Because the ID is incremental, old stuff naturally sorts itself.

For example, I have '16 Travel' as a category. I make a new JD number for each trip I take and create Finder & email folders. Order details and PDFs tend to live there.

16.01 was, let me look ... a trip to Perth in 2012. And my latest, 16.31, just happened. But of course my '16 Travel' folder sorts like:

  16.01 Trip to Perth to see Bart
  16.02 <name of trip>
  16.03 <name of trip>
  ...
  16.29
  16.30
  16.31 Hunter Valley, Xmas '18

- so those old trips just kind of hide themselves away. My eye only ever looks at the most recent stuff, and all of the recent things sit near each other. It just works.

This also has the advantage in that you don't need to remember which year a thing was in. They're all there, visible.