- Running a business means dealing with receipts. Lots of them. And for buildersclub.ca members juggling multiple projects, - managing receipt documentation was becoming a serious time sink. Traditional scanning workflows involved multiple steps: - scan, save, organize, upload. Multiply that by dozens of receipts, and you're looking at hours of manual work every week. + For buildersclub.ca members, I created a simple network scanner endpoint that makes digitizing receipts and documents fast and easy. + The service is available at http://192.168.0.119:9876 on the clubhouse network.
-- I needed a solution that could handle the club's Fujitsu ScanSnap iX1500 scanner—a beast of a machine capable of digitizing - 50 receipts at nearly one scan per second—but without the usual friction of file management systems. -
-- A custom WebDAV server optimized specifically for high-speed document scanning. Load 50 receipts, hit scan, - and watch them all digitize in under a minute. Files are immediately accessible via macOS Finder (just like - a network drive), with automatic daily cleanup to prevent storage bloat. Zero maintenance required. -
+- For buildersclub.ca members: Access the scanner service here (clubhouse network only) + Access URL: http://192.168.0.119:9876 (clubhouse network only)
http://192.168.0.119:9876- The system provides a straightforward network location where the ScanSnap scanner can send documents directly. - Just connect with Command+K in Finder, enter the URL, and you have instant access to a network drive ready for scanning. + Note: All files are automatically deleted at 3:00 AM daily to keep the system clean. + Make sure to copy important files to your own storage before then.
-- This creates a seamless experience - load your documents, hit scan, and they're immediately available on your computer - without any additional steps or software. -
- -- Here's the thing about receipt scanners: you want them to be fast and frictionless. Authentication dialogs kill that flow. - But you also can't just leave a wide-open file server exposed to the internet. -
-
- The solution? Custom permissions at the protocol level. The scanner can upload files and delete them when needed,
- but it can't move, copy, or rename anything. More importantly, the service is completely isolated to its own directory—there's
- literally no way for it to access files outside ~/scansnap-dav/scans, even if someone tried to hack around it.
-
class ScanSnapProvider(FilesystemProvider):
- def create_collection(self, path):
- # No creating subdirectories
- raise DAVError(403, "Creating directories not allowed")
-
- def copy_resource(self, src_path, dest_path, depth):
- # No copying files around
- raise DAVError(403, "Copying not allowed")
-
- def move_resource(self, src_path, dest_path):
- # No moving or renaming
- raise DAVError(403, "Moving/renaming not allowed")- For the clubhouse environment, this works perfectly. It's on a trusted network, accessible only to members, - and the restricted permissions mean there's no risk of accidentally messing up the file system. -
- -- When you're scanning 50 receipts at a time, storage fills up fast. Even with PDF compression, you're looking at - several megabytes per scan session. Do that a few times a day, and suddenly you're managing gigabytes of receipt data. -
-- The fix? Automatic cleanup. Every night at 3 AM, a Python scheduler wipes the scans directory clean. Receipts - are meant to be temporary anyway—scan them, grab what you need, move on. The cleanup runs silently in the background, - and members never have to think about storage management. -
-def cleanup_scans():
- scans_dir = os.path.expanduser("~/scansnap-dav/scans")
- for filename in os.listdir(scans_dir):
- file_path = os.path.join(scans_dir, filename)
- if os.isfile(file_path):
- os.remove(file_path)
-
-# Daily cleanup at 3:00 AM
-schedule.every().day.at("03:00").do(cleanup_scans)- Before this system, processing a week's worth of receipts meant: -
-- That's easily 20-30 minutes of manual work for a typical batch of receipts. -
-- Now? Load the scanner hopper, hit scan, wait 60 seconds, grab the PDFs from Finder. Done. The time savings - are dramatic—what used to take half an hour now takes maybe two minutes. -
- -- The beauty of this solution is its simplicity. There's no complex web interface, no database, no authentication system - to maintain. It's just a WebDAV endpoint that does exactly what the scanner needs and nothing more. -
-- For buildersclub.ca members, it means one less thing to think about. Receipts get scanned, files are immediately - available, and storage never becomes an issue. The system just works, quietly and reliably, in the background. -
-config = {
- "host": "0.0.0.0",
- "port": 9876,
- "provider_mapping": {
- "/": ScanSnapProvider(scans_dir)
- },
- "hotfixes": {
- "emulate_win32_lastmod": True,
- "unquote_path_info": True,
- "win_accept_anonymous": True,
- },
- "property_manager": True,
- "lock_storage": True,
-}- I could have built a full web application with user accounts, file organization features, OCR processing, - automatic categorization, cloud sync... but none of that was actually needed. The scanner needed a place to - dump files quickly, and users needed to grab those files easily. Mission accomplished with a fraction of the complexity. -
- -- The solution integrates directly with macOS Finder, making it immediately familiar to users without requiring - any special software or training. Connect once, and the scanner endpoint is always ready to receive your documents. -
- -- The daily cleanup feature turned this from a "nice to have" into a "set it and forget it" solution. Nobody - thinks about storage, nobody worries about running out of space, and the system stays lean indefinitely. + This simple solution dramatically reduces the time buildersclub.ca members spend on receipt management, + allowing them to focus on their projects instead of paperwork.