Stapled corners become bulky and prevent documents lying flat and neat inside the folder. Credit Cardīusiness filing system tip - avoid stapling documents in the top left corner – it really isn’t necessary to staple everything.
You can head these up with either the bank account type - daily transactions account, savings account, tax account etc., or use the account number. So bank account No 1 will have a section for the monthly/weekly statements, and a separate section for the monthly/weekly bank reconciliations. If you have more than one bank account it will be easier if you keep the statements in separate dividers for each bank account and also keep the reconciliation reports in separate dividers for each bank account, and separate from the bank statements.
Of course, if your bookkeeping software has the capacity to track accounts receivable and show you which invoices aren’t paid, then you don’t need a spreadsheet and having only one file for sales invoices is the better option. That way there is only ever one file or section for sales invoices. When you produce an invoice, file it into the unpaid sales in alphabetical order and then move it to the paid sales into the relevant month once payment is received (file it into the month you produced the invoice or the month payment is received).Īnother method is to file the sales invoices in order of invoice number whether paid or unpaid, keeping track of unpaid ones using a spreadsheet. This is so that as the year goes on you always have the latest document at the top and you are not having to move months of work over the prongs to get to the latest ones near the bottom. If your financial year runs from January to December you would put all your months back to front, so January is at the bottom and December at the top. Sales Invoices and Debtorsīusiness filing system tip - put the latest documents near the top. If you are only keeping a cash book, then your bill is entered into the bookkeeping program at the date you paid the bill, so you will file it into the month of the payment.Īnother method is to simply file all the bills away into one file, whether paid or unpaid, and keep track of the ones you haven’t paid using a spreadsheet. This all depends on whether or not your bookkeeping program has a creditors/bills option. What do I mean by relevant month? If you entered a bill into your bookkeeping program at the date that is on the bill then file it into the paid bills file at month/date of the bill. When the bills are paid, pull them out of the unpaid bills, keep them in alphabetical order but this time file them into the relevant month in the paid bills file. In the paid bills file put Jan-Dec monthly dividers. Inside the unpaid bills put a-z alphabetical dividers so that the bills can be filed in alphabetical order which makes them easy to find, especially if you have a high volume of bills.