Have you ever searched all morning for a document without finding it or has it ever taken hours to find information you need? If so, you need to organize your paperwork into a filing system where you can store the information for efficient retrieval when you need it.

Here's a great filing system to help you organize your paperwork so you can always retrieve the information you need efficiently.

Where to Store Your Information?

If you're going to organize your files, you need a place to organize them. One alternative is a filing cabinet where you can organize and store a huge number of papers in a small space. Filing cabinets range from small two door untis to large 4 drawer lateral ones. One good way to obtain a larger commercial filing cabinet at a reasonable cost is to watch for businesses selling their furniture. I once bought a commercial grade 2 drawer lateral unit at one of these sales for $25. In any event, make sure the unit you purchase is equipped with rigging for hanging both letter size and legal sized hanging folders.

You should utilize legal sized hanging folders and file folders with plastic tabs in your file cabinet. The cabined should be positioned in your work space so you can access it easily from your desk.

 

How to Organize Your File Cabinet?

Create your filing system in a fashion that makes sense to you. Select your categories to be broad enough to keep the number of papers typically held in your folders approximately equal, yet logical enough until you can always find the items you are seeking.

Every three months, review your file folders checking their relative size. As folders become too full, break down the category for the folder into additional categories and folders to divide the paperwork. Also review your files and discard all information you no longer need by asking yourself: What's the worst that could happen if I don't have this piece of paper? Have a tendency to discard rather than keep documents you don't access often.

Index based file systems are the best. In an indexed file system, you maintain a central index for your files as you create them with the file's location. You start your index by documenting the highest level categories for your filing system on a set of papers filed at the front of all your files.

In your index, separate files into two categories: Active and History. Active files are the ones you access regularly and History files are those that you won't need to access as part of your daily, weekly, or monthly routines. Store History files in an area of your file cabinet that is more difficult to reach. Active files should be stored in the location within your filing cabinet that is easiest to reach from your desk.

 

Managing Paperwork Begins When It is Received

When you receive the mail, sort it into two piles: One pile for junk and advertising mail to be discarded, and one pile for personal business mail. In my case, the junk and advertising mail is quickly discarded leaving only the pile for personal mail.

Then open your personal business mail. If you don't have time to open the mail immediately on retrieving it from your mailbox, then leave it in your mailbox until you have time. This will leave an incentive for you to open the mail instead of stacking it for later opening. This approach eliminates the piling up of unopened mail.

As you open each piece of personal business mail, sort it into piles. I like to sort mine into the following piles: a pile for payments or actions I need to schedule and all advertisement and junk mail is put in a pile to be discarded.

Then, discard the advertisement/junk mail and process the "pile for payments or actions". In today's world of computers, your bank has services allowing you to schedule payment of your bills online. Utilizing these services, you can quickly move your bills from your "pile for payments or actions" into a "Scheduled for Payment" file. Simply take each bill and schedule the payment using your bank's online system.

Using your bank's system, you can schedule the payment to be mailed immediately or schedule it to be made on a future date. You can also utilize this system for paying bills with our cash forecasting system. Once the bill is scheduled, move the invoice or bill into a file folder entitled "Scheduled for Payment". Keep bills for the last three months in this file and discard previous months during the three month file purging mentioned above.

Files for Other Paperwork

As you decide to keep other papers, sort them into categories and use post-it notes to designate the category piles. These piles should be organized into broad categories such as photographs, hobbies, real estate, taxes, money, credit, etc. These broader categories should be hanging folders.

Place paperwork for subcategories into multiple manila folders to be housed within the hanging folder for the category.