Filing Tips

It is important that your office basics, such as your filing systems, are organized and in order for your accounting functions to go smoothly.

YOUR FILING SYSTEM:
Set up two filing areas: permanent files and annual or dated files

A.) Permanent files – These are files that are not date specific, like any warranties, bank documents, business start-up papers, etcetera. They are best filed alphabetically.

Color code your files for easy recognition- for example, you could do each of your customer files in green files (money coming in), all of your overheads in red files (money going out), and all of your carrier files in plain manila files (over time you will have the most carrier files, and manila are the least expensive). Blue files could be informational (such as info on your phone system, insurance policies, etc.).

You should start a file for each customer and a file for each carrier as you secure them. These informational customer and informational carrier files are permanent files; hopefully you will continue to have a relationship and do business with them for years to come, so they are not date specific.

B.) Annual, or dated files – These are files that go along with a specific year. Some examples are your office bills or overheads, your individual files for each shipment, and any claims files that you are facilitating for your customers (because they relate to a specific dated shipment and are time-sensitive). Annual files relate to your income and expenses for a particular year, and will be stored after the year is over along with that year’s tax records. Learn the laws regarding record keeping for brokers, for the records that you are required to keep on each transaction.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about what kind of documents to file in each of these systems.

Moving forward

Jeff Roach
www.brooketraining.com