Hello everyone and thanks for joining us today. My name is Phyllis Wischer and I am the Business Success Coach at SageFire, Inc. - the creators of KeepMore.net. I am a Public Accountant with over 20 years experience in helping thousands of small business owners with their bookkeeping, accounting, payroll and tax needs. Thanks for joining us today as we discuss getting your office and paperwork organized so that you can spend more time building a successful eBay business!

SageFire is a Certified Solution Provider specializing in helping small business owners' track their business financial activity using our online accounting, contact management and document storage solution. Our solution, KeepMore.net makes it simple for you track your business while maximizing your tax benefits.

There are many benefits to being organized. Today, we are going to discuss the following:

• Organize your office


• Organize you email


• Organize your desk

It's time to move all the clutter out of your office. And, I mean "all" the clutter. You might even want to move out all or a majority of all the furniture. If you don't have a place to move the clutter 'out', move everything into as small an area as possible within your office space and stack it as high as you can.

While you are moving the clutter out, start a mental picture of how you want to organize the clutter as you sort it and move it back into your office. Do you have what you need to get organized? Do you need a file cabinet, some storage bins, or some file folders? In the next post, I will mention some tools that you can get that will help you get organized. You might want to get them before you start the move back in.

Now, take a few minutes to "clean" your open space. You might even want to take time to paint and clean your carpet.

Toss it can mean several things; and it could mean several types of things. Besides the all important day-to-day paper work in your office, you could have old furniture, magazines, books, articles and even equipment. Depending on the item, you can toss (throw away) any thing that does not contain any important personal information, you can shred anything that does contain any important personal information, and you can sell on eBay anything that would have any value to someone else. Just think about it - you can make money by organizing the paper flow in your office.

Keep it is where the organization part of your project begins. You need to set up procedures for organizing the items, projects and documents you need to complete or want to keep. Once you have those procedures set you also need to set up a policy for permanent storage or destruction in a timely manner. You do not want to keep and store more paper work than absolutely necessary, especially if you are paying out-of-pocket for that storage space.

Organization of the items, projects and documents you need to complete or want to keep is the primary objective of this exercise. Having a good filing system, for both your office and your computer (we will get to that later in our workshop) will help you organize the paper flow in your office. You will need a system for filing paper work that needs to be completed and another for storing the paper work (if it is necessary to keep it on file) when the work is completed.

Work to be completed - Without a doubt, the most important filing system I have is my "Tickler" file, I call it my TIC file. This file consists of 48 file folders in a size that fits into my file cabinet. I use this system to file and organize any documentation for work I will need to do in the short term and in the long term. There are 12 file folders labeled for each month, there are 31 file folders labeled for each day in a month, and there are five file folders labeled Monday-Friday.

As I get new projects or documents that have a due date down the road a few days, or a few months, I file the paper work in my TIC file for follow up at the appropriate time. This means that if I have something due on September 15th, like my third quarter estimated tax payment from my eBay business, I would file the document a week or two before the deadline to be sure that I have handle all the necessary steps to complete the work by the due date. I may even move the document forward another day or two until the final deadline and I am ready to complete the project timely and effectively.

I use the 12 month file folders to file projects and documents that are due in the months to come. I use the 31 day file folders to file projects and documents that are due within the current month. At the end of the current month, I go to the next month's monthly file and re-organize the projects and documents by due date in the current month.

I use the Monday-Friday file folders to organize the high priority items that I am working on that may need special attention several times a day.

Each morning, I take just a few minutes to get my paper work for the day organized for completion that day.

As you sort through the 'clutter' you bring back into your office, take the time to organize your paper work in your 'TIC' file. Then start immediately to get into the habit of using you 'TIC' file every day.