Your day to day
When what you need is not a document
«When does it expire?», «what is the cover?». The answer is not a file: it is one line inside one.
Half a dozen times a day the question is not «where is the contract» but «how long is it valid» or «what does it cover». Those are different questions, and searching for them the same way is what turns five seconds of work into five minutes.
Two searches that get confused
| What you need | What to search for | How it ends |
|---|---|---|
| The document, to send it | By its name or who issued it | You download and send it |
| A value from the document | By the value, not the file | You answer without opening anything |
| Everything meeting a condition | By the value, across all at once | You get a list, not a document |
| Whether something changed | By the value, comparing versions | You see what changed and when |
Important
The mix-up is costly for a not-obvious reason: **a file's name says nothing about what is inside**. `scan_2024.pdf` may be the policy expiring next month, and no naming scheme, however good, will tell you the sum insured. When the question is about a value, searching by name only leads you to a document you then have to open and read — and with thirty suppliers, to thirty documents.
What has to be decided once
- 1
Which values you are actually asked for each week
Expiry, amount, number, holder: usually four or five.
- 2
That those get extracted on upload
A value that is not extracted cannot be searched or watched.
- 3
And check them the first time
A misread value spreads to every answer that depends on it.
Watch out
The consequence of holding values outside the document is the one people do not anticipate: **what is extracted can be monitored; what lives only inside the PDF cannot**. An expiry date existing only as text on a scanned page can warn you of nothing, however neatly it is filed. Deciding what gets extracted is therefore not a configuration task: it is what separates a tidy archive from one that works for you.
Tricks that work when it will not turn up
Worth knowing
If a value is asked for often and is not extracted, it is worth adding even if the old ones need a manual pass. That is half an hour recovered in the first month.
›Can I search inside the document text?
Yes, and it helps; but an extracted value can also be watched and compared.
›What if the document is a photo?
It reads the same, though check the value the first time.
›Is it worth extracting everything?
No: only what you are asked. Extra extraction adds review with no use.
A real case
The situation
A company opens thirty policies to find which expire this quarter.
What you do
- Extracts the expiry on upload and queries the value instead of the document
What you get
The list appears in a second and warns on its own when one comes close.
The situation
What is needed is not a document but knowing whether something was done and when.
What you do
- Checks the file's history
- Searches for the action rather than the file
What you get
The question is answered even though no paper answers it.
The situation
A document that never existed is hunted for.
What you do
- Checks whether what happened was a recorded action
What you get
You stop looking for what is not there.
The situation
You need to know who decided something.
What you do
- Checks that decision's log
What you get
The answer has a name and a date.
The situation
You need to prove that warning was given.
What you do
- Checks the send log
What you get
The warning is proved without a signed document.
The situation
A report nobody ever produced is requested.
What you do
- Checks the data and generates the report now
What you get
The answer exists even though the report did not.
This article answers
- searching for a value inside a document
- when does this supplier's insurance expire
- getting a figure without opening the pdf
- searching by amount or date