I use a Fujitsu Scansnap ix500 scanner for going paperless. They're expensive, but very very good for going paperless. It's not mustachian, as you could do similar things with a camera or 2 in 1 printer, and so forth, but I don't want to run the risk of having a pile of paper somewhere that I still need to scan, but don't do as it would take too much time.
I just bought that exact model yesterday on Amazon (used). I have 2 1/2 file cabinets of stuff I need to scan and shred before I can FIRE, so I figured buying something nice will help make that task easier, and then I can resell fro around what I paid for it.
What was your organization system? Did you scan to Evernote (or something similar) or just PDF and organize in folders? What scanning software did you use? (The used one I bought said it doesn't come with the normally packaged Adobe Acrobat Pro software, unfortunately.)
I tried Evernote, I tried some other systems I saw online, until I got the hang of it for me personally. All in all it will be something you will likely have to experiment with. I usually am not the greatest at creating a good filing structure for these things, but really spent the time on this as I know if it doesn't work in my natural flow it will be a waste of effort and a ton of work to change after the fact. I now use simple file structures, and rename each of the scanned file to the following format:
YYYYMMDD <<Company Name>> <<Brief Description>> [Optional: additional information].pdf
YYYYMMDD is the date that is stamped on the document, not the date I scanned it.
Company Name is the company I sent something to, or received from
Brief Description is usually the title of the document, but sometimes I have to make something up
And then I add in additional information at the end if needed. It's not ideal, as it requires me to check every scan as to what is in there. I am going to experiment a bit with OS X and it's superior PDF search functions, but so far am a Windows user so a bit uncomfortable in OS X still (actually mostly on managing files, which is pretty crucial in this process). All in all, on the name of the file I can recognise mostly what it is about, but wouldn't mind tagging functionality or something similar.
The folder structure I use is on the first tree legal entities / combinations and interests. This means I have a folder for my LLC, my previous company, one for myself. I also have one with good books and articles I wanted to keep, although Evernote would also serve that purpose very well. Second tree for the LLC is administration per year, and 'global' things like communication and contracts that do not make sense to file under the administration for a year. In my private folder I have then subfolders for insurance, living, working, finance, pension, studies etc etc. About 95% of what I scan has a natural place now, but there's always some small things that I want to keep, but don't have a good place for, so there's also an Other folder in each of the first tree folders.
For software I used the standard software that came with it. It can be found at the fujitsu site:
http://www.fujitsu.com/global/support/computing/peripheral/scanners/software/ix500.htmlThe scanner does OCR, straightening, and cropping automatically with the scansnap manager software and I didn't feel the need to tweak it much.
Evernote could work as well as a storing and referencing mechanism. I didn't have a particular strong reason against using Evernote, but it didn't sit well with me to have all my private financial, health, etc etc data sitting on foreign servers and by using Evernote for the paperless purpose, it would also mean I couldn't use it well for other purposes either (not that I am using it intensively at the moment). I also had some trouble with tagging that similar terms would mean slightly different things between private and LLC data. I currently just store on my private cloud, using a NAS and it synchs to my laptop and desktop.
I bought the ScanSnap mostly because I had several years of archive to process and am keeping it because I still have quite a few pages I need to scan monthly (say 20-30ish) and I don't want to spend too much time on that. I expect the scanner to serve my needs until it dies, which should be quite a while :)
I still have a final hurdle to go over, and that is to actually destroy the paper archive. It's just sitting around in boxes at the moment, but there's still a nagging "what-if" feeling before destroying it. But, as I am moving in less than a month, that moment is coming closer and closer ;)
Please let me know if you want to know anything else and I'll answer more questions tomorrow.