Categories

A category (also called document type) defines what kind of document you’re storing. Categories help you organize documents by their purpose and ensure consistent metadata across similar documents.

Examples of categories:

• Invoices
• Contracts
• Receipts
• Tax Documents
• Employment Records

Why Use Categories?

Categories provide three key benefits:

1. Metadata templates — Each category defines which metadata fields apply to its documents. When you assign a document to a category, the appropriate fields appear automatically.

2. Retention periods — Categories can have an associated retention period. All documents in that category inherit the same retention rules.

3. Automatic organization — Categories can use filing rules to automatically organize documents into folders.

Creating a Category

To create a new category:

1. Navigate to Categories
2. Click New Category
3. Enter a name (e.g., “Invoices”)
4. Select which metadata fields should appear for documents in this category
5. Optionally configure a retention period
6. Optionally configure a filing rule
7. Save the category

Assigning Metadata Fields

When you create or edit a category, you select which metadata fields belong to it. These fields become the “template” for all documents of that type.

For example, an Invoices category might include:

• Invoice Number (text)
• Invoice Date (date)
• Amount (monetary)
• Vendor (text)
• Payment Status (select: paid, unpaid, overdue)

When you assign a document to the Invoices category, these five fields appear in the metadata panel, ready to be filled in.

Tip

Create metadata fields first, then assign them to categories. A single metadata field can be used across multiple categories.

Retention Periods

Each category can have an associated retention period — the minimum time documents must be kept before they can be deleted.

When configuring retention:

1. Select a predefined retention period (e.g., 10 years)
2. Choose the retention pivot — which date starts the countdown:
   • created_at — when the document was uploaded
   • A date metadata field — e.g., “Invoice Date”
3. Optionally assign a deletion approver — the user or group who must approve deletion of expired documents

See Data Retention for details on how retention works.

Filing Rules

A filing rule automatically moves documents in this category into a target folder — and can rename them — so you don’t have to file them by hand.

You configure it on the category with two fields:

• Target Folder — where documents of this category are moved, e.g. /Invoices/{{year}}
• Rename Document (optional) — a new title for the document; leave it empty to keep the current one

Both fields accept placeholders such as {{category}}, {{year}}, and {{title}}, which Papermerge fills in from the document when the rule runs.

See Filing Rules for the full list of placeholders and worked examples.

Category vs. Tags

Categories and tags both help organize documents, but they serve different purposes:

	Categories	Tags
How many per document?	One	Many
Structure	Defines metadata template	Flat labels
Retention	Can have retention periods	No retention
Use case	Document classification	Flexible labeling

Example: A document can belong to the Invoices category (which defines its structure and retention) while also having tags like “urgent”, “Q1”, and “reviewed”.