Keepin’ Track of Business

Last month I wrote about Evernote, a free service that helps you organize and search your photos, audios, videos, notes, and web site bookmarks. I hope you’ve tried it out and that it’s been saving you a lot of time and energy.

But what about all the files and folders full of letters, contracts, ad copy, spreadsheets, coaching exercises and templates that you’ve probably got stored on your PC. How do you keep track of all that data and how do you quickly find a particular item when you need it?

If you remember exactly where you saved a particular file or folder, no problem. But what if you forget? After all, if you have hundreds or thousands of items on your computer, it’s nearly impossible to recall where each one is. Especially the ones that you don’t use frequently.

The search function that comes standard with Windows can help you find files stored on your computer when you don’t remember where they are, but you can remember part of the file name. It works much faster than you do. And it doesn’t get bleary-eyed late at night and skip over file names because it’s in a hurry to get done.

In fact, it’s a real snail compared to the Everything search engine. This free utility indexes all the files on your PC so that you can easily and quickly search them. It can fly through a million files in about a minute.
You need to have administrative privileges to run it on your machine. You can use wildcards in the searches as well as Boolean operations (e.g. and, or, not). You can also limit your search to specific files types and locations.

What if you don’t know even part of the file name or type? Or the Everything search returns too many files and folders? Then you need a tool that will actually search the content of the files.

My favorite free tool for that kind of searching is Locate. It has extensive features, allowing you to search by name, location, file size, file extension, date modified, and specific text (word or words) inside the file. You can also use wildcards in your search. I have tens of thousands of files on my PC, so I occasionally misplace one (LOL) and Locate has been my life-saver!

I suggest that you set up and use a standard naming convention system to make it less likely that you’ll lose a file, even temporarily. Here’s what I mean.

With a paper filing system, you store papers that are similar to each other (e.g. Client One’s invoices) in the same folder. You label the outside of the folder with a name that’s meaningful, so you can spot it right away. Maybe you have tabs inside the folder to separate the years or months, making it simple for you to reach in and pull out the exact items you need. Perhaps you color code the folders in some way, so that you can tell active clients from inactive, large jobs from small ones, or local firms from distant ones. And then you put the folders in drawers or cabinets, arranged alphabetically or in some other way so you can retrieve them quickly.

You can organize your electronic data in the same way by using some standard naming conventions. This will save you time when you first create the file, because you won’t have to think up a completely original name. You’ll just follow the standards of naming policy you’ve established and customize the part that applies to the new file.

For example, suppose you keep copies of all of your clients’ invoices and coaching exercises. You might have a folder on your desktop called coaching clients. Inside that folder you might have a separate folder with each individual client name on it. Inside the client folder you could have files that include the date of the invoices and the names of the homework exercises. Perhaps something like this…

Client One

…Invoices

………Invoice09.14.07

………Invoice09.21.07

………Invoice09.28.07

…Exercises

………ExerciseASeptember07

………ExerciseBOctober07

Client 2

…Invoices

………Invoice09.14.07

………Invoice09.21.07

………Invoice09.28.07

…Exercises

………ExerciseASeptember07

………ExerciseBOctober07

Get the idea? See how easy it’ll be to find later?

No system is foolproof, and we all get in a hurry every now and then and bypass the procedures we’ve set up. So put these tools in your PC toolbox folder before you need them. You’ll be glad you did.

Sheryl Schuff is a Certified Public Accountant and founder of the Business Startup Success Club. She specializes in consulting with solopreneurs about business formation, taxes, recordkeeping, and technology and is currently accepting applications for charter membership in a special training and mentoring program which begins May 19th. Sheryl is the author of “Save$100’s in Taxes With a Home Office Deduction,” and “How to Get Your Business On-Line for Under $10.”