Free Document Management Software

[DaCurryman]

Hello All,

I was wondering if anyone had experience or knew of an application that would meet my needs. I'm looking for a free document management application to help my parents. My parents have a few business and lots of paper documents (bank statements, supplier invoices, buyer invoices, etc.).

They have multiple companies, so I'm looking for something that will allow them to distinguish by company. I'm also looking for something with fields that I can enter the critical information for each document:

document source (i.e. bank name, supplier name, etc.)
document description
document date

Since all these documents would need to be scanned in, I'm looking for something that will let me scan documents directly into the application and then fill in critical fields instead of having to scan the docs separately (saving them as jpegs) and then importing them into the application.

The application should be able to handle multiple pages for a single item (since rarely are statements only a single page).

Lastly, I'd like to be able to click through scans (prev, next buttons) for ease of use for my parents when they're looking for something.

I know this is a lot for anyone to help me with, but I figure someone on here might know of something or have used something similar. If there's an application that isnt free, but only nominally priced, please do share. Thanks in advance for any help.

~ Ketan aka DaCurryman

 

[DaCurryman]

bump for help...

 

[Seeruk]

I work with a lot of Documentum but it's far from free!

Thing is... document management is reallly freaking lucrative. I mean insanely 3000 pounds sterling per day lucrative just as a consultant to some of these projects They are typically used by mega corps like pharma's, oil, banks, government agencies, that kind of thing. With that kind of licence money to chase there are not any free ones I can think of (well some but they are just total and utter crap)... and certainly for the scanning side you are looking at something like Kofax which is pricey too. I cant think of anyone who really caters for the SME as generally there is no requirement for something so complex.

Sorry... there is a gap in the market I am sure... noone has nabbed it yet

 

[DanceMan]

Scansoft Paperport will do exactly what you want. To me, it is one of the most underrated pieces of software ever created.

However, it is not free, and the latest version (Version 11) does cost quite a bit. However, you can buy Version 9 or Version 10 for less than $20.00 or so. You might be able to bum one off from somebody who has a scanner (it's often included in scanner packages).

You can 'tag' the files with keywords for searching, and it can even OCR text, and use the text as searchable. It does exactly what you want with multiple pages, and has a interface like the thumbnail viewer in Internet Explorer. It can handle all sorts of documents, not just scanned, but Word, Excel, photo, and even any document that can be printed (They give you a Paperport Printer Driver). It can even help you fill in forms, if you scan the form in.

 

[MrChad]

I work with FileNet, but it is also far from free.

I've heard good things about Alfresco, which is an open-source content management solution. It may be a bit overkill for your parent's needs, though.

 

[DaCurryman]

Wow...thanks everyone. I'm going to spend this weekend looking into the suggestions here and let you know my findings. Yeah..I figured it'd be pricey since it's for big business, but I figured there would be a toned-down version of commercial software meant for simpler uses.

 

[WildHorse]

It just occurred to me that Microsoft Office 2007, which is free or nearly free and functional through January 2007, includes

Document Imaging

and

Document Scanning.

They're in the Tools.

So if you download the Office 2007 package, you could use those free for about 4 more months.