Effective filing systems for the office make your business run more smoothly. Whether you have a huge office, a home office, or a mobile mini office, you can find papers easier and save time looking for them. To keep effective filing systems in your office, try these tasks and share them with everyone in your office to keep the system going consistently.
Steps to make a small business filing system more functional
- Determine how you want to retrieve the files. Do you want the files to be sorted by event, topic, or speaking engagement?
- Label each hanging and manila folders. This way, if you take out the manila folder, you will know what section to place the manila folder when you need to return it.
- Stick with the same labeling system. If you use front labels and file behind the tab, stay consistent. If you use color folders for particular folders, keep using those colors.
- Leave space in the drawer for new files. By purging every year to make room for the files, it will not only help your filing system stay current but it will also make your system more refined with what is going on that current year.
- Lay the paper in the folders so you can see the tabs. Papers sticking up out of the folders will block the tabs and make it more difficult to find a file.
- Find a filing cabinet that will hold all your files. Label each drawer a broad topic to help you and others find the right drawer more quickly and painlessly.
Everyone needs to know the filing systems organization.
Remember, filing systems only work if everyone knows how it is organized. They must know what to do when putting files in the filing system. Write down the exact instructions for your filing system as a reference to others. Hang it near your filing cabinet so everyone can refer to it. If you have several filing cabinets, you can make a floor plan map of the filing cabinets and label on the floor plan map what each drawer contains. As a result, users of the filing cabinet do not have to ask you where files are in the filing cabinets.
Revisit files every year or two.
Revisiting files each year and clearing out the unused and unneeded ones helps keep your space organized, and you will not need to add filing cabinets to your office. Visit our benefits and tips to revisit paper files yearly post to help you do this task.
To have a functional filing system, it needs to be organized to retrieve your needed papers easily. A filing system that is not retrievable takes up space. It is just filled with misplaced documents that are hard to find. As a result, you miss out on retrieving important information promptly. So, keep these tips in mind when creating your filing system.
What filing system tips do you use to retrieve your papers effectively? Please leave a comment below so we can continue the conversation.
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Here are some additional articles from other experts that will also help you get your filing system organized.
How to Set Up an Effective Filing System
How to Organize a Home Filing System in 7 Steps
5 Office Filing System Mistakes to Avoid
