Keeping documents and records is vital for businesses; mostly when it comes to compliance and security, but also for productivity. The more unorganized your documents are stored, the more likely there is a data breach, and the longer it takes to retrieve information. So, here are 4 tips to help keep your business documentation neat and organized.
Go paperless
First and foremost, you need to go paperless. And whilst it can pose some new threats and issues if done incorrectly (please check the next tip), it’s important to begin transitioning to a paperless way of storing documents. Digitally organizing your documents will be much faster and more versatile, finding and retrieving information out of them will be much faster, and communication will be cheaper and more environmentally friendly. Of course, it seems like a security threat to have them on the computer, but in most cases, it’s proven to be safer than lying around in their physical form.
Document management system
A document management solution is an important second step. If there was just one tip from this list that is most relevant, it’s this one, but you need to already be ready to go paperless.
Implementing a management system can help keep confine the problem and help provide some structure. You can create your own system, but more wisely, you can use a cloud-based scalable platform to help store them.
The cloud-based management solutions can help save space (both on your hard drives/servers and physically in the office), integrate all content that can be easily shared and assigned access with streamlined collaborations, and have watertight cybersecurity. Going at it alone or on Google Drive can be clunky and may not fit all of your needs.
Record retention
One problem of managing all of your documents as a business is that just keeping any and every document forever can exacerbate the problem – you may not need all of your documents. On the other hand, you simply must keep certain tax records for X amount of time in order to be compliant, in which non-compliance can land you in expensive trouble.
So, documents need to be appropriately labeled as when they need to be kept by, allowing you to remove them when appropriate. Some document management systems may have features in which they will automatically delete the documents upon expiry should you want that to happen.
Fortunately, if you have a good system for retrieval along with vast cloud storage space, your need to purge obsolete documents becomes less pressing – which is a good thing.
Backing up
Finally, ensure your documents are safe by having a safe backup protocol. The management system may take care of this for you, but it’s vital to have somewhere in which you can recover lost documents. Otherwise, your neat and organized collection of documents can quickly unravel if a storage disaster strikes, or some are lost and damaged. HMRC among other bodies will not accept accidental loss of documents as a plausible reason for noncompliance, so don’t forget the basics.
Talha Ali is your tech generalist, covering a wide spectrum of topics within the ever-evolving world of technology. With a curiosity for the latest innovations, industry trends, and breakthroughs. Whether it’s hardware, software, emerging technologies, or the intersection of tech with daily life, Talha’s articles provide readers with a well-rounded perspective on the dynamic landscape of the tech industry.