What is a folder structure?
A folder structure is the layout of folders and subfolders used to organize your documents. In AI Sortify, a template gives your workspace a starting structure. Folder settings help determine where classified documents belong.
Why are there different folders?
Different documents serve different purposes. Income holds money coming in; Expenses holds costs; Contracts holds agreements. A freelancer may need Clients and Projects, while a household needs Family, Housing, and Health. Choose categories you can recognize later rather than creating a folder for every individual file.
The three parts of organization
Folder tree decides where a document goes. Custom fields capture extra information from its content. File naming decides what the file is called. They work together, but changing one does not automatically configure the others.
Start with a template
Open Preview templates to compare the available structures before generating one. Personal Filing suits private documents; Freelancer suits independent work. General and Small Business are other starting points. Some templates require a paid plan. Previewing a template does not replace your current structure.
For private use: Personal Filing
The current template includes Personal and Identity, Family and Children, Income, Expenses, Finance and Banks, Contracts, Insurance, Housing and Household, Work and Career, Health and Prevention, Mobility and Vehicles, Leisure and Projects, and Taxes, plus Manual Fallback. Start with the categories that match your documents.
- Personal and Identity · Family and Children
- Income · Expenses · Finance and Banks
- Contracts · Insurance · Housing and Household
- Work and Career · Health and Prevention
- Mobility and Vehicles · Leisure and Projects · Taxes
- Manual Fallback
For freelance work: Freelancer
The current template includes Income, Expenses, Clients, Projects, Bank, Taxes, Contracts, Business, and Insurance, plus Manual Fallback. Income uses Year → Month; Expenses uses Year → Month → Entity; Clients, Projects, and Contracts use Entity. An entity can be a person or company associated with a document.
- Income — Year → Month
- Expenses — Year → Month → Entity
- Clients · Projects · Contracts — Entity
- Bank · Taxes — Year → Month
- Business — Fixed · Insurance — Entity
- Manual Fallback
How folder behaviors work
Fixed keeps documents in that folder. A container groups subfolders. Date-based behaviors organize by year or month, while entity-based behaviors group documents by the associated person or company. The behavior guide explains each option, and the folder editor shows an example result.
- Fixed — documents stay directly in the folder, for example Contracts/agreement.pdf.
- Container — groups child folders; documents go into those subfolders. Example: Business → Income or Expenses.
- Year — adds a year, for example Taxes/2026/file.pdf.
- Month — adds a month folder, for example Receipts/01_January/file.pdf.
- Year → Month — groups by year first, for example Income/2026/01_January/file.pdf.
- Entity — groups by a person, company, or configured naming value, for example Clients/Acme/file.pdf.
- Year → Month → Entity — puts the date first, for example Expenses/2026/01_January/Acme/file.pdf.
- Entity → Year → Month — puts the person or company first, for example Staff/Anna/2026/01_January/file.pdf.
- Paths are illustrative. Exact names depend on your template, language, extracted values, and settings. Check Example result in the editor.
Customize your structure
Use Edit beside a folder to change its settings. Organize files by controls its behavior. Folder naming fields and custom fields provide values for dynamic names. Positive and negative keywords help describe which documents belong there. You can add custom folders within your plan limits and drag folders to reorder them.
- Use Edit beside a folder to change its settings.
- Organize files by controls the folder behavior.
- Folder naming fields and custom fields provide values for dynamic names.
- Positive and negative keywords help describe which documents belong there.
- Add custom folders within your plan limits, and drag folders to reorder them.
Add a new folder
Use Add folder, enter a clear name, choose its behavior, and add relevant keywords. If you choose an entity-based behavior, review Folder naming fields as well. For example, create Projects and use an extracted project name to group documents. Adding the folder does not automatically move all existing files into it.
- Choose Add folder and enter a descriptive name, such as Projects.
- Choose Organize files by: Fixed for one destination, or an entity/date behavior for subfolders.
- For entity-based behaviors, choose Folder naming fields when you want to use custom extracted values.
- Add specific positive keywords and only useful negative keywords.
- Check the example, then save. Custom folder availability depends on your plan and workspace permissions.
Positive keywords: what belongs here?
Positive keywords describe signs that a document belongs in a folder. For Insurance, examples include insurance policy, coverage, and policy number. Prefer specific phrases that distinguish the category. A broad word such as invoice may appear in both Income and Expenses, so it is not enough to tell them apart.
Negative keywords: what does not belong here?
Negative keywords help distinguish documents that should go elsewhere. For an Insurance folder, a phrase such as job application may help identify an unrelated document if it has been misclassified there. Use exclusions carefully: a real insurance invoice could contain the word invoice, so excluding that word could work against the result you want. Keywords guide classification; they do not guarantee a destination.
Folder naming fields and custom fields
A custom field captures a value; a folder naming field tells an entity-based folder behavior which value to use. Example: create a text field called Project, describe it as the project name stated in the document, then select it in Folder naming fields for Projects. When Project is Apollo, the example destination can be Projects/Apollo. Review the editor’s example and do not assume every document contains that value.
A complete example
Imagine an invoice dated January 2026 for project Apollo. First create the Project custom field. Then configure Projects with Entity behavior and select Project in Folder naming fields. Finally choose a filename pattern containing document type, Project, and date. An illustrative result is Projects/Apollo/Invoice_Apollo_2026-01-20.pdf. The folder category, extracted field, and naming pattern each contribute a different part.
- Document: an invoice dated January 20, 2026, for project Apollo.
- Custom fields: define Project as a text field that extracts the project name.
- Folder tree: configure Projects with Entity behavior and select Project in Folder naming fields.
- File naming: choose document type + Project + document date, separated by underscores.
- Example: Projects/Apollo/Invoice_Apollo_2026-01-20.pdf.
- This is an example, not a guaranteed extraction. Review actual document results.
Review and improve results
Use the example result to check the path layout before saving. Then review a processed document to see whether its category and extracted values make sense. If it lands in the wrong category, refine the folder description through its keywords. If a dynamic name is wrong, review the custom field description and the naming fields selected. Manual Fallback is a review category included in the templates.
Folder names and filenames
The folder structure decides where a document belongs. File naming controls the document’s name. In the File naming tab, set a default pattern or a custom pattern for a folder. Inherited folders use the applicable parent or default pattern. Missing field values are skipped. Saving a naming pattern applies to future processing and does not rename existing files.
Review before changing
Check the preview and example results before saving. If a structure already exists, the template preview may ask you to reset it before generating another. Read the reset explanation first. Reviewing a guide or template does not change your folders.
Finish nested edits and save the folder
- Review the folder name, Organize files by behavior, naming fields, file-naming override, and keywords together.
- Done inside a keyword or naming editor returns to the folder editor; review the folder-level Save action to persist the full edit.
- If you close with unsaved changes, use the discard prompt deliberately.
- Quick creation of a naming source and selecting an existing source are different actions. Check which field was created and selected.