Almost every business knows the question: “Where do we keep …?” The signed quote, the latest version of the drawing, the inspection report from the spring. Usually there is an answer, but it is: “Ask Petra.” The document exists; nobody quite knows where.
That costs a few minutes every day, and sometimes a lot more: when people work from an old version, when a customer asks for a document nobody can find, or when the person who knew where everything was leaves the business.
Why documents end up scattered
Documents land wherever they are created. A quote is written on a PC and saved in someone’s own folder. The customer’s reply comes by email and stays in the inbox. The delivery note is scanned and sits in the scan folder. The technician takes a photo of the damage on a phone and sends it by messenger.
Each step makes sense on its own. Together they add up to four or five places for a single order - and none of them is the right one.
The four usual places
The network drive
A shared folder structure on the server is the standard in many businesses. It is simple and everyone understands it. Its limit: a folder knows nothing about its contents. Whether a document is a draft or the valid version, which order it belongs to and who last changed it is written in the file name at best. From outside the office the drive is often only reachable over VPN.
SharePoint, OneDrive and Teams
If you work with Microsoft 365, SharePoint is already included. Documents are then online, several people can work on them at once, and earlier versions are kept. That is a big step up from the network drive. But order does not appear by itself here either. Without rules, SharePoint grows the same muddle as the drive, only spread across many teams and channels.
A document management system
A document management system, or DMS, specialises in filing: documents get attributes such as customer, document type or date, can be found by full-text search and can be kept according to fixed rules. For businesses with a lot of incoming paperwork that often makes sense. The question is how the DMS relates to your other programs. If the order is in one system and the delivery note in another, you are searching in two places again.
With the record in your business system
The fourth option: the document sits where the record is. The quote with the quote, the drawing with the order, the photo with the service visit. Whoever opens the order sees everything that belongs to it. This is the most natural kind of filing, because nobody has to think about which folder something goes in. It does require your software to be able to attach documents to records at all.
Which place for what
In practice it usually ends up as a mix. A workable rule of thumb:
| Document | Where it is well kept |
|---|---|
| Belongs to an order, customer or machine | with the record in the business system |
| Worked on together, such as a draft proposal | SharePoint or OneDrive |
| Incoming documents in large numbers | a DMS, or with the record if the business system can do it |
| Templates, manuals, policies | one fixed place everyone knows |
What matters is not that there is only one place. What matters is that for every kind of document it is settled where the valid version lives.
A filing plan that survives everyday work
A filing plan does not have to be a thick policy. One page is enough if it answers these questions:
- Which document types are there? Quote, order confirmation, delivery note, invoice, drawing, inspection report, contract.
- Where does each one go? One place per document type, not two.
- What are files called? A simple pattern with date, customer and document type helps wherever there are no attributes.
- What is valid, what is a draft? Drafts stay with whoever is working on them; the valid version goes to the fixed place.
- Who tidies up? Without someone responsible, any filing system falls apart.
The plan works best when it is drawn up with the people who file every day. Once the office, the workshop and accounts say where they search today, the new plan is usually already on the table.
Who may see what
A central store makes documents easier to reach - including those not everyone should see: personnel files, payslips, contracts with terms. Permissions therefore belong in the plan from the start. On the network drive they have often grown over the years, and nobody knows exactly who can get into what. How to organise permissions by role is covered in our guide Roles and permissions.
This matters all the more if an AI is later meant to search the documents. It finds everything it is allowed to access. If a confidential document sits in a folder open to everyone, it will turn up in its answers too. More on that in How AI reads your documents.
Do not forget retention
Invoices, accounting records and business letters are subject to statutory retention periods, and there are requirements for how they are stored. Which periods apply to your records and what your filing has to do for them is something to settle with your tax adviser. For planning, one question is enough: can your store keep documents unchanged for as long as needed, and delete them in a controlled way afterwards?
With e-invoices there is the added point that the invoice itself is a file of structured data. What that means for receiving and storing them is covered in E-invoicing in your business.
How to go about it
- Take stock. Where are which documents today? Ask each department where they last had to search and how long it took.
- Define document types. Which types are there, and which record do they belong to?
- Assign places. One place per type where the valid version lives.
- Settle permissions. Who may see what, who may change it?
- Start small. Begin with one document type or one department, test the plan in daily work, then extend it.
- Decide on the old files. Not everything has to move. Often it is enough to keep old folders read-only and file anew from a set date.
Wherever documents are to sit with the record, you need software that can do it. In ElbDesk, the foundation we build on, the Core already brings document storage with it: files sit with the customer, the order or the machine, with permissions and search. Microsoft 365 can carry on alongside.
