Idea For Library 3.0 Developers? Bill Filer
After only 7 years of being married my wife and I have 2 file cabinets chock FULL of invoices that I'm sure most we COULD throw away but 'just in case' we tend to hold on to them. It's starting to get out of hand and I'd love to computerize things and rid myself of the ugly steel boxes.
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Required Hardware:
1 - Computer
2 - Scanner of some type
Application Details:
1 - Scan a bill or invoice (all pages but you must start with the 1st)
2 - If the software identified the invoice (see below) it's filed into correct folder / drawer - optionally asking for meta data (for scanning historic invoices/bills) once you scan all of your old stuff you can turn that off and it will use the current month / day / year for any new stuff you scan in.
3 - If new or unidentified it would:
a - Ask user to identify folder it should be filed into. For cases where the software had trouble and the folder already exists.
b - Ask user to select a 2"x2" or 1"x1" space on the bill that is always the same and that space will be used for all future identification (select company logo or something) and then ask user to provide name of folder.
To me anyway, this would be really cool but the only thing that I'm unsure of is the 'image' detection part... Is todays OS X (and it's image APIs, etc) up to the challenge? For example if say the phone company logo always appears 2" from the left of page 1 could software correctly identify that? (given that was the area you selected for the software to examine)?
Muiti-page invoices/bills add a slight level of complexity but I think they too could be overcome.
Finally, other enhancements could include identifying the price area (if the same on each bill) so the software could 'OCR' the bill/invoice price and even date and automatically add that to the meta data. Then you could even add an export to Quicken feature if you'd like.
Burning data to CD for archiving (to free up HD space) could be as simple as:
- Burn all "2004 Bills to CD"
...or even...
- Burn all "XYZ Electric Bills to CD" or "Cable Bills to CD"
With an option asking you if you'd like to delete them from the HD (or not).
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I dunno - but to me this would be a pretty cool app.
Dave
-----------------------
Required Hardware:
1 - Computer
2 - Scanner of some type
Application Details:
1 - Scan a bill or invoice (all pages but you must start with the 1st)
2 - If the software identified the invoice (see below) it's filed into correct folder / drawer - optionally asking for meta data (for scanning historic invoices/bills) once you scan all of your old stuff you can turn that off and it will use the current month / day / year for any new stuff you scan in.
3 - If new or unidentified it would:
a - Ask user to identify folder it should be filed into. For cases where the software had trouble and the folder already exists.
b - Ask user to select a 2"x2" or 1"x1" space on the bill that is always the same and that space will be used for all future identification (select company logo or something) and then ask user to provide name of folder.
To me anyway, this would be really cool but the only thing that I'm unsure of is the 'image' detection part... Is todays OS X (and it's image APIs, etc) up to the challenge? For example if say the phone company logo always appears 2" from the left of page 1 could software correctly identify that? (given that was the area you selected for the software to examine)?
Muiti-page invoices/bills add a slight level of complexity but I think they too could be overcome.
Finally, other enhancements could include identifying the price area (if the same on each bill) so the software could 'OCR' the bill/invoice price and even date and automatically add that to the meta data. Then you could even add an export to Quicken feature if you'd like.
Burning data to CD for archiving (to free up HD space) could be as simple as:
- Burn all "2004 Bills to CD"
...or even...
- Burn all "XYZ Electric Bills to CD" or "Cable Bills to CD"
With an option asking you if you'd like to delete them from the HD (or not).
-----------------------
I dunno - but to me this would be a pretty cool app.
Dave
Comments
a few thoughts...
i think you would need to scan the whole bill and keep a copy, as what if the bank ask for copies (for example)? maybe not, but its something to consider.
as someone who actually gets paid to design customer bills, there are no fixed positions for displaying data. it depends on the billing system, the layout of the invoice. this can change (and does) often. so there would need to be a cute way of dealing with this. library 3.0 uses the barcode, but bills don't have this as we know.
It would be too time-consuming for this to be a good option anyways. Scanning every individual bills? Sheesh.
Every decade or so, go through those cabinets and in a couple hours get rid of all the old stuff which you're positive you don't need.
Scanning is such a laborious process that you'd probably spend more time and money on the computerization.
Or... Throw them in cheap waterproof containers and put them in the basement. Chances are, you'll never need any of the ones you've relegated to long term storage. And, if you do, you'll have the original copies.