my notes in. The problem for me is that scanning ended up just being too tedious and time consuming for me to stick with it regularly.

I've not heard of the Neat Receipt scanner, though. I'm assuming it has some features that allow to to scan stuff quickly in bulk, which seems like it would be really nice.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, and keep us posted!

[Shane McCarron]

I am curious why you would scan them as PDFs instead of as... I don't know... PNG or something.  PDF seems really good for text docs, and less good for images.

[Eric Senf]

Appropriately noted. I modified my original post. I will scan as whatever seems to make most sense and hopefully leverages Evernote's OCR.

[Eric Senf]

The NeatReceipts is wonderful, portable, and backed by really well designed software. Unboxing photos on my flickr stream at: http://tr.im/2skr

More info to come as I play with this a bit more.

[Patrick Rhone]

Gosh that looks like a great solution. Please keep the productivity porn coming.

[Shane McCarron]

Does it have the ability to magically upload to Evernote when you scan?  Or, barring that, is there some nifty tool that could monitor a folder and sync changes in it with Evernote?  That would be a real boon.

[Shane McCarron]

To answer my own question... Evernote seems to have the ability to synchronize a local folder with the web repository.  Unfortunately, in my architecture all of my scanned data is stored on a network folder - and at least on the Windows version of the client you cannot synchronize a "Remote folder".  Considering alternatives, such as having my network scan folder sync into a folder on my laptop, and then have THAT folder be sync'd with Evernote.  Seems a little convoluted, but it might be reasonable.

[Brad Blackman]

Gosh that looks like a great solution. Please keep the productivity porn coming.

Looks really nice! We (my wife and I) have been throwing around the idea of purchasing some sort of scanner to de-bulk our filing cabinets by digitizing everything, only keeping essential files (house title, that sort of thing). How does NeatReceipts compare with the Fujitsu ScanSnap?

[Kelley Hopper]

Brad,

You asked about the Fujitsu ScanSnap and I have one (model s510)and it rocks.  You can scan both sides of document with one pass, it's fast - 18 ppm.  Can be set to scan into PDF of JPG and does a really good job. 

I work as an accountant for a construction company and have been scanning 50 to 80 documents a day on this scanner for two years and have never had a problem.  The only thing it doesn't scan well are documents where the type is very light, usually gas receipts.  I sometimes have to take them to our photocopier and and copy them dark to scan but other than that I think this scanner is superb.

I implemented a program in my dept. a few years back so we could cut down on the time it took to find documents.  Everything to do with accounting is in there which makes our yearly audits a breeze.  I burn all of the scans to DVD weekly and take them off site in case something catastrophic should happen to our building.  We wouldn't even miss a beat if the building was gone since all of the software is backed up daily and all of the paper is digitized.

If you are going to begin to get your office more paperless, I recommend that you start with the current year instead of trying to go back.  It is so very time consuming to try to keep up with the current paper and get the older stuff scanned as well unless you don't have a lot. 

[Eric Senf]

How does NeatReceipts compare with the Fujitsu ScanSnap?

I looked at several scanners. I wanted something that was highly portable, easy to use, and something that had great Mac software. Though the mac software with NeatReceipts is not yet on parity with its PC counterpart, the software is good (e.g. well designed installer, good UI, etc.) The will have v2 of the Mac software available soon, which will bring feature parity.

The scanner is extremely small and well designed; almost iPod-esque. I posted some pics here: http://tr.im/2skr

Scan results of PDFs, OCRed receipts, and photos are all beyond expectation.

Plus you can't beat the price of only about $160.

[Shane McCarron]

I suspect a scanner like this is great for smaller tasks, and less good if you have years of material that you want to scan and shred.  In that situation, you likely want some sort of a sheet-fed scanner.  What I am using is an HP AIO tied to a Windows PC.  The software from HP allows you to define what happens when you press the "scan" button on the scanner - so I have it set up to save into a file on a RAID-1 network disk.  It puts the scanned material into a folder by month (automatically) and puts in one file per scanned page.  Combining this with some sort of smart indexing software that could examine the scanned images would be ideal, but for now I am happy just scanning high resolution and letting the world catch up with me.

Evernote could be part of the solution here - I just am not quite smart enough to figure out how.

[Eric Senf]

Does it have the ability to magically upload to Evernote when you scan?  Or, barring that, is there some nifty tool that could monitor a folder and sync changes in it with Evernote?  That would be a real boon.

Here's my 3x5 notecard workflow thus far:

1. Setup the NeatReceipts PDF button to scan to a PDF file.
2. Insert document, press PDF, title the document the title on the notecard, complete the scan.
3. Review scans (I use coverflow view on Mac OS X 10.5)
4. Drag and drop PDFs onto the Evernote icon in the dock (Mac OS X)
5. Appropriately tag new items in Evernote, delete files, shred paper.

I'm sure this could be further automated with some AppleScript-foo, and Evernote has an interesting workflow using Image Capture on their blog at http://blog.evernote.com/2008/11/12/scan-to-evernote-on-mac/

I'm open for thoughts...

[Brad Blackman]

Didn't Emory post about something similar? He joined this forum, but he hasn't posted in ages. [Aside: has anybody talked to him recently?]

I do seem to remember in his huge "this is how I do my thing" post Emory said something about scanning his 3x5s into Evernote, but that was a few years ago, before Leopard and Cover Flow.

[Eric Senf]

My groove continues. My bag has been liberated from all paper scraps and info. Now moving onto a pile of undecided information that was on my desk. The NeatReceipts to Evernote workflow is far more efficient than anything else I've used.