Effective Filing System

Keeping your boss, client or colleague on hold while you are searching a document from pile of papers is frustrating to them as well as you, hence declining your reputation in the organisation. This not only wastes your time, also you are wasting others time too because of your defective file management. Of course most of us think filing the documents is a boring and time consuming task. Generally we push filing as a least important task and keep the document aside for later hours. This way we pile up a large set of documents waiting for their turn to be filed cluttering on our desk.

Imagine how impressive it would have been if, when asked, you would smiled, accessed a well-organized filing system, immediately found the document, and quickly responded!
 
Here are some tips to help manage your documents:

Discard unnecessary documents immediately: Whenever you get documents quickly scan through it and discard if it is not important and is not useful in future too (e.g. adverts). Having too many unnecessary documents mess up and makes it harder to find things in the future. Be selective about what you save!

Name your files and folders systematically: Number all the files to keep it in order. Divide a main folder into subfolders for clients, vendors, and co-workers. Give shortened names to identify what or whom the folders relate to. You can even give a different appearance or look to different categories of folders like color coding; this can make it easy to make them apart at first sight.

Store related documents together: Store reports, letters, presentation notes, spreadsheets and graphics related to a particular project in a single folder, instead of having one folder for reports for all projects, another folder for spreadsheets for all projects, and so on. It is much quicker to find documents for a particular project, this way. 

Separate pending work from completed work: Keep current or ongoing work separately until a job is completed. Then, once it is completed, move it to the appropriate location, where files of the same category are stored. This way you can precisely know how much work is pending and will not skip any work.

Avoid overloading folders: If you have a large number of files in the main folder, or a large number of subfolders in the main folder, break them into smaller groups (subfolders or sub-subfolders). For instance, you can divide a folder called "Purchase Report" into subfolders called "PR2011”, "PR2012” and "PR2013." Likewise, you can divide a folder for a client named Shaan Enterprises into subfolders named "Shaan Enterprises Purchase Report" and "Shaan Enterprises contracts”. The idea is to place every file into a logical folder or subfolder, rather than have one huge list of files.

Make digital copies of documents: Scan the documents and store it as digital copies. This is useful if you don't have much space to store paper documents, or if you want to archive documents without destroying them completely. For this, you have to make the best judgment or take the recommendation from your superior before discarding the documents especially original copies of documents like contracts and legal documents.

Prioritise your files: It is important to prioritise your files associated with your work. Put expected completion date on the files or documents and keep it in the order that comes first. Create a folder that contains 31 days separators and file documents according to date when you want to work on.
 
So, now free-up your time for implementing above points and reward yourself with time and work throughput.
 
To help you out Shaan Enterprises has the large set of Files and Folders to buy online.
 

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