Using Acrobat for Doc Management

[Shane Aust]

I am a relative newbie to Adobe, although I have used it for awhile and know the "basics" of pdf document creation. I have a small business with many, many documents (mainly paid invoices) that I want to:
1) scan into pdf format
2) have a search facility available to retrieve a document quickly
3) then throw out the original docs

Can anyone advise the best way to accomplish this? Is it necessary to save all docs in OCR format, if all I want to do is have the ability to search by vendor name, invoice number, invoice date or amount?

Thanks greatly.

[Andrew E D Clark]

1. Depending upon your set-up, you should be able to scan directly to PDF. You will then be able to run Paper Capture on them to make them searchable.

2. Run Catalog on the PDFs to create an index. To make this really useful, you should ensure that the document information fields are complete (File>Document Properties>Summary) before you run Catalog. You could use the Keywords field for the vendor field, or you could use ViewInfo from Merlin Open Systems to add your own fields, such as 'Vendor'. Under 'Open Options' tick 'Display Document Title'. You could use whatever you like for the title - it could be the vendor name, product name or whatever. This is the text that will appear in the Search Results box. Make sure you 'Save As' the documents after adding this information.

3. NO! Put them in a box and stick them in the loft. Throw them out when you retire.

[Aandi Inston]

One thing to think about if you plan to use your computer more in your
business is your backup procedure. Do you have backups? Every day?
How many cycles? Do you take them out of the office and store them at
another address? How often?

This may seem irrelevant but it isn't; you are planning to make your
business dependent on your computer, but you can't depend on your
computer never failing or never being stolen.

Aandi Inston

[Andrew E D Clark]

In that case you need to pay particular attention to Aandi's comments about backup.

[Shane Aust]

Thanks Andrew - will give it a go.

I will be throwing out the originals, though - I live in Australia and although we must keep copies of invoices, etc, the govt has ruled that electronic copies are acceptable. So, out they will go.

[Steve Rindsberg]

How are the invoices generated in the first place?

If manually, then I'd test very carefully to ensure that OCR will work
reliably.

If by computer, then you'd be better off reprinting the invoices directly to
PDF. If at all possible, it'd be far less work than scanning/OCRing all of
those invoices.

If the accounting app can generate text files or spreadsheets, you might be
better off with that than PDF, depending on what the government will accept.

[Shane Aust]

thanks, Steve - the invoices I refer to are those from suppliers, not invoices that we send to clients. We are drowning in paperwork and I'm looking for a solution that will work for our simple needs (ie we dont need a sophisticated search/retrieval system).
yeah, I've tried OCR and it can be a real pain depending on the quality of the document..

[Shane Aust]

Hi andrew (again):
thanks greatly for the advice - using the document comments field seems to be the way to go, as it works when I do a search. Really pleased about that - thanks!

Shane

[Shane Aust]

Andrew: this seems to be working okay, but I'm finding that when I add new documents to a folder, and then run a search on something, it's not finding the new ones....am I doing something wrong?

thx!

[BMcLachlan]

Good discussion. This is an area that I think Adobe has missed - i.e. document management for the small business.

Adobe should build into its Acrobat product simple doc management routines, like prompting for keywords, titles, archive date, category, etc. Adobe Capture is so over-priced at $399 that all Adobe is doing with that product is creating a market for an entrepreneur to develop and sell an affordability priced doc management system using pdf files.

Building into the Std. Adobe Acrobat product simple doc mgmt routines would justify the price of the full version (US$250).

[Aandi Inston]

I like the ideas, but I'm not sure of the details. Capture is now a
fraction of its former price, too! As a portion of the cost of a
large paper-to-PDF project it is basically trivial, because so many
person hours are needed to do the job.

1. Capture is a scanning/OCR product. Does it also somehow streamline
eywords, titles, archive date, category, etc.? Or are you hoping it
does something it doesn't?

2. Acrobat already allows you to set keywords, titles, etc. for
documents, and to build searchable collections. Is this something you
missed, or are you looking for more than it does?

Aandi Inston

[BMcLachlan]

Aandi - Thanks for the questions. Yes, I was aware that the full version of Acrobat allows searchable fields in its Document Properties. I was hoping Adobe or someone who could write a plugin for Acrobat would create a doc management routine that would prompt the user of typical doc management info, including archive date, category, etc. and publish this info to a doc mgmt dB.

There are no products on the market that do this (except for PaperPort, which lacks a lot). As more and more home and small business owners start to use their computer for managing their enterprise, there needs to be a affordable doc mgmt system to with this task.

I have not used Paper Capture product but I do use the Paper Capture Plugin when necessary.

Bill

[YrbkMgr]

I couldn't agree more. There are no decently priced, small business document management apps. I think the only reason why more and more small business aren't paperless is for lack of a decent document management app, and small business need to be as paperless as possible. I think Adobe could develop a nice niche, as it were.

[Andrew E D Clark]

Shane, I don't know whether you've sorted out the issue of additional material, but you need to re-index your document collection each time you add new PDFs. Generally I find it much quicker to delete the pdx file and the index folder and index again. If you find it takes rather long then do it overnight, or during a lunch or tea break.

Talking of which...

[Michael Blair]

I have the same issue and what we did is to save each document to a directory with a name which contains sufficient information to seach and retrieve based on the document name such as EOBS_Medicare_20030521.pdf.

We then placed these on our IntraNet and wrote a PHP or ASP program to scan the directory and create a page with hyperlinks to each document in chronological order.

Hope this helps!

[Murali Kulathumani]

Funny how many people have the same need...
I designed a doc management system using Adobe and it is web based.we are using it now and quite pleased with it but it is somewhat more heavy duty( thousands of docs/advanced work flow features) than for home/small business use.
Maybe I should scale it down to suit the niche markets mentioned here and market it myself....~* thinking * ~

[Erin Spalding]

We developed a document imaging & management system based on Adobe Acrobat and PDF that we have been selling for the last 7 years with over 300 installs ranging from a 1-man law or CPA firm up to fortune 500 companies with 15,000 users. We now offer in addition to the Document Imaging System an EOB system, CPA-Imaging System and an Electronic Medical Records system all based on Adobe Acrobat and PDF image only. All systems are web-enabled too. It is affordable without the PDF click through charges you have with Capture.

Just to let you know it's out there...
Erin Spalding
r...@esiimaging.com
336-824-7011

[Bob McD. Green]

more info? one man law firm

law...@naxs.net