Once a year someone asks for every receipt from last year: your accountant, a tax form, an expense report. They’re all on your Mac, spread across Downloads under names like INV-20931.pdf, Receipt-2841.pdf and Factura_0012.pdf. Searching for “invoice” finds a handful.
The fix is boring and it works: one folder for invoices and receipts, with a folder inside it for each year. The hard part is keeping it up all year.
The Finder way
Finder can’t move files by itself, but a Smart Folder can at least collect them in one view:
- In Finder, choose File › New Smart Folder.
- Click + and set “Name” “contains” “invoice”.
- Hold ⌥ and click the … button to add an “Any” group, then add “receipt”, “INV-” and any other names your invoices use.
- Save it to the sidebar.
The Smart Folder lists matching files wherever they are, without moving them. That’s handy for finding, but the files stay scattered, and you still sort them by year by hand. The invoices and receipts guide has more on this.
The Omaculate way
The Gather invoices and receipts recipe reads like this:
Anything in Downloads that looks like an invoice or receipt is moved to Downloads/Invoices and Receipts, by year.
“Looks like an invoice or receipt” goes by the file’s name, on every tier. Oma looks for invoice, receipt, INV-, Factura, Rechnung, Quittung, Recibo, and order or payment confirmations. She doesn’t use “bill”, which would also catch “billboard.png”.
“By year” means Oma makes a folder for each year inside Invoices and Receipts and puts each file in the one for its date. If your accountant wants quarters, change it to a folder per quarter or per month in the recipe editor.
Like every recipe, it starts in Ask first: you see the list of files and where each one would go, and nothing moves until you approve.
When the name doesn’t say
Some invoices arrive as “document.pdf” or “scan_0042.pdf”. The name gives nothing away.
With Grand Oma and smart naming switched on, Oma also reads PDFs and documents whose names don’t settle it, and checks whether they’re an invoice, a receipt or an order confirmation. She only reads a file when the rest of the recipe already matches, and she remembers the answer, so the same file isn’t read twice. This happens on your Mac. The file and its contents never leave it. Smart naming requires macOS 26 and Apple Intelligence.
Statements and contracts get their own folders
Bank statements, payslips and contracts aren’t invoices, and they don’t go in that folder. Two more recipes handle them:
- Gather statements and payslips moves them to Downloads/Statements and Payslips, also by year.
- Gather contracts and agreements moves them to Downloads/Contracts.
Put all three on, and next year’s paperwork is already sorted when someone asks for it.
