There are a lot of troubles that come with being a business owner or running an organization. Managing and organizing business paperwork – seemingly easy tasks – shouldn’t be one one of them or shouldn’t be there at all.
Several entrepreneurs find themselves shackled with documents. These can be contracts, financial statements, spreadsheets, reports, employment applications and records, insurance policies, invoices – you name it. From the important to the minuscule, the paperwork clutter seems never-ending.
Bringing some management to your important documents can give you increased clarity about what’s in the drawer, what’s in the trash (and what’s missing) and a greater supervision over the administration of your business. Moreover, you can stress less when you are actually looking to find something.
Let’s establish a system that you can work with. Here are some of the very common yet important steps to enhance your paperwork management from messy to meticulous.
Get the Equipment You Need
Out of the chaos, the last thing you want is to scatter all your documents across the desk just to realize you can’t find what you need to get the work done. So, before you get on to work, ensure you have access to all the requirements. The items include:
- Shredder
- File folders
- Filing cabinet
- Label maker or labels
- Safe for important documents
What you require is dependent upon your existing system, organization, and goals. The point is to ensure you’re all set for the task before diving right into it.
Create Viability
Consider this your rule of thumb of organizing paper clutter: The lesser you touch a piece of paper, the better. That means you have to come up with a system to file those documents before you start sorting them out.
There are numerous different options to categorize them:
- By client or customer
- By year or specific time frames
- By category (finances, hiring, legal)
- By type of document (contracts, invoices, financial statements)
A good filing system should be intuitive. So, if you’re struggling to figure out the approach to tackle this, ask yourself: What would I first search if I were looking for this item in the future?
Whatever system you create for your documents, use the same one for your soft copies (computer files). You will eventually identify the most suitable approach to managing and separating those documents. Your future self will thank you.
Begin With One Area at a Time
You probably have documents scattered at a lot of different places. Perhaps there’s your filing cabinet, the growing pile on your desk, your tangled web of computer files, plus all of the important paperwork that’s hanging out in your email inbox.
This can feel overwhelming, so make the process more manageable by starting with one area at a time.
Tackle that filing cabinet first before moving onto the loose papers scattered around your office. Doing so means you’ll conquer this project methodically, avoid missing anything important, and maintain a cohesive system as you move through each of these storage locations.
Easy Way Around
If you can’t do it the harder way then do it smartly. Leave everything aside and trust the technology. When I say the word “technology”, I certainly don’t mean software, programs, coding, design, and, etc.
What I simply trying to say is, look around there are easy things available everywhere like simple mobile apps. For instance, Udhaar app.
About Udhaar App?
Udhaar, a simple tool for personal and commercial use. Udhaar app manages credit (Udhaar) with customers and suppliers.
Udhaar app is an online ledger (like an online khata or journal) to note your outstanding debt, and send reminders to customers to improve collection and cash flow. It’s an easy, safe, and reliable app with outstanding features like reporting, multi-language support, data backup, offline mode, and many, many more.
