In a company, countless documents accumulate every day, and you can’t just throw them away. All company correspondence, such as incoming and outgoing invoices, applications, approval notices, invitations, appointment confirmations and much more cannot simply be recycled. Important documents must be kept for a certain period of time according to the will of the legislator.
In order to store the different documents in a well sorted way, you can create an archive. In this way, one does not have countless papers lying around at the workplace and creates order on the desk.
1. Create a structure
In order to create an archive, it is necessary to think about a structure beforehand, to create enough space and to provide the necessary utensils. An empty office or a dry cellar room can serve as a place for the archive. To create a rough structure, it can be helpful to use shelving units whose individual areas are e.g. be used for certain subject areas. Once the shelves have been labeled, the archive can almost be created. It is also worth considering whether to use file folders, suspension files, drawers or so-called archive standing collectors for the documents.
2. Archive company correspondence by name
The company correspondence could also be sorted by addressee, so that the desired documents can be found under the name of the respective company.
3. Archiving by date
Another possibility of archiving is sorting and storing according to the date of receipt or dispatch. In this way, one only has to find the correct date and immediately has all documents at hand that were created on a certain day. Of course, such an archive requires subordinate sorting, for example, according to the type of document (e.g. Invoice, bank letter, conversation note).
4. Archive bank data separately
Bank documents should always occupy a separate area in an archive or even be kept in a completely separate archive, as they are by far the most frequently required documents. In addition, bank documents almost always contain sensitive data to which not everyone should have access.
5. Space-saving but costly – the digital archive
In many companies there are already digitally created archives. In order to create such an archive, all documents must first be scanned and then stored as a file on a computer with as large a memory disk as possible. In addition, a good structure is required for a digital archive, so that the desired documents can be found again at any time. However, one should never forget to make regular backup copies of the archive, so that in the event of a possible failure of the technology (e.g., a computer failure), the archive can be saved.B. computer damage) the entire archive is not destroyed.
Important!
Unfortunately, many originals of documents archived in this way cannot simply be destroyed, but must also be retained, as they must be stored in accordance with applicable law. Creating order on the desk in this way actually means doing twice the work.
Whichever form of archive you choose, it will definitely help to restore order to your desk and to quickly and securely file the documents that come up every day.