Sorting a client folder
There is no good filing in the abstract. There is filing that matches the way you search.
The three ways, and what they cost
| Filing | When it is right | What it costs |
|---|---|---|
| By document family | You look for “the bank details” or “the tax assessment” | A two-person file mixes the two |
| By person | A mortgage file, an estate file | Documents with no identified person pile up |
| By year | Accounting follow-up, invoices | A document without a date becomes unfindable |
Choose once
The worst filing is the one that changes from folder to folder: nobody knows where to look, and everyone rebuilds their own.
Compose if you need to: by person, then by family inside. A level that cannot answer disappears rather than creating an “unknown” folder.
And what is not identified
There is always some. What matters is that it is visible: a 00-a-classer/ folder at the top of the tree takes ten minutes to deal with; the same documents scattered across fifteen subfolders never get dealt with at all.