How to improve the circulation of documents in the company?

Document circulation in the company, which can save time and avoid unnecessary stress, requires first and foremost one condition to be met – it must run smoothly. It is on him that the quality of services offered by a given company depends to a large extent. Unfortunately, the influx of a large number of orders, invoices and other documents can sometimes disrupt the efficient circulation. In addition, employees have a great influence on the efficient flow of documents in the company. It all depends on their individual document management habits.

Workflow – traditional method

Each company develops its own system of bringing order to it, as it must fully correspond to its character. Thanks to an organized circulation of documents, you can reduce the risk of losing important documentation.

Data archiving should be based on simple procedures, such as, for example, a uniform description and numbering of documents and then segregating them into appropriate files in a chronological order, according to the alphabet or other generally accepted key. Both external and internal documents should be dealt with in this way. If the document flow in the company is carried out in a traditional way, the equipment itself can be a great help. Office furniture, such as filing cabinets, can do a lot of good. Unfortunately, although they are a great help, unfortunately they will not save the employee. Therefore, the main link in the development of an efficient documentation flow in the company is the person who is responsible for adhering to the established procedures.

Document workflow

With a large flow of documents, it is important that employees follow the following rules:

saving documents in one destination – by saving in temporary folders or leaving documents in an e-mail box, you can forget about their existence after some time or waste a lot of time finding them,
setting one method of naming documents – e.g. the main folder will be divided into subfolders of customers, suppliers and associates. Additionally, to facilitate viewing of documents, it is best to create generally accepted keys – abbreviations / symbols – for faster and easier classification. Importantly, such keys should be written down and made available to employees,
adding a date to the document name – thanks to this, you can quickly find the latest document without having to open each one in turn, in case there are several documents with a similar name,
proper organization of documents – instead of creating separate folders with the documents themselves saved in a spreadsheet, text document, or with only presentations or photos, it is better to create one folder in which all documents related to a specific area will be located (in order to search for specific types of files the already widespread actions of filters – internal search engines will be helpful,
creating copies of documents – this is very important in the event of a sudden failure of e.g. a disk. Currently, it is popular to keep backup copies of documents in the so-called cloud.

Workflow – modern solutions

Currently, applications supporting electronic document flow in the company are available. Thanks to them, the company gains easy access to all information and documents regarding customers, implemented projects, purchased devices, etc. Additional benefits include:

 reducing operating costs,
 improving work in the company,
 optimization of information flow,
 process monitoring at every stage.

Thanks to the use of such modern forms of supporting the circulation of documents, the company minimizes the risk of their loss, and also saves time that would be wasted on finding them.
Therefore, an entrepreneur who wants to improve the functioning of his enterprise should take into account the investment in software that will improve the circulation of documents within it.