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(tip) saving receipts as pdfs
vrillusions | Nov 19 2006
Maybe this is "old news" but I realized only a couple days ago that since the mac can save to pdf, and windows can save to pdf using PDFCreator (an excellent open source pdf creation program), why not just created pdf's of receipts instead of printing them out when 99% of the time you don't need to? So I've started to get in the habit of doing just that. As far as a file naming convention, I'm using (date)_(website or store name)_(order number)_(brief description).pdf. Some examples: 2006-09-25_buy.com_2231_10ghz laptop.pdf 2004-03-16_ebay_2154939820_haunted mason jar.pdf I know most of that information can be obtained just by using a search program that can search inside pdfs, but this includes all the information I would probably need if I had to find a receipt quickly. The only downside to this, in order to have one place for everything, that means you need to scan any receipts you get from stores and restaurants as well, which could get tedious if you buy a lot of stuff in person. 8 Comments
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 the mac can save to...Submitted by Berko on November 20, 2006 - 8:34am.
vrillusions;6730 wrote: the mac can save to pdf With OS X 10.4 Tiger, there is a built-in Automator workflow called "Save PDF to Web Receipts" under the PDF menu of the Print dialog box. It doesn't take your naming conventions, but Spotlight is more than capable of searching the PDF. Quote:
The only downside to this, in order to have one place for everything, that means you need to scan any receipts you get from stores and restaurants as well, which could get tedious if you buy a lot of stuff in person. This is not as bad as it sounds and worse than it sounds at the same time. The good news is that you can scan multiple receipts on one scan by placing multiple receipts on the glass at once. (Or if you have an ADF like my MP530 does, scan them in order, assuming the receipt isn't too small to go through the feeder.) The bad news is that unless you have some awesome OCR software, you're basically dealing with images, which Spotlight can't search for content of course. The MP530 has OCR software bundled with it, but I haven't yet tried it out. The condition some of my receipts are in when they come out of my pocket makes me think this would be an exercise in » POSTED IN:
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