24 Tips to Get Organized in January: Tip #9, Develop a Naming Convention for All Files

Tip #9: Develop a Naming Convention for All Files

I don’t get why more people don’t do this. Many of my employees just save files to the computer desktop with little or no thought to how it might be found later. This is a huge time waster.

You should name all of the files on your computer – and that includes images and pdfs.

Develop a convention and use it all of the time. Create folders and subfolders for storing your documents – and use them.

At my office, I split my computer data into three main files: Admin, Client and Personal

Admin is broken down into several components: Billing, Hiring, Office Space, Vendors (you get the idea)
Client is separated by client names – easy enough.
Personal is divided into several pieces: Finances, Family, Board Work, etc.

I am descriptive in my document titles so that I can tell, at a glance, what the document is. I know that some people save by date (if it works for you, use it) but I don’t find that useful as a stand alone because I do so many documents in one day.

So, my document might look like:

kelly’s computer/Erblaw/Client/clientname/Will_1107
kelly’s computer/Erblaw/Client/clientname/sendingdraftdocs_1207

What works for you?

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