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The management and storage of valuable and legal documents is of vital important for business owners. Certain documents must be kept by aw, while others are just plain helpful to have on hand when you need them. These documents are not only useful, but helps build a paper trail that is incredibly useful for audits and other inspections by official bodies, so it’s always wise to keep your records up to date. But how can businesses manage that mountain of paperwork? Why, with effective document archiving.

 

 

What is Document Archiving?

Document archiving is the best alternative businesses have to storing all of their paperwork on site with them. Given that some business records must be kept for up to 7 years, businesses with space issues can often find storing this information almost impossible. But effective document archiving allows you to store these documents in a more space-efficient manner, and even store them off site if you are really pressed to space. In order to archive your documents, they are organised with the excess paperwork that does not need to be kept is pulled out and destroyed, leaving you with a neat pile of ‘thing to keep’. For any documentation you had destroyed, you would add the certificate of destruction to this pile. You would then take this paperwork and place it into a box file, binder or archive box of your choice, label it clearly and move it to your long term storage area. Businesses may find themselves needing to do this at different times of year for different things. So for example you may need to archive monthly for paperwork, invoices and orders, but yearly for the accounts. We’ve always liked the idea of buying a set of archive boxes in a single colour to use over the year, and moving on to a new colour each year. Once you hit the 7 year mark and you can destroy the oldest paperwork, you can start reusing colours for the new years and save on stationary costs.

 

Where To Store

Deciding where to store all of this valuable and classified information is a big decision for businesses. If you have the luxury of space within your office, or a lockable storage room, then this is the obvious fit for most. Lockable filing cabinets also work well too, but may be outgrown as your business grows. An important thing to remember that this documentation will need to have protection from flood, fire or any other kind of natural disaster – so the more popular option tends to be in external storage. This means that your documents are secure, kept under lock and key, but with easy access when you need them. They are kept separate from your offices, so that if something were to happen to your building your files would still be intact, and under extra security.

 

Why Use Document Archiving? 

There are many different reasons why businesses should look to a professional to help them with their document archiving needs. Among the top are:

Convenience – Some companies do manage to do their paperwork in house, but this is rarely effective and often causes a lot of issues in the future. For example, destruction of the wrong documents, things being filed in the wrong place or loss of documentation are just a few common problems we see in businesses. But outsourcing your archiving literally takes the problem out of your hands, making it an incredibly easy and convenient solution.

 

Time-Saving – You might not think that having all of your business paperwork on site is time consuming, but the time spent finding and fetching documentation or rifling through piles of old paperwork to find the new document you need really adds up. By having your documents archived regularly, you can be sure you are only dealing with the most recent information on site, without having to wade through it all every time.

 

Cost-Saving- Obviously outsourcing document archiving, storage or management is going to cost money, so it’s important to have a clear understanding of how that outlay could save you money in the long run. For example, it could save you money on legal fees, resources, time or even rental space if it allows you to move to a smaller office. The biggest cost saving is often time – allowing the business to take their member of staff away from managing documents and have them instead work on revenue generating tasks.

 

At Greenaway, our life is in paperwork and documents. While we are primarily a shredding company, we also help businesses of any size with the organisation and storage of their documents With out help you can be on top of your documents at all times, and safe in the knowledge that when that 7 year clock runs out, your documentation will be destroyed securely without any hassle. For more information, get in touch with the Greenaway team today.