by Gisela D. Perez

Created on: March 28, 2008

Advice for setting up an office filing system is advice that everyone who either owns or works in an office needs to know. Filing is one of the mundane tasks that everyone detests but is very necessary to the efficiency of the company and in maintaining an efficient work flow. Those who work in the administrative support fields or own their own small business know how confusing it can be to come up with the right filing system to meet their needs. There are ways however to make the process a lot easier and simple to maintain once completed.

The first step to setting up an office filing system is to survey the needs of that particular company as well as the size and expected growth. This is key to estimating exactly how much space should be dedicated to the filing system and how complex or organized that system should be. For large companies, large file cabinets are a must have while small businesses may benefit from simple small 2 drawer file cabinets.

Once the size of the system is determined, the type of documents that the filing system is for need to be taken into account. Some businesses involve more paperwork than others, especially those selling products in large quantities. This can include the need for various files for every customer.

Color coding with the newer colored file folders can really come in handy and make the filing system easier to use when more than one file is needed per client or vendor. For instance for a business that sells a product one hanging file folder can be dedicated to each customer or vendor. This hanging file folder will then hold individual colored file folders. This system makes it easy to find all documents pertaining to one customer in one place and makes it visually easy to find what you are looking for by assigning certain colors to certain categories throughout every file. For instance green for paid invoices, red for past due invoices, yellow for contracts, blue for contact information, purple for correspondence, etc. This way everyone who needs to utilize the file system will know that when looking for past invoices for a certain customer all they need to do is pull the red folder under the customer name and when needing the entire customer file they can easily pull the entire hanging file folder versus having to pull various files from various locations. This organized and color coded office filing system also avoids and entire file from being lost when only a certain type of document is needed for that client.

Every good filing system needs to have an accountability system in place as well, using the same theory as one would see in a library. Having a sign-out sheet at the front of every file or simply sitting on the file cabinet makes it easy to track down files when they're in use by someone else. Often files can get lost amongst the piles of paperwork on someone's desk or someone can forget to put the file back in it's place after using it. Having an accountability system for your office filing system ensures that you will always know where your files are and who has them.

The last and easiest step in maintaining the filing system. To do these a series of desktop trays should be placed above the filing cabinet. One tray per file category is a good rule of thumb. Doing so will help avoid having to go back and forth while filing and also help prevent misfiling of documents. Giving everyone who will utilize the filing system a brief introduction to the new system is a smart way to make sure that everyone is on the same page of how the system will work and help keep the new office filing system running smoothly and efficiently.

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