I run a tiny handmade skincare business and my filing system is basically 'that one drawer' plus a chaotic Google Drive. I need to get this sorted before tax season. Where do you keep things like supplier invoices, old contracts, and product test records so you can actually find them years later? Not looking for a lecture on best practices, just what works for you.
Document storage
Where do you keep business documents so you can find them years later?
One folder per year, then inside that: invoices, receipts, contracts, misc. Boring but it works. I used to do fancy tag systems and and never kept up with them.
I keep physical copies of anything with a signature in a fireproof box, everything else scanned into a folder called 'ADMIN' that I dump into once a month. Is it perfect? No. But I found a 2019 invoice in about 40 seconds last week, so.
honestly the thing that saved me was renaming files consistently. like 2023-04-15_SupplierName_InvoiceNumber.pdf. once I started doing that I could search by year or supplier without even opening folders.
The renaming thing is what trips me up. I start doing it and then a busy week happens and suddenly it's 'scan_0043.pdf' forever.
I use a free cloud account with yearly folders and a simple text file that lists what's where. The text file feels old-school but it's faster than digging through a dozen subfolders when I need something from three years ago.
Also, back things up. I lost a whole folder of supplier contracts when a drive died and now I have two copies of everything. Learned that one the hard way.
I just keep everything in email labels. Is that terrible? I feel like it's terrible.
Not terrible until your email provider changes something or you need to migrate. I did that for two years and then spent a weekend exporting everything. Your call though.