It’s perfect! Do you guys already do this?
I open a letter, I take it’s picture with FairScan. The FairScan-folder on my android device gets syncthinged to the ingest folder for Paperless-ngx on my “server”. Paperless imports it, deletes the file and sets the new documents tag to inbox. I decide if the document goes to the binder for important stuff, or if I just toss it in a binder with all the paper I most likely will never touch again. Next time I look at Paperless, I edit all documents with the inbox tag and remove the tag.
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Sounds like a great workflow!
Unfortunately, I just can’t get syncthing to run in the background of my phone without chewing up the battery.
You can get it to run at time intervals. E.g. once an hour for 5 minutes. That’s not bad on battery for me. I actually have mine once every 24 hours for 30 minutes so it can successfully transfer a few gigs of Signal backups.
I will look into this, thank you!
Thank you for introducing me to FairScan! Great app. I have a scanner but being able to snap stuff on the go is so much quicker.
I luckily have a professional document scanner for this, which has wifi and is able to store the PDF on a cloud drive. Started using ASN numbers recently, so I put a sticker on the letter before scanning. The letter gets archived and is found quickly if needed because of the ASN.
Yesterday I wanted to introduce syncthing as my main backup solution. However, I am struggling with setting up the discovery server and want to fix that before installing it on all my devices.
That’s a very cool idea, seems great for receipts and quick stuff.
Heads up if your Paperless is installed via Docker: be VERY CAREFUL about your database version and do an export often!
Mine has been down for a while because I did a pull and it doesn’t support my version of Postgresql anymore. So it’s kinda a huge mess trying to figure out how to safely migrate it in the container.
I haven’t been able to fix it yet so I’ve just left it disabled and gone without for a while. It’s not fun.
Allegedly if you export from within Paperless, you can just start with a fresh updated database container and import when this happens. Oof.
your version of postgres meaning that you use a db external to the docker container?
No sadly the upgrade path is a bit ducked. Their compose, their versions, still not working without intervention.
Thank you, yes, exactly what I meant. It’s a bit baffling such a mature project doesn’t have some kind of migration script. :(
Well, crap
I don’t think Postgres shouldn’t be just left as
:latestor anything. At least the way I handle it, DB upgrades require manual intervention.I just got burned by accidental latest tag on a pg container for Nextcloud. They moved some paths internally and it could no longer find the db.
This is a reminder for self-hosters to put their apps (and their data) on snapshotting filesystems with automatic, regular snapahots turned on; and fix the app versions to at least the major version, across all containers. This should bring similar disruption to bare minimum and makes recovery always possible, without relying on specific app backup features.
Oh man I just set this up. I just changed to a high deductible health plan with an HSA and need to save all of my medical receipts. I already had paperless set up but i was dreading setting up some automated way of getting files over to paperless. Thank you so much!
I have configured an email address in paperless_ngx and send everything there. The appendix is then tagged as unsorted.
This is the transhumanism I like.
Jokes aside, how did you deal with your papers from the past? I do this with all new incoming mail, but I can’t for the life of me find the time to scan the pile of taxes, bills, medical reports, etc. that has accumulated over 3 thousand years of family life.
You could buy an automatic scanner that takes a stack of docs and dumps the files to a network share.
Do you have any particular model in mind? What do you mean by “automatic scanner”? Any scanner I know needs quite a lot of manual preparation to scan a batch of documents.
Epson WorkForce DS‑730N
put 100 sheets on the tray, it scans them all and either puts them all into a single pdf or multiple pdfs. Then you split / merge them in software.
Not very automatic, is it? There are definitely better ways to scan high volumes of documents.
please elaborate
You can use e.g. barcodes, patch codes or separator sheets (which usually carry the patch code). Sometimes you can also separate documents by recognising some feature on the first page, e.g. a logo or a barcode that’s already there. And of course it’s a good idea to put single page documents in a separate batch so you just separate them by page count. This of course also works if all documents are two or three pages long.
afaik you just listed features that the printer I mentioned (or if I am wrong, other similar printers) supports
it’s my bad for not mentioning all possible workflows, I was just a bit lazy and thinking of my personal documents only, which do not work well with further smart automation, because my batches are highly irregular. So the more manual approach is the best for me currently. Maybe possible with some future AI integration.
I took my Very Important Documents!!-folder to a neighbour with a decent scanner. It’s not that much, we scanned for an hour or two. Older, less important stuff stays in binders I most likely will never touch. If I do have to look at something from there, I snap a quick FairScan before I put it back. So it’s not about perfection, I just try to make my live easier from now on. :)
There are companion apps for paperless (like Paperparrot for iOS) that simplify that process even more.
No need for syncthing.
Or “Swift Paperless” on iOS too, at least that’s what I use
The best thing about this is that it enables you to stop organizing all this paper. I have a little box next to my scanner and everything that is scanned is just getting put on top of the pile. In most cases you never need the original document anyways. But if you need it, you can check Paperless when it was scanned and you will find that document from Feb 2023 in a few seconds.
This is awesome! Thank you for sharing this flow! 😍
Isn’t syncthing for mobile discontinued?
This is the currently maintained android version: https://github.com/researchxxl/syncthing-android
wasn’t there some recent controversy over the change of ownership for the repo?
That was all resolved.
I held off switching until very recently, but reading the githubs, etc. it’s all settled down now.
From memory it was just a bit of a nieve handover (ie “hidden” in the background, not out in public)
I use a different app (though I’ll be checking out FairScan), but that’s pretty much exactly my workflow for things that aren’t convenient to do basically the same thing on my desktop PC & scanner.
I’m using CamScanner, but I have to share every doc to paperless. Should have a look at an automatic ingest as well…
Honestly, phone scanning is a total trap for anything you actually care about. I tried this exact setup for months and the OCR quality was absolute trash because of bad lighting or a slight tilt. If a document is important enough to keep, it is worth getting a dedicated scanner with an auto-feeder. Taking photos of letters feels like a massive chore that you will eventually just stop doing after the novelty wears off.
And let’s be real about that inbox tag. That is just a digital pile of shame. I have hundreds of documents in my own Paperless instance tagged for review that I havent touched in two years. You think you are staying organized, but you are really just moving the clutter from your desk to a database. Syncthing is the only part of this workflow that I actually trust to work every single time without failing.
