Ask Slashdot: Open Source For Bill and Document Management? 187
Rinisari writes "Since striking out on my own nearly a decade ago, I've been collecting bills and important documents in a briefcase and small filing box. Since buying a house more than a year ago, the amount of paper that I receive and need to keep has increased to deluge amounts and is overflowing what space I want to dedicate. I would like to scan everything, and only retain the papers for things that don't require the original copies. I'd archive the scans in my heavily backed up NAS. What free and/or open source software is out there that can handle this task of document management? Being able to scan to PDF and associate a date and series of labels to a document would be great, as well as some other metadata such as bill amount. My target OS is OS X, but Linux and Windows would be OK."
Re:I just thought of something (Score:4, Insightful)
Providing quick and easy access to the government (and who knows who else) to all of your important documents.
Re:I just thought of something (Score:3, Insightful)
Google is pretty fickle with its applications. We'll never know how long gmail will remain online, until they decide to shut it down.
Oh, like the other replies said, 'privacy'... You will have none if it is online in any form.
Re:My Workflow (Score:0, Insightful)
Man, fuck off and die. His solution works fine and you're gonna pick on it because he's not using your favorite kiddie OS? Newsflash: Windows software raid works, just like Linux software raid.
Re:You don't need a CMS (Score:5, Insightful)
If we use the format YYYY-MM-DD for dates (for instance 2013-04-07), they sort both alphabetically and numerically, they are easy for human eyes/minds to parse at a glance (my apologies to the vision impaired) and there won't be a reason to change to format for approximately 7,895 years (but who is counting, really).
Please see ISO 8601: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 [wikipedia.org]
Obligiatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/1179/ [xkcd.com]
Re:You don't need a CMS (Score:4, Insightful)
And this is exactly why I HATE all of the "e-bill" solutions that every company has dreamed up at the moment.
They turn the problem from "the company remembers to SEND you a bill/invoice/paper" to "you have to go get the bill/invoice/paper FROM the company".
With paper bills/invoices/etc. sent through the US mail, they "remember" to do something, and I get an automatic reminder when the envelope appears in my mailbox.
With the e-bill solution, the most I get is an email reminding me to go log in and download the bill/invoice/paper. Now, notice what is wrong here. They just sent me a communication (hint, its the reminder email) that could have functioned identically to the USMail envelope of carrying the bill/invoice/paper along with it right to my inbox, so when I receive the email, I ALSO receive the bill/invoice/paper itself (i.e., attach the bill/invlice/paper as a .pdf to the email).
Now, most companies will balk at that because "email is not secure" or "email is not private". Well, why don't you let me F****** upload a gpg public key to your system, and then your system could encrypt my bill/invoice/paper using my gpg public key, then attach it to the "reminder" email, and now we have an electronic system that functions identically to the old paper bill in the old paper envelope sent through the postal office.
They remember it is time to send me my bill, they create the .pdf (electronic equivalent to printing the bill on paper), they encrypt the pdf (electronic equivalnet to sealing the bill in a mailing envelope, and they email me the item (electronic equivalent of giving the sealed envelope to the postal service).
But does any company implement this system? No, not one.
And so they will continue to mail me paper, and can continue to hound me to switch to "e-bills" all they like. But until their e-bills are done properly (as above) they won't get any buy in here.