How’s your church’s filing system? Frustrating? Do you have a hard time finding the materials you need for preparing sermons, planning Sunday school lessons, and managing daily activities of the congregation? You may even have three or four files that contain the same information, but are labeled differently — what a mess! Fortunately, it’s not that hard to get your church document management system in order!
Creating File Categories
What causes the downfall of a filing system? Chances are, it wasn’t much of a “system” to begin with. More likely, it was just a random assortment of individual files that really had no connection to each other (aside from the fact that they lived in the same drawer.) To create a truly effective filing system, you need to start with a plan. Simply slapping a label on a folder won’t cut it!
Look at your current filing system (or that pile of paper that you’ve been meaning to file for months) and start sorting your documents into broad categories. “Sermon Outlines” might be one, “Vacation Bible School” could be another, “Church Fundraising” may be a third. At this point, we’re not focusing on detail — quite frankly, I don’t care if it’s a topical sermon or a Bible sermon right now. We’ll worry about those distinctions later on.
Once you’ve completed that step, pick one of your “major category” piles (any pile) and let’s sort through it again. This time, I want you to think about breaking your paper into smaller subcategories. For example, your “Church Fundraising” stack could be divided into “Building And Construction,” “Youth Programs,” “Missions,” “Community Service,” etc. This time, you want to be as specific as possible. When you set up a section called “Accounts,” don’t tell me that they are “bank statements” — tell me which account they belong to and break each out into a separate pile. We don’t want any files “bunking” with other files — everyone gets his or her own separate folder.
The trick to developing a workable reference file is choosing categories that make it easy to a) know where to put a piece of paper and b) know where to find it again. The problem is that most people focus entirely on the “where to put it” side of things — they don’t envision the day when they will need to retrieve that file. Then, when they go hunting for a specific document, their mind is thinking differently than on the day they filed it — so they can’t remember what they labeled the folder. As you are deciding on a category for a piece of paper, ask yourself where you would look for that piece of paper when you need it again, and be sure to include those categories and subcategories in your file indexing system for easy retrieval — this will help you create a logical file label that makes sense to you both now and down the road.
So now implement those ‘categories’ into Paper Tiger Filing System Software and Document Management. Indexing your files into the database so that you can find your file later no matter how you file it originally. Depending on how large each individual category is, it could be a Location of its own or an Item Name with keywords included for each category or file folder. The most important thing to remember here is to enter keywords associated with each piece of paper that you input into a file folder. That way when you want to find it six months or two years later, you would be able to conduct a google-like search in your database and find what you need in seconds.
Labeling
After you’ve completed the sorting, each major category of paperwork should be assigned a different color (your choice) — and then we’re going to put each of its subcategories into an individual hanging file folder. So in the filing system example above, “Church Fund-raising” might be green, and each of your fund-raising accounts gets a separate green hanging file folder. Then perhaps “Sermons” are in red, and each different topic (“Weathering Hard Times,” “Family And Marriage,” “Scripture,” “Finances And Money,” “Faith,” etc.) is assigned a separate red hanging file. It might seem like a small thing, but color-coding your system will save you a huge amount of time in filing and retrieving papers. Being able to look in your file drawers and see distinct bodies of information broken out by color just makes sense to your brain. And when you know that your financial statements are in green and your sermon topics are in red and your youth program materials are in blue, you don’t even have to think — your hand just naturally goes to the appropriate section your file drawer.
Now that everyone has their own colored folder, we need to label each file. When creating your labels, move from general to specific. Don’t tell me you are filing paperwork for your “Guatemala Mission Trip” — call it “Mission Trip: Guatemala.” If you are filing alphabetically, all of the “Mission” files (no matter how many you have) will be together alphabetically, rather than scattered hither and yon. Our goal is to keep related files in close proximity to each other. Do this again and again for every grouping of files until you have labeled every file in each major category.
Setting It All Up
All you have to do now is put the files within each major category in alphabetical order, and then put the major categories themselves into the drawer in alphabetical order. Whenever you need to find a document or put something in a folder, just look first for the correct major category (identified by both the labels and the color) — then it’s easy to put your hands on the correct file without a lot of searching.
Remember that we’re setting up “reference” folders — these files contain documents that don’t require immediate action, but that you do need to access regularly. They could be financial records, administrative papers, information on past projects, trip ideas, you name it. But the one thing each piece of paper has in common is that you have to be able to find it quickly on demand. In order to make that happen, here are a couple of things to keep in mind as you set up your system:
• pick a category that is broad enough to encompass more than just a couple of pieces of paper — it’s quicker and easier to search through a few thicker folders whose contents are all related, than a dozen different “onesie and twosie” files which have nothing in common with each other.
• choose one type of filing system and stick with it — it doesn’t matter if you file chronologically, alphabetically, or another way — just be consistent and do it the same way, all the time, throughout your entire system.
• when your files get overstuffed, it’s time to divide that category out into a couple of smaller subcategories — if your “Youth Programs: Vacation Bible School” folder has gotten way too big, you can break it out chronologically (“Youth Programs: Vacation Bible School 2009″, ” Youth Programs: Vacation Bible School 2010″) or topically (“Youth Programs: Vacation Bible School / Crafts”, “Youth Programs: Vacation Bible School / Speakers”, “Youth Programs: Vacation Bible School / Games”, etc.) so that the documents are still all together, but you have fewer pages per folder.
Follow these simple, yet effective steps for creating reference files, and you’ll discover that your system takes most of the work out of filing (and retrieving) your important documents, and for the most part can be structured alphabetically – the way most of our minds work!
Then there are always those files that come through that you just don’t know where to file because they don’t fall into a specific category. Indexing with Paper Tiger makes filing simple. Utilizing Paper Tiger Filing System Software and Document Management along with this ‘category’ structure is great for new people that come into the office or when the office assistant is out for vacation.
Ramona Creel is Professional Organizer, NAPO Golden Circle Member, and the original founder of OnlineOrganizing. A former Social Worker, she has always enjoyed helping people find the resources and solutions they need to improve their lives. Ramona now travels the country as a full-time RVer, sharing her story of simplicity with everyone she meets. She leads by example — having worked for more than 10 years as a Professional Organizer, and having radically downsized and simplified her own life as a full-time RVer. Ramona now considers herself a “Renaissance Woman” — bringing all of her passions together into one satisfying career. As a “Virtual Organizer”, she can create a customized organizing plan for your home or office. As a “Simplicity and Accountability Coach “, Ramona provides a proven program for making every area of your life a little bit easier — perfect for those who want to make the time and space to focus on their true priorities. As a Professional Photographer, Ramona captures powerful images of places and people as she travels. And as a freelance writer and blogger, she shares organizing techniques, travel tips, and social commentary with others. You can see all these sides of Ramona — read her articles, browse through her photographs, and even hire her to help get your life in order — at www.RamonaCreel.com. You can also follow her on Twitter, check out her Facebook profile, and subscribe to her blog feeds.
[...] other information at Organizing Church Documents The Easy Way for tips on labeling and [...]