Treat your small business to a make over

A thriving business relies on both people and systems. You’ve recently acknowledged your administrative professionals for the important role they play in your business. Now it’s time to assess the contribution that your systems have given and maybe spend time giving your systems a minor makeover. If you are by chance a small-business owner, then it could be that systems are the only “administrative professionals” you have. When your systems succeed, your business succeeds. When your systems fail, your business fails. The business’s capacity for profit will be lessened to the degree that your systems are clunky and slow. Systems of business to a large extent depend on a system of organizing paperwork (Even if you are totally paperless, your systems rely on organizing electronic paperwork.) It may be unglamorous but because of this dependence, organizing paper work is one of the most important functions. Your goal is to “set it and forget it” – configure your system correctly to serve your needs. What you want is a quick, nimble, low-maintenance system for organizing paperwork. For small business owners it is even more crucial that a system for organizing paperwork functions as a super-effective administrative professional. Your system should perform a few functions regarding organizing paperwork that save you time & effort in order to act like an administrative professional: • Protect you from wasting time sorting through junk • Put paperwork where it belongs fast • Pull paperwork fast • Purge paperwork as it is no longer needed Protect Protect yourself from having to sort through junk by stop junk from coming to you. Use Catalog Choice Mail Stopper! Catalog Choice can reduce your junk mail by 90 percent, for free! Organizing paperwork will be quicker and simpler if you are have less paper to organize. Fast Filing: pulling and putting away paperworkr Two things are important to saving yourself time according to research. 1) You need to be able to find any paper in 30 seconds or less and 2) be able to file incoming papers easily time after time. How is this achieved? Set up a system for organizing paperwork that is both easy to use and just as importantly also easy to maintain. Your filing system should be suited to you. Organize paperwork with a simple category based system that can change and grow with your needs. Avoid having to re-do your office or home filing system again, do it right the first time. You could try the Fast-Filing Method, a popular category-based filing system. Or, choose a different system of organizing paperwork. Just make sure it is straight forward and easy! Purge: Shred, Recycle, or Convertr Organizing paperwork is only made more difficult by extra unneeded paperwork! Purge what you don’t need by shredding, recycling, or converting paperwork to electronic format. Trying to decide whether paperwork is unnecessary, think about this information: According to the National Association of Professional Organizers, the average person has 3000+ documents filed, and 83% of it is never referenced again! When you get ready to start purging, sort your paperwork into 3 categories: shred, recycle, and keep. Find a bag for recycling and a paper shredder. Then START, sort and purge. Don’t get to this point again keep a paper shredder and recycling bin near your desk for unnecessary paper, and sort the paper right away. (This will be easy, you’ve eliminated 90% of all incoming junk mail.) Decide which paperwork you want to store in paper format, and which you will keep in electronic format. If possible do not keep a copy in both formats. If you don’t need the paper format, shred or recycle the paper, after you scan a document into your computer. Continue to use the ideas of protect, put it away fast, pull it fast, and purge in your system for organizing home paperwork and you will continue to find success!