Digitising Paperwork

[Meesterbond]

Bit of a long shot this but thought I'd ask all the same.

After spending the last hour looking for an old logbook and other car paperwork I really need to do something to make finding old documents a little less painful. After various house moves etc there are files and folders all over the place so I'm thinking about some sort of electronic solution.
Ideally I'd like to scan and index as much as possible, probably disposing of 75% of it as I go, keeping hard copies where I must and then scan any paperwork that comes into the house.
I don't mind spending a few quid if it makes the whole process a little less painless. Just scanning everything and sticking it in folders would seem to be the easiest option but I can't help feeling that there must be a better solution out there.

Has anyone done this successfully? Any tips on software or hardware to use? We tend to use macOS / iOS at home if that makes a difference.

[Captain Morgan]

It depends on the volume/nature/sensitivity of the documents in question.

You could use a scanner & files / folders as you suggested, you could also use file tag’s to make document identification easier.

If you want the data available on multiple devices &/or away from home then you’ll need some kind of cloud aspect, depending on the data sensitivity.

One possibility is Evernote as a multi platform option, you can also scan directly from your phone/tablet
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LqlDA7U2MUc

There is also a office lens app that does the same if you’re going to use the folder/files path.

Other things to consider are data encryption, either locally or in the cloud what would be the risk if the data was stolen?

Backups, if you lost the data (fire, flood, theft, ransomware, etc) & you no longer have paper copies what’s the impact?

[Meesterbond]

I've been using (and paying for) Evernote for years to store handwritten notes etc, never really thought about it as a document storage app though... I'll do a bit more digging about the security and how easy it would be to move away from it if the need arose... cheers!

[joe narvey]

Very simplistic but if low volume, the notes feature on an iPhone now has doc scanning and can extract text and supports searching.

[Captain Morgan]

On balance even though Evernote stores data locally & in there cloud I’d suggest it’s likely not the right tool.

As your Mac centric it’s likely you could just use iCloud as your off site option, files on your iOS devices & local sync on your Mac(‘s).

I’m not sure if you can encrypt data at rest with iCloud would be my only question. If that’s a dealbreaker then there is a cloud / sync product I’ve used called spider oak / spider one now I think which is encrypted at rest.