When you’re an entrepreneur, it can be hard to spend time on the little things. But as any good business owner or manager knows – organization is key! If your company’s files are all over town in different places (or worse yet- scattered across various platforms), then there will always come a day when someone needs what was found elsewhere instead of being pulled directly from their proper location because let’s face it. A lot has changed since I first started working with computers; One thing though which hasn’t really improved much over these past 20 years would have me searching through folders looking for something specific only minutes before meeting deadlines.
Some time ago I read an article about employees spending 19% of their working time looking for documents in folders. There is a lot of time that can be translated into money and stress for employees, a bad folder system can jeopardize security with lost files and give a messy impression among
So I created the perfect system
When you start thinking about it, what would a perfect folder system look like? You should plan for your long-term business goals. If you are a startup or a steadily growing company, you want a system to grow into. It will be so much easier when you do not have to think about the structure in a couple of years. If you are just getting started, it is a luxury problem, for those of you who are restructuring, you should keep in mind that links disappear or are broken.
Categories
Start by creating your own categories, these usually depend on what business you are conducting. In general, you should have administration, business development, finance, HR, marketing, customers, legal, products, projects, planning, and systems. This structure works well for companies that have departments that act as microcosms. If your company has a marketing department, an HR department, an IT department, etc., it is best to create a top-level directory for each of them. This allows workers in these departments to quickly access files that are relevant to their work.
- Admin
- Business development
- Economy
- HR
- Marketing
- Customers
- Legal
- Products
- Project
- Planning
- System
If your company focuses on specific products or services, it is a good idea to create top-level folders for each product/service. A marketing agency can have top-level directories named after its services such as web design, branding, and advertising. The exact folder names depend on your company’s offering, but the general principle applies to all product or service-based companies.
Subcategories
As I said, some common structures are suitable for a number of different company types and work styles, but it is precisely subcategories that distinguish the activities. Another thing is that I number my headers and subfolders, practical to guide colleagues (01-02-01) to find the right one and the structure looks the same everywhere. You can of course create subfolders by subfolder. Your team that handles the details of day-to-day operations needs to know which subfolder organization works best for them. A tip can be to let them brainstorm about the subfolder’s topics to meet their needs. Let the managers of each department, product or service review the list of suggested subfolders and decide which ones to implement.
- Admin
01. Corporate Registration
02. Meetings - Business Development
01. Product
02. Research
The art of sorting …
Distributing the documents correctly is at least as important. The perfect sorting system is not yet born, but simplicity is a virtue. A common pitfall to watch out for is storing too many files in one folder. If your employees need to browse through 50 files to get to the one they need, they can take advantage of a subfolder to add another organizational layer.
05. Marketing
01. Advertising
02. Branding
01. Brand Personality
06. Customers
01. New Customers
02. Prospects
Another tip for subfolders is to include dates in documents to keep them in one chronological order, for example, YYMMDD. Also include the word draft for documents that go through multiple updates. As an example, a marketing department may have filter advice that looks like this: Customer Name> Proposal> Draft> File Name.
Hope this was helpful and facilitates your everyday life, the goal is to free up time you can dedicate to other more important parts of your new business,
Good Luck!