How to Organize Digital Documents for Business
If you’re a business owner, you’re probably familiar with having lots of documents around. Whether they’re paper or digital, documents like W-2s, 1099s, and others can really clutter your workspace.
Luckily, there’s a simple solution. All you have to do is organize things a little bit.
Sure, that’s easy enough when your documents are on paper, but can you really organize a bunch of digital files? Yes!
Organizing digital documents is easy. Ready to get started? Here’s our quick guide for organizing digital documents for business.
Choose Your Storage Space
In this day and age, you aren’t restricted to saving your digital documents on a single computer. Instead, you have many options, including cloud storage.
The first step to organizing your files is choosing where you want your files stored. Choose a location and store all of your documents there. Choosing a single overall location will help keep things simple.
Keep in mind, though, that storage locations can fail, so always plan regular data backups!
Discover Your Roots
Whether you run a small business or a large one, you’re sure to have a lot of digital files. To effectively organize these files, you got to determine what your root folders are. These are the folders that create your organization system at the highest level.
Your root folders are where you begin when you’re looking for a file. For example, you may have a root folder called “Employee Documents.” Inside the root folder, you may have other folders for each type of form you use for your employees.
Choose where you want your root folder to be and stick to them. Make sure all your employee documents are placed in the employee documents folder,
Discipline Your Team
Remember that to have an effective organization system you have to use it! This means you need every member of your team using the system correctly.
Don’t forget that your team includes you! Follow your own rules or you’ll run into problems.
When your entire team puts documents where they’re supposed to go, organization is possible. This means you need to clearly train all team members so they know exactly where each file belongs.
Get Rid of Link Clutter
As a business owner, you probably have several websites you use regularly. You might use one to generate pay stubs and another to track employee hours. Help yourself keep things organized by storing helpful links in one place.
These links could include paths to online storage or digital documents. Keeping documents links organized helps with your overall document organization.
Organizing Digital Documents is Simple
Your organization system can be as complicated as you want, but when it’s broken down to its bare bones, organizing digital documents can be simple. All you need is a secure, dependable storage location, and a little discipline.
Save your documents to the same place, and have everyone do it. Clean up files and links wherever you can. It’s really that simple.
Organization leaves you more time for other things. Not sure what to do with your time? Click here to read all about branding your business.
