So all along we have been using QuickBooks also as a repository of invoices, purchase orders etc and now once we upgrade we have a dilemma:
* lose them all
* continue to maintain and upgrade the QB license to maintain our digital database.
There must be a better solution, or a market opportunity for a hacker in this forum.
What do innovative companies use as a repository of digital documents? Mind you that while it's 2021 often we get PDF that are not searchable/indexable.
Is there a solution or is this an unaddressed pain point?
I have a very web forum-like interface for the users to manage files. Threads contain and represent a single file or a collection of related files. The main 'post' holds the files and under it there's a simple versioning abstraction that chains previous versions of the files, each new version is much like a new comment on a forum thread. All meta-data is included in this threaded interface and makes files and file collections full-text searchable by description, tag or category.
Files are not to be stored on a database, they are stored on a file server. The action of attaching a file to one of these threads actually generates a unique hash for the file. On committing changes the file is then 'moved' (copied) to the file server and a record is created in the main application's database referencing the file location on the file server.
eg. User created thread "Important Pdf File" and uploads|attaches|links file "important.pdf". When the submission is ready the file will be moved to: fileserver://files/taxa/taxa/taxa/8jma6ge_important.pdf
Newer versions will just include a different hash.
The file id (hash) is then stored on the main application database (file_id: 8jma6ge)
If all hell breaks loose I still get to move things easily from one server to another, migrate to a different rdbms is unobtrusive.
Needless to say, users never get direct access to the files on the file server, they can only interact with the versions they've got on their own machines and with the versions exposed through the frontend.
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So far it appears this methodology works ok for an application a few hundred users. Storage is a concern, backups as well and one of the main problems is duplication of files on local machines.
It is filled by consultants.
If it matters, spend money on them.
If it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter.
There is no silver bullet.
The good news is you can maintain the database via the license and decide about consultants later.
Six months or three years from now, the same options will exist so long as you maintain the license.
In some number of years, the business records will no longer be required to be maintained by law.
Much of what you have in the database may already be obsolete.
Talk to your legal counsel regarding what can be deleted and when.
Good luck.
Having been thru this myself and am about to go thru it again as Head of Finance, digital docs should really be stored separately in a file server.