Office Space Article
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How To Effectively Organize Your Office Space
"While many offices are trying to go paperless, the fact remains that some paperwork is necessary. Many business transactions require the proper paperwork and the IRS is just one organization that may require hard copies rather than electronic copies. If you have a small office you may find yourself running out of space to put all your paperwork. Organizing and properly filing your papers is essential should you ever need to find anything specific.
Trying to organize a mass of paperwork can seem like an impossible task. Many people don't know what to throw out and what to keep so all papers get shoved into boxes and drawers. |
Finding anything becomes impossible. The management of all companies needs to come up with ways to organize and file important paperwork.
""Most small businesses don't deal with their papers until it's too late,"" said Barbara Hemphill a well-known author on the subject of office efficiency. Paperwork piles up and documents are impossible to locate. If management and owners learned more about time management, paperwork would be in its place.
Beginning to Organize
Start by declaring an office cleanup day. All employees should pitch in and help organize any and all paperwork in the office. If at all possible schedule this on a day that you're normally closed to avoid any distractions. Paying your staff overtime for one day will be well worth it once you see the results.
Organizing your office space and paperwork is more difficult if you work alone, but not impossible. Even entrepreneur diehards can squeeze in a day for cleanup.
The paperwork atop your desk needs to be first priority. Organize by subject and then date. After sorting is out of the way, it is time to put everything in its proper place. If file folders do not exist for some of the paperwork, then create some so there is a place for them.
The accounting should be a top priority for obvious reasons so find all of the income statements and receipts lying about the place and sort these too. You always want your records to be current, so stick to the task of posting transactions to your books until everything is up to date. I can be a slacker on this one myself and wind up spending the majority of the day recording transactions. If it looks like you are not going to get finished, then just quit at a point that will be easy to start back up from again.
Upon organizing the paperwork into folders, you are going to require some boxes or perhaps some crates to store all the documents in for safekeeping. The particular way in which you file things will naturally be determined by the nature of your business. But, irrespective of the type of business you operate, all companies should file accounts payable and accounts receivable at the same time. The critical thins is that you have some kind of system for your filing.
Organizing your Computer Documents
Fire or water can wreak havoc on a business if either of these two hazards reach critical documents. Businesses have coped with these dangers by investing in scanners so that they can digitize their physical documents.
Computer documents are easily accessible and easier to file on a CD or 3.5"" floppy. Of course, if you want to be really high-tech, you can use an external hard drive to store your documents. CD's, floppies, and external hard drives should be stored in a fire resistant safe, or off the premises.
You must be able to access information in a timely fashion in order to get through the list of tasks that must be accomplished on a daily basis. Do not procrastinate and put off organizing your office space because management strategies are essential to the success of your business.
Hemphill says that ""Your ability to accomplish daily tasks is directly related to your ability to find the right information at the right time."" If your office isn't currently organized make it your number one priority. It will save you time and money in the future."
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