I like to have things sorted by date, so I name them YYYY_MM_DD_Vendor. I group invoices/receipts by year, so 2009 has its own group. I replicate receipts that have tax implications to another group for taxes, “2009 Taxes.” I also replicate major purchases or anything with a license warranty to other groups.
I’m not a tagger so I do (a) but I’m also a date person like Karen, so I have a similar naming convention as she using the YYYYMMDD scheme to prefix all my names.
When I scan my electricity bill I rename the searchable PDF after it has been saved in my database by selecting the vendor name (SCI REMC), Control-click on it and choose Set Title as. Then I add ‘0906’ (June, 2009) so that the PDF will sort with other electricity bills by year/month.
I see no need for additional tags, as I can quickly pull up electricity bills by content or Name without the time and effort of adding keywords, for example.