Whether you are a recent start-up or a more established bigger organisation, archiving documents is a necessity for any business. From receipts to legal contracts, and outdated documents to important files, whilst some paperwork can be thrown away, some has to be kept for legal reasons.
Keeping on top of and organising your paperwork will also leave you with more space and less stress, and saves you time in the long run, making for a more efficient workplace. So if you have been neglecting your office archiving recently, we have put together some easy steps for you to follow:
- Auditing
To organise your documents properly you need to first know what you are dealing with, so that means taking a thorough audit of all your paperwork and deciding what you need to keep and what can be thrown away. Once you have established what you are going to keep, then you need to decide the best way to keep it depending on what the document is and how often you will need to access it. Some documents can be scanned and stored electronically, some need to be kept in paper format and some can be archived for long-term, but less frequent, accessibility.
- Purging
After you audit, you should be left with a lot of paperwork that you can get rid of completely. Double check that each document has exceeded its legal and recommended retention period, and then dispose of the document. You can do this using a shredder or for highly sensitive materials, source a professional disposal company that specialises in destroying highly classified or personal information.
- Verifying
Once you are left with the documents you are keeping, then verify how long you need to keep each document and how frequently you are likely to need to access it. Businesses often find that they legally have to keep hold of certain paperwork for a period of time but because they don’t need to access it regularly, it takes up valuable office space. This is where many organisations use self-storage to house their business documents. At Offerfair we have self-storage units in a range of sizes all offering secure and alarmed storage, ideal for archiving paperwork and freeing up space in the office.
- Organising
To save time in future it pays to get organised with your archiving and have a comprehensive inventory system (eg by year and type of record) so you know where everything is stored.
- Storing
Once you have organised all the items you are storing, then pack them in strong durable boxes (we can help with this as we sell a range of packaging materials). Label all your boxes clearly to avoid having to hunt around for an elusive document and then store the boxes that you will need more regular access to at the front of your storage unit.
At Offerfair, we work with many local businesses who use our six locations across Hastings and St Leonards to store their important office documents. Talk to us today to find out how we can help you with your business storage.
