The financial statements are piling up. Clients are calling with questions. And that inbox? It’s growing faster than you can keep up with. For many accounting firms, January through May is the period when document management is the first thing to fall by the wayside. “We’ll take care of that after the deadline.”
Richard Schouten, an accounting specialist at Docubird, knows this story all too well. Every day, he speaks with people from firms who are grappling with the same challenge: how do you keep your files in order when time is against you?
In this blog post, Richard explains how to avoid spending hours in June trying to piece together what happened in March.
Reconstructing data after the fact takes more time than saving it immediately
It sounds counterintuitive, but it’s true. Those five minutes you don’t have right now to save an email will turn into fifty minutes of searching later on. A client calls in September with a question about his tax return. The accountant handling the file is on vacation. And the replacement? He opens a folder containing “Jansen final v3,” “Jansen new return,” and “Jansen FINAL.”
The search begins. Personal folders. Desktops. Items sent three months ago. The answer that could have been given in two minutes now takes an hour. And the customer wonders why it’s taking so long.
Five minutes a day adds up to six hours a quarter
Do the math. Five minutes of searching per day, multiplied by a three-month peak season: that’s over six hours of productive time. Per person. In an office with ten employees, that adds up to sixty hours. Time that isn’t spent on clients, isn’t spent on substantive work, and isn’t spent on the things you were trained to do.
And that’s not even mentioning the stress. That email you can’t seem to find. That attachment you’re sure you received. That colleague who asks where your correspondence is, even though you don’t know yourself. Three practical ways to keep your files organized.
1. The Friday afternoon check works
Set aside 15 minutes every Friday afternoon to wrap up your week. Open your sent items. Go through what you’ve sent this week. Which emails should be added to client files? Which documents are still on your desktop?
It feels like extra work. But it’s preventive maintenance. Just as your car needs to go to the shop every now and then, your digital workspace needs maintenance too. Those fifteen minutes on Friday will save you hours of searching in September.
2. Buying in bulk saves you more than you think
During busy weeks, emails pile up. You reply to client Jansen, move on to the next one, and figure you’ll save them later. That’s understandable. But by the end of the week, you’ve sent twenty emails to the same client.
With bulk saving, you can select all the emails in your sent items. One click, and they’re in the right customer file. No need to repeat the same action twenty times—just once. All emails retain their original dates. That email from January 18 remains dated January 18, even if you don’t save it until March.
Saving a week's worth of correspondence takes less than two minutes. And after the busy season, you won't have to piece together who said what and when.
3. Perfection is the enemy of structure
During peak season, it’s better to have a rough system in place than none at all. That perfectly organized folder structure is a luxury reserved for quieter times. Right now, you need three categories: urgent this week, important this month, and archive. Sort things quickly and refine later.
Time pressure forces you to make choices. What information is truly important? Which documents will you never need again? Use that pressure to your advantage. It helps you finally clean up that digital clutter you’d otherwise never get around to tackling.
The calm after the deadline begins now
The difference between a stressful June and a relaxing summer starts now. Not by working harder, but by organizing your files more efficiently. Those fifteen minutes on Friday. That batch file organization at the end of the week. That simple folder structure that’s good enough.
Docubird helps accounting firms streamline this process. Bulk saving, automatic metadata, and the right client folder always at your fingertips. Want to see how it works in practice? I’d be happy to show you in a quick demo.