Notching holders is certainly a time-tested common solution. Just be careful you don’t file too deeply. The more anal among us file notches only on the inside rail of the bottom flap.
Riteway holders, of course, are supplied with round numbered acetate disks on the bottom flap which can be rotated to imprint a negative number on the edge of the film.
Similarly, you can make your own numbered acetate tabs from lith film or from blank acetate sheet stock run through a photocopier. Or with a ruling pen and India ink on old cleared film stock. Some film holders have a square recess in the inside bottom flap where these little tabs can be glued.
A color lab tech I once worked with in Hollywood, had a very high-quality chrome plated diamond-shaped paper punch, designed to punch theater tickets. He used it to make notches (in the dark) along the edge of the transparencies to identify them with the numbered holders, as he unloaded them.
Single notches along the long film side each counted as One. Notches along the bottom each counted as Five. A transparency with two notches each along the side and bottom was from holder number twelve. One side notch and three bottom notches meant holder sixteen.
Just to round out all of my personal experiences, medical supply houses sell tiny rolls of pre-printed numbered and/or dated waterproof self-adhesive tape which can be used in various ways to identify hospital xray films and envelopes. These would also be useful on holders. A medical web-search might turn up something.
All sorts of useful stuff out there, sometimes in the darndest places!
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