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Drowning in a sea of paperwork?

By Navigator member Lesley Beagley, Director, SOS Virtual Assistant

As a professional Virtual Assistant (VA), my job is to help my clients deal with all those important but non revenue-generating tasks that clutter up their desk and headspace, leaving them free to focus on building their business and dealing with those things that only they can do.

But what if you are not yet at the stage in your business where a VA is a viable option? What can you do to get organised and save yourself  from drowning in a sea of paperwork? Here are my top tips for getting, and staying, organised.

Think ahead and think BIG!
Where do you expect your business to be in 5 years time? 10 Years time? When you are planning your office systems, think much bigger than your current list of clients and suppliers; there is nothing more frustrating than having to re-organise everything because your business has outgrown a system you put in place to cater for where you are now rather than where you want to go. You may need to move into bigger premises as you expand, you may need to take on more staff, you may need to upgrade computer software, but if the basic principles of organisation are right in the first place, all of those processes will be far simpler.

A Place for everything…
Set up your office and computer so that everything you need to deal with has a specific home. This way, not only will you be able to work in a tidy environment, you will always know where to put something when it arrives and more importantly, where to find it  when you need it!

You will need places for physical paperwork and folders on your computer for electronic paperwork.  A filing drawer with hanging files for everything you are not working on today, and a couple of stacking trays for things to action and things to assign. A cardex file for business cards collected at networking events and meetings (even though you will enter them into a database too!). And a large paper recycling bin!  

Have a single book on your desk for making notes from phone calls, noting down voicemail messages, noting down odd ideas etc. Each morning put the date at the top of the page so you know when you made the notes when you refer back to them. So much easier than a collection of notes scribbled on the back of envelopes or piles of sticky notes!

Chunk UP, then break it down
All of the information you use in your business will relate primarily to one of just a few key areas:
Clients / Sales
Suppliers / Purchases
Accounts / Finance
Marketing
Staff
General Admin / other
(you may have one or two others specific to your business, but try to keep this initial list of major categories as short as possible)

Start by creating physical filing folders and electronic folders on your computer and email client for each major category. 

Within each category, you can then begin to break things down to fit your vision.  For example…. how do you need to categorise your clients? Is your vision to go national or even global? Will you need to break them down by country or region before alphabetising them?  Do you have different groups of suppliers for different areas of your business… for example an Event Organiser might want to categorise suppliers as Venues / Caterers / Transportation / Audio-Visual / Entertainment…  

Accounts should be subdivided into Sales Invoices / Purchase Receipts / Bank Statements. Invoices and Receipts might be further divided by month or by client / supplier name, depending on how many transactions you might anticpate with each client or supplier.

It’s almost certain you won’t need all these folders right away, and I am not suggesting you set aside a whole room of empty filing cabinets for the physical files you might eventually keep on your clients etc., but a simple extra hanging file in the drawer, labelled in readiness, does two things; it reminds you constantly of your vision for your business, and gives you a ready-made place to put things when you do start to grow.

There is no right or wrong way to categorise, just try to think ahead and apply a little logic to make it as simple and intuitive as possible… in the future, as you grow, it won’t be just you trying to locate things.

Give yourself a BAFTA
Allow yourself only five options when receiving any piece of paperwork, whether electronic or physical;
Bin, Assign, File, Task, or Action

Bin
Be firm and honest with yourself – do not keep endless articles, brochures and magazines because you “ought” to read them, whilst secretly knowing you never will.  Have the quickest flip through and make a decision.  If you think you might need it for reference later add the details to a database of useful contacts to get another copy when you actually have a need, or if you really genuinely believe your will need it fairly soon, file it. Otherwise Bin it, right away.

Assign
Anything that could be done by someone else should be done by someone else, so forward the email to the relevant person, or put the piece of paper into a reserved and labelled folder or tray that is passed on regularly – invoices to your book-keeper for example.

File
Now you’ve got your systems in place (as above in point 3), you can immediately file anything that you need to keep but which doesn’t need action. Do it as soon as you have been through the day’s post, and remember the facility of setting up message rules in Outlook and other email clients to do this for you instantly.

Task
These are the things where you need to take some action, but not necessarily right away.  Perhaps a trade journal that you definitely must read.  Put these to one side and/or add a task to your To Do / Outlook Task list.

Action
This is what you are left with that needs action right away.  By this stage, you’ve not only dealt with probably 75% of your mail and cleared it off your desk and out of your head, you have clarity on the important stuff.

Its never too late
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago.  The second best time is now!  So even if you are currently sitting there surrounded by boxes of magazines to read “later”, piles of “stuff” that needs going through, sorting out, actioning and filing, or can never find the client file you need when you want it, its never too late to get some systems in place.   

Most good Virtual Assistants will offer a “Sorting Out Stuff” service, whereby they will stop being virtual for a short while and come to your office to get systems set up, perhaps taking away the boxes and piles of paper whilst they are sorted, and returning to you in a neatly organised fashion, thus minimising disruption. Or just set aside a weekend and commit to completing the task yourself.

From there you can easily keep on top of things until the extra time you’ve created for by being organised means inevitable growth of your business. Then you can consider taking on your own VA!

© Lesley Beagley, Director, SOS Virtual Assistant

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