When you bring a new filing system into your small business office, some of the employees might be a little concerned. If you currently have a haphazard filing system, especially one that is unconventional at best, you might find yourself at the mercy of the few people who understand it. If there is no organization system that works the same way for every employee, there will be reluctance of most people to try to find any information at all. And, if that one employee that actually gets the filing system has to be out of the office for an extended time or worse leaves the company, where will that leave you?
A good filing system, like Paper Tiger Filing System Software for Document Management, is one that is effective, adaptable and expandable, but most importantly, is simple enough to be used by everyone in the office without needing hours of training. Ideally, you want to take a new employee to the computer, show them the basics of the system and then be done. That is the mark of a good system: the ability to show it off once and then walk away, no hand holding needed.
Your employees should know what their duties and responsibilities are in regard to the filing system in the office. There should never be just that one person that does all of the filing and updating, especially in a very small office where there only a few employees to begin with. Remember: the more that you rely on one single person other than yourself, the more trouble you will have if that person has to be out of office for vacation or sickness or decides to leave your business.
Instead of allowing papers to pile up, there should be a systematic filing system – preferably when a paper or document comes in to the office. The right organizational filing system is also one that will allow you to file away other items, not just papers. A small business has just as much obligation to keep an accurate inventory of their business machines or products as a larger business. Being able to keep track of those items on the same filing system that manages your paper documents streamlines your entire operation. Of course, the document management systems that require you to scan everything will not be useful for this process. You can’t scan an adding machine or a set of office phones.
The papers that you have laying around can be very messy, but more importantly, they can be dangerous to your business. The more time that you have to spend shuffling papers around, the less time you have to focus on your business which means less time that you have to make money. Because there are so many papers that can be vital to the operation of a business, it becomes even more important to make sure that they are where they need to be when you need them.
In addition, it is important to create a records retention guideline for your document management system so you and your employees will have a systematic system in place to know when to purge certain types of files, how long to keep records. For more information on records retention, please see articles that you might find helpful in our blog category: Retention Guidelines: How Long Should You Keep Records
Implementing a simple, straightforward, easy to use organizational filing system, like Paper Tiger Filing System Software for Document Management, in your business allows you and your employees to focus on what really matters.
