I like to earn money and while I’m opening letters, paying bills, or filing paper I’m not doing what I like. Here are a few simple things I do that may support to streamline your filing system and get you more time.

I purchased a good, used filing cabinet at a fraction of the retail outlay from the local government asset recovery store where they sell used equipment. Strangely enough, I’ve spent more on folders than on the cabinet.

The cabinet I settled on is a 2 drawer horizontal type about 27 inches high, 36 inches wide, and 18 inches deep. The top drawer I use for tracking underway activity by day and month. The bottom drawer I use to track clients by year. I use colored legal size hanging folders to separate the activities.

I marked 31 blue folders with numbers from 1 to 31 for each day of the month. As mail comes in, I open it and decide when action is required. I enter the important part for the day of action, trash the rest, and usually my desk is clear in less than 5 minutes.

Boy, do I ever like empty folder days and I make them by putting as many things to do into the folders on days I have to pay bills. The fewer days of pushing paper the better. When the action day arrives I look in the folder, budget my time for what’s required, and do it as quickly as possible. I write the checks and enter the rest in the monthly section, then advise the daily folder to the back of the cue with tomorrows date left prototypal in line.

The monthly folders are in three groups, paid, due, and received. The paying group is filed in two ways. The prototypal way uses grey folders labeled with the name of the creditor like bank, credit card, etc. The second group uses yellow folders labeled with the months of the year. The yellow folders track my day-to-day receipts of expenses for the month including petty change purchases.

The due group includes 1 orange folder marked underway and 3 red folders labeled 30, 60 and 90 days. When I issue an invoice or get evidence of earnings from an affiliate program a paper copy goes to the orange file. When payment is received, the invoice or evidence is put into a green colored enter named for the client or affiliate program that paid. If payment is not made, then the paper record is transferred to the folder marked 30, 60, or 90 days. I take different action according to how delinquent the account is and apparently try to keep the red folders as diminutive as possible.