Open SharePoint. Click on "Clients." Then click on the letter "J." Then click on "Jansen BV." Then click on "2024." Then click on "Correspondence." Then click on "Q3." And there's the email you were looking for. Six clicks, a minute and a half. No problem, right?
Richard Schouten, an accounting specialist at Docubird, likes to do the math. Because that minute and a half doesn’t happen just once. It happens twenty times a day. For everyone in the office. Every workday. All year round.
In this blog post, Richard calculates the true cost of search time and explains why the folder structure that once seemed logical is now your biggest efficiency drain.
The cost of twenty clicks
On average, it takes one and a half to two minutes to find a single document. You know where it is, you click on it, you open it. No big deal. But add up all those moments.
Twenty instances of searching per day, each lasting two minutes, adds up to forty minutes. Per person. Per day. Multiply that by two hundred workdays, and you get over 130 hours per year. Per employee.
For an office with ten employees, that amounts to 1,300 hours. Converted to an average hourly rate of 80 euros, that’s over 100,000 euros a year. Just for searching.
Search time is invisible but palpable
No one records research time on their timesheets. It falls under “file work” or “administration.” As a result, it doesn’t show up in the numbers. But it’s clearly felt in the workload.
That colleague who’s always working overtime. Those deadlines that seem to be getting tighter and tighter. That client who’s waiting for a response. Often, the problem isn’t too much work, but too much time spent on non-work activities.
Searching isn't work. Searching is the price you pay to get to your work.
Folders were a solution for a different era
The folder structure dates back to the days of the filing cabinet. Physical folders, physical binders, physical labels. We’ve carried that structure over into the digital world. Client, year, type, subtype. Logical, organized, familiar.
But digital documents aren't like paper documents. They don't have to be stored in a single location. They don't have to be accessible through a single path. They can have properties that you can search.
Yet we keep clicking. Folder by folder. Level by level. As if we were browsing through a filing cabinet that doesn’t exist.
Metadata searches for you
Metadata allows you to assign properties to a document. Client name. Document type. Year. Status. These properties make the document searchable without having to click.
You type “Jansen advisory letter 2024” and the document appears. Not six clicks, but three seconds. The difference between navigating and searching.
For a single document, that saves a minute. For twenty documents a day, that saves thirty minutes. With ten employees, that saves five hours a day. Twenty-five hours a week. Thirteen hundred hours a year.
The same 100,000 euros, but as savings instead of a loss.
Resistance lies in habit
Why doesn't everyone switch to metadata? Because the folder structure works. Not perfectly, but it works. You eventually find what you're looking for. It just takes longer than it needs to.
And people are creatures of habit. Those six clicks feel familiar. They don’t take any mental effort. You do it on autopilot.
Metadata requires a different way of thinking. It’s not about “where is this document located,” but rather “what characteristics does this document have.” Making that shift takes a little effort at first. But once you do, it gets faster every time.
The difference lies in the minutes
Accounting firms operate on tight margins. Price competition is fierce. Labor costs are rising. Workloads are increasing. In this context, every minute counts.
A firm that saves 1,300 hours a year in search time can devote those hours to billable work. Or to better service. Or to a workday that ends at 5 p.m. instead of 7 p.m.
The gains don't come from major reorganizations. The gains come from eliminating small inefficiencies. Five minutes here, three minutes there. It all adds up.
Start with what you search for most often
You don’t have to revamp your entire archive all at once. Start with the documents you look for most often: advisory letters, quotes, and signed order confirmations. Make sure they’re searchable by metadata.
Then expand your search. Correspondence. Financial statements. Tax returns. Step by step, searching becomes faster. Step by step, the click burden disappears.
Docubird automatically adds metadata to the documents you save—such as client name, date, and document type—without any extra work or extra clicks. This turns searching into finding. Want to see how much time that saves? I’d be happy to show you in a quick demo.