I’ve used the following for over ten years. It works.

ProjectTLA Date(Year.Month.Day) ClientTLA Narrative

So I have a project Squizzle with client Citibank

SQZ 06.10.21 CIT project proposal SQZ 06.10.26 CIT meeting agenda SQZ 06.11.04 CIT minutes agreed SQZ 06.11.15 CIT First proofs …

The above is what I’d see in a Finder window. If I sort on name, it’s sorted by date as well.

I can search for the Project, I can search for date and I can search for the client easily.

I can also search easily across parameters, for Project AND a particular month etc.

The narrative section provides space for that urge to do that stuff and functions as a sort of short term memory trigger. Also, the progess of the project is visible in the narrative field.

I have many projects which span several years and it functions really well for searching through older project material. You can’t rely on Finders date assignments.

The one variant I permit myself is I always put invoices in as INV in the narrative with a space on either end. It’s handy to be able to search for all invoices ” INV “