Automating File Renaming and Moving with Hazel — My Monthly Bank Statement Downloading Process
As a YNAB certified coach, it’s important to me to remain on top of my financial information. Part of doing so means downloading my bank statements each month. I used to do this manually — including renaming the files to my preferred naming convention and moving them to their specific folder. However, with a wonderfully powerful automation tool called Hazel, I click the download button and the renaming and storing in the correct folder is all done for me.
What Can Hazel Do?
Hazel, which is available from NoodleSoft, is an incredibly powerful file automator. I’m using about 1/10 of the power of Hazel at the moment so I am definitely not an expert in the tool. However, I feel super powerful every time I use Hazel to do the clean up work for me. This superhero feeling also motivates me to do a relatively mundane task.
Hazel’s basic functionality is to watch a folder you choose for certain conditions that you choose to be met. If those conditions are met — say you add in a file with a heic extension — then Hazel will perform an action on that file automatically. For example, it might convert that file to a jpg file.
Hazel can also perform routine file cleanup for you and watch a folder and…
