Paper Tiger Blog

This article in the Financial Advisor Magazine gives us many tips for organizing a financial services office (and once again, the tips are applicable for many small offices) and controlling disorganization.  The article deals with how to deal with the constant flow of paper coming into the office and how to get better organized.  Keeping up with the client paper files alone in many financial planners’ offices are enough to cause stress.  It is imperative that a system be put in place that keeps managing clutter and setting up a workable paper filing system or document management system, a very high priority.  This article provides some good suggestions.  You can read a short portion of the article and then click on the link to read the entire article.  See Paper Tiger Document Management and Filing System software mentioned in the article.

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Financial Advisor Magazine
July 2004 issue
Conquering The Paperwork Mountain
Some cost-efficient ways to improve productivity–and avoid headaches.
By David L. Lawrence

If you have been in the financial services business for any length of time, you know that paperwork can become an overwhelming task. Apart from the piles of mail that must be sorted through every day, there is the unending task of filing, forms to keep track of and compliance paperwork that, in recent years, has increased tremendously. I have visited financial advisors’ offices where paperwork stretching back months is unceremoniously stacked in piles on the floor of the office. One advisor told me that when the piles get so high that it is difficult to walk to and from the desk, then all other tasks are dropped so that the piles can be dealt with.

Consider how much it costs to maintain inefficient paperwork and filing systems. If, as a direct result of not having efficient systems, it costs you and/or your staff one hour each day (this is probably conservative), and you used a $50-per-hour cost factor over the course of an entire year—the cost of inefficiency could top $12,000 in lost time ($50 x five days per week x 48 weeks).

Read the full version of the article by clicking here.

The time it takes to convert your piles and files is justified!

Does converting your files to ‘The Paper Tiger way’ seem overwhelming? Do you have an office full of stacks and stacks of paper to be filed and lots of file drawers to convert?

There is an investment of time to set up your new file system with The Paper Tiger, but when you consider that the average person wastes 150 hours per year looking for lost and misplaced papers, even if it took two (8 hour) days to convert …that would be 16 hours vs. 150 hours. The investment of time is well worth it because you will be so much more productive for years to come.

The Paper Tiger actually makes filing easier and quicker to do once you have it set up, because you set up the empty hanging files prior to filing (a file labeled with a number can be labeled ahead of time) so they are waiting empty in the file drawer to receive your paper files. So when you’re ready to file, you don’t have to search for a hanging folder nor do you have to create a printed label at the time you create a new file.

Listed below are some plans of action.

• Block off a couple of workdays and get it over with. Plan ahead and make sure that you have an assistant; anyone who can type to enter the data you relay to them will make the file conversion go much more quickly. Go ahead and input the numbered tabs into your hanging folders (files you already have set up in your desk drawers and file cabinets, and new hanging folders for new files.) You tell your assistant which words to enter into the database for Item Name, Keywords, and Category starting with #1 and forward. Then, you can put the papers into the appropriate numbered file.  This will also be a good time to decide file retention for each file and use the Action Date section to remind you to archive or trash after a pre-determined amount of time.
• Converting will be more difficult without an assistant, but it can be done.
• We suggest starting with the papers on your desk. Make a decision for every piece of paper.
• Throw away what you can do without (if you can toss all the paper in your life and find it later on the Internet or get it from someone else, recycle!)
• Does the paper require Action? If so, decide which action and file appropriately. Use the handy Action tabs that come with your shipment or printed from Paper Tiger to help you decide how to file Action items! You may also want to set up a daily and/or monthly follow up system to help you with dated items, which you should check daily.
• If you want to keep for later reference and it doesn’t require action, place in stack to file (or tray labeled ‘To File’)
• Next, go to your desk drawers. If you’ve already input the numbered tabs in your hanging folders, you’re ready to type into Paper Tiger the item name and keywords for each file.

Note: If your hanging file folder has several items that you want to include into 1 Item Name in Paper Tiger, you would simply add keywords for all document items into the Keyword section of the same Item Name. In addition, you may want to separate the physical documents in the hanging file folder with manilla folders. In this case, you might also want to number the manilla folders and include the number that you input on the manilla folder with the coinciding keywords in the Keyword section.

• Go to your file cabinets next, one drawer at a time. Before you know it, you’ll be done!
• If blocking off complete days will not work for you, commit to doing a certain number of files per day. So if you had 150 files to convert and you said you would do 10 a day, in 15 days you would have it done. If you do this, you need to schedule the time in your calendar to do the conversion and then be disciplined about keeping these appointments with yourself.

Do a combination of the above in some way that will work for you. Decide on the most important sections of your files and convert them immediately. Then you commit to a couple of hours a week or 1 drawer a day until the rest is done…whatever works for you. Statistically, 80% of our existing files are never referenced again, so as you are going through each file, and you know you haven’t referenced a file for several months (and probably won’t again,) decide if you can toss it or if it needs to be archived. If it needs to be archived, put the file in the last drawer to be converted. When you get to that drawer, you can create a location called Archive within Paper Tiger, input the file item name and keywords in that Archive location, then box the file to be sent to wherever you send archived files.

Also, you don’t have to add keywords for every piece of paper in a file if the file name contains the only word(s) you would ever look up to find it. (ex: invoices)

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The Paper Tiger Filing software is not only a filing system for your papers, but a finding system that can be used for so many other things for which you want to keep track. One of our attorney customers told me he uses Paper Tiger for keeping track of and check for client conflict of interest. Watch for our upcoming newsletter and our blog for other great ideas. If you don’t currently receive our monthly newsletter, sign up today on our home page www.thepapertiger.com.