Hello, I have just registered. I am looking for suggestions on a solution to a problem. Currently we keep invoices on paper in boxes for years and when audits come up, it takes ages to find the ones we need. I am wondering if there are any suggestions on how to keep them stored as scans with searchable parameters (invoice number, branch number, payee, etc). I know that I could just set up an excel spreadsheet but that seems like a rather elementary idea for the large number of records in question.

thanks

You can scan them in and save them all in one folder. It sounds very possible to link each document with an access (or similar, access is just "more available") and you can store details to your specification in the database.

In fact, I just talked myself into saying - use a database.

I actually work for Imscan and would be interested to know which of our customers GEORGEV works for..
It is true that our software is not cheap (and not as expensive as £1000 per license) but then good solutions never are. We utilise a SQL database to store references to the images but it's a lot more user friendly and expandable than just scanning the images into a folder. If you did that then yes, the images would be scanned, but how would you find them when the auditors arrive?
I suggest you contact me and I can very quickly show you how are software works. Don't worry, I'm not a salesman, I am the Technical Manager at Imscan which of course makes me biased towards our solution but once you've seen what the software does you'll be free to look at other offerings.

If you're a programmer, there are several image processing and scanning libraries that you can use; I've used BlackIce and ImageLib libraries on several projects.

Once you've automated the scanning and file naming tasks, You'll want to look at the database side of things. While there are instances where you would want to store the images within the database, I don't believe that this application is one of them. Store the images on the disk drive (with appropriate folder permissions defined) and store the path name (with UNC naming) of the image files in the database record, along with the individual search fields (invoice number, branch number, payee, etc.) Use the database search functions to return the image path name(s) as needed.

In one of the document management systems I've reviewed (and it's probably present in many more) a service runs on the database server. This service monitors changes in the image folders permissions, and resets the permissions when they've been altered. (ensuring that someone can't alter, move, or delete an image unless authorized to do so) Because the images are stored on the file system, unless you can control these sorts of changes, you could end up with database records with an invalid image path, and/or images without a matching database record.