Love it or hate it, filing is a necessity for almost every business. Without proper filing, paperwork can become unmanageable and you may waste time looking for important documents, if you can find them at all. Here are some tips to keep your filing system optimally organized.
Less is more
First and foremost, you should shred or recycle all documents that it’s not absolutely necessary to keep. Instead of sorting through a filing cabinet periodically to throw out papers that have never and will never be used, don’t file unnecessary clutter – for example, ads and informational letters from companies you’ll never get in touch with – in the first place.
It’s also a good idea to assign “toss-out” dates to each document you file. This makes it easy to spot documents that are no longer necessary and that you can throw out.
Speed up retrieval
It’s important that the filing system you use allows you and others to find documents as quickly as possible.
A neat way to do this is to keep a separate filing system close to you for documents that are likely to be called for soon or regularly. This will make finding those documents easier than if they were filed together with all other documents, including those that hardly get used but have to be kept for business or legal purposes.
If you don’t have the facilities for a separate filing cabinet, making a note of “files in use” using adhesive stickers is another smart way of making it easier to find documents you regularly have to access.
Choose a system
The key to making any filing system useful is proper organisation. The type of content you need to file will help determine the type of system you should use. For example, you might choose to file documents
- alphabetically
- numerically, for example by product code
- based on geographical region
- chronologically
- by subject
A great way to arrange folders is to take inspiration from the way folders are nested on your computer. Instead of having folders arranged simply by date or alphabetically, you can use wider concertina folders for nesting smaller folders, helping to keep related documents near each other.
You can even take this a step further and have a filing system on your computer that mirrors that of your filing cabinet, so that you can use your computer’s “search” function to determine where a particular document is stored.
Light loading
You should never fill a file shelf or drawer beyond about 90% of its storage capacity. Once you start packing any tighter than that, it will become difficult to flip through documents to find what you need. It’s also important not to pack more into a file than it’s meant to hold. This may cause the file to bend and fray, possibly pushing the folder tab out of sight and preventing you from seeing it in a filing cabinet.
K-Mark’s filing solutions
Whatever filing system you choose, you need a suitable filing cabinet. K-Mark provides bulk filing solutions in the form of a cabinets that are custom made to your specifications and with software available to help you stay organized. K-Mark’s filing cabinets can be designed to include any of the following features:
- pull-out cradles for holding suspension files and computer binders
- pull-out drawers suited to containerised baskets
- a pull-out reference table
- security cabinets
- wire racks, and
- static cradles
