Documents Classification and Organization
How Do You Retrieve a Particular Document From Among Tens of Thousands?
Even smaller businesses tend to accumulate thousands of documents - correspondence, reference materials, bills, invoices, contracts, and so on. If these were thrown into a table drawer without any order, you would be wasting a huge amount of time searching for a bill due for payment, or some other document.
For very small businesses, a simple classification and filing system might be all that is needed. For example, bills could be filed in two folders - unpaid and paid. Correspondence could be filed in date order if the volume is not much. And so on.
For larger businesses, such a simple system would not be enough for managing the documents efficiently. In the next section, we look at the different kinds of classifications usually adopted.
Classifying Documents
The classification method adopted would depend on the type of document. A few examples follow:
- Correspondence: Name of main addressee and Date; Project/Subject and Date
- Transaction Documents: Financial Year, Month and Date
- Drawings & Specifications: Customer, Project or Product, Component, Date
- Employee Records: Department, Grade, Employee Name or Number
- Salesperson Performance: Product Line, Region, Area, Salesperson Name
In general, the classification criteria are mainly Department, Alphabetical or Numerical Order, Subject, Region or Date. Typically, a combination of these criteria is used to arrange documents, depending on the overall situation and type of document. The objective of classification and filing is to facilitate subsequent retrieval. The best scheme of organization would be one that is instinctive, i.e., the way people tend to search for a document of a particular type.
Physical Aids to Filing
Where the volumes of documents were large, physical aids like pigeonhole cupboards made the task of sorting and filing easier. You first sorted the documents into different pigeonholes of the cupboard and then filed the contents of each pigeonhole into a relevant folder or category of folders. Other kinds of physical aids included rolodexes, segmented folders and card drawers.
With the arrival of computers, most of these aids have disappeared.
Computers and Document Classification
Computers did not eliminate paper documents and devices like folders and filing cabinets. However, they made it possible to refer to documentary details simply by pressing a few keys instead of retrieving the original document every time.
You developed a coding scheme that identified a document by relevant criteria and used the applicable code when entering the details from each document into the computer. Retrieving the documents would then be quite easy. You don't even need to remeber the code; the computer program would have a graphical or other easy-to-use interface to help you classify or retrieve a document.
Correspondence and drawings typically originate at the computer these days. Even paper-based replies to the correspondence could be scanned and OCRed (Optical Character Recognized) to be stored in an easily retrievable manner. Paper-based reference materials could also be thus scanned and stored in the computer.
In such an environment, rarely did you need to go to the filing cabinet to retrieve the original document. You might need these original documents, however, to prove your claims in a law court or to satisfy the tax inspector.
Conclusion
Without a well-designed system of classification and filing, documents in a business would become almost impossible to retrieve when needed. Classification methods differ from document type to document type, and the best methods are those that people tend to use instinctively for particular documents.
Computers have made classification and retrieval easier, and also minimized the need to retrieve the original documents.