The first month of scanning is easy — you have four scans and you remember all of them. The problem arrives at scan number sixty, when a client calls about a bid from August and you are looking at a list of captures with no idea which one is their house.
Pick one convention and never deviate
The convention matters less than the consistency. Any of these work:
- Address-first —
412 Oak St — kitchen remodel— best if you think in properties - Job-number-first —
2026-118 — Alvarez— best if you already run job numbers - Client-and-date —
Alvarez 10-14— simplest for a small shop
Address-first wins for most contractors, because the thing you remember six months later is the house.
Name it before you scan, not after
The rename that happens later does not happen. Create the scan with its name, then capture. Ten seconds at the start beats a folder of Untitled 7.
One scan per property, not per room
Keep a house as a single whole-house model with its rooms inside, rather than eleven separate captures. The assembly is what carries the floor plan and the whole-house totals, and it is one thing to find instead of eleven.
Voice notes are your search index
The thing that makes an old scan immediately useful again is the narration. Transcribed voice notes pinned to rooms tell you what you were thinking on site — which wall was covered, what the client wanted, what you assumed. A silent scan from August is geometry. A narrated one is a memory.
Share it the day you take it
A scan that exists only on the phone of a person who is now on vacation is not accessible. Send it to the office the same day, where the estimator can open it and it survives a lost phone.
Six months from now, the scan you can find is the only one you took.