How do you manage your household paperwork?

TheGardener

I read it and if it needs keeping then scan it on a fairly humble home combi printer scanner - then shred the paper version. I do a back up onto an external hard drive once a month (I never did trust the 'cloud' storage idea) Its kept in a draw by the door so in theory I can grab it on the way out if the house is on fire

Once a year I create a new folder for the year. The hard drive I have is massive (capacity I mean - its actually physically not much bigger than a fag packet) and I suspect it will hold all my admin paperwork for a loooong time.

However you store it - dealing with it little and often is the key to success for me - backlogs are the worst.

TheGardener

NotRichAtAll wrote: »

do you all scan wage slips?
i keep thinking of doing this myself, but am curious once you have scanned your important documents. do you shred the paper originals? are scanned documents accepted if needed?

I used to keep all mine (still do) and it paid off when I was able to prove there was an error on my NI record for 1992

I'm_not_going_into

Blimey! Ours is in a right mess! But then we aren't very organised at all! If something looks important it's opened but other than that it just gets put in the post tray thing in the kitchen. I think it took me about 30 minutes to go through at least 2 months of documents the other week. This was only because I needed one letter from each company with reference numbers in them for the evidence to send to StepChange.

I really really need to sort a better system out!!

fromtheshires

Im like several others here.

Pay slips / P60's / P11's are online where I am so its just a case of downloadning them straight to my storage device when they come in.

I operate a one touch policy with paperwork. Open it and it either goes in the bin if rubbish (with address section shredded) or scanned to PDF then instantly shredded once its been confirmed the PDF opens. I have lots of little folders and they are all in financial years. My storage device is large and I keep literally everything on there;- pay slips / bank statements / water / gas / elec bills.

sausage_time

fromtheshires wrote: »

...My storage device is large and I keep literally everything on there;- pay slips / bank statements / water / gas / elec bills.

I hope you have it backed up and the backups stored elsewhere (cloud, other house, office, etc)! In my experience if you have this set up properly then storage devices won't fail. If you don't, they undoubtedly will.

jinkster

The Apple Notes app is very good for keeping track of Direct debit dates etc. The papers I have a box file and the important stuff I scan and keep on dropbox.

soulsaver

TheGardener wrote: »

I used to keep all mine (still do) and it paid off when I was able to prove there was an error on my NI record for 1992

About time all business started delivering wage slips electronically, eh?

[Deleted User]

Most stuff just goes into a big pile and I sort through it and tidy the pile up and bin what I don't need every now and then. Usually when it starts to topple over. :rotfl:

Uxb wrote: »

Check out Fujitsu IX500 fast A4 document scanner - does both sides of the page at the same time and runs at around 30 seconds per sheet.
Chuck 30 sheets in the feed in tray and 1 minute later they are done as pdf's.

I think my local council use these or similar when I last went in with a 50 page council tax benefit form. I was amazed how fast it went through and thought to myself "thats cool".

kazwookie

I have a file, with sections, for all old bills, now days I have everything for bills online,
I deal with post as it arrives, use it or shred it.

I pay bills online monthly, normally via DD

fromtheshires

sausage_time wrote: »

I hope you have it backed up and the backups stored elsewhere (cloud, other house, office, etc)! In my experience if you have this set up properly then storage devices won't fail. If you don't, they undoubtedly will.

Oh yes. I have two other locations (both secure cloud and independent of each other) where my information is stored.