Even if your company is growing and making money, there are still ways that you can improve. One way is to try and organize your environment and your processes so that they are more efficient and easier to use. Even if you don’t mind the piles of boxes or papers on the floor, it will still make a difference to your business, how productive you can be, and health and safety. Here are some top tips for getting organized.
Do an Office ‘Purge’
If you have been running your business for a while, the chances are that you have probably collected a lot of papers that you no longer need. These could be taking up valuable space or causing a fire hazard at the least. Take some time to go through all of the paperwork and throw out what you no longer need for recycling. Anything confidential you need to shred, or you can employ a company that will burn it for you. You also want to recycle or throw away any old equipment you no longer use, and any office furniture that is broken.
Paper Files
A study found that the average person will spend 4 hours per week searching for files. That is a lot of wasted time, so you should be sorting through your files to remove any that are no longer needed. If there are any that you need to keep for reference, then scan them into your computer and throw away the originals.
Throw Away Paper Receipts
Most of the time in business, you won’t need to keep all of those small receipts that you keep for your accounting. There are now many apps that can scan the receipts and send them to the people looking after your accounts. The same applies to your taxes. Companies like Tax Return can deal with much of your accounts electronically so that paper copies can be filed.
Use Cloud Storage
If you are going to be scanning a lot of paperwork or switching to a paperless office, then you need somewhere to store all that data. There are many cloud storage solutions out there, so it is best to do a little research and see which of them is the best for your set-up and what works with your own software. Although many will have a set amount of storage for free, you will need a business account so that you can benefit from more storage.
Organize Emails
With time being so precious, the last thing you need is to be searching in your inbox for an email you received a year or more ago. That’s why you need to organize your emails into categories that you can move emails to when they arrive. You won’t have to go through as many, especially if you also start to delete older emails that are no longer relevant.
Becoming more organized is so important to your business because you want to portray a professional image to your clients and be able to give them what they want as fast as possible.
