Hey, you, it's Thursday at 10 am. You know what time it is. It's Coffee Chats with Candice. So, grab your cup of coffee, or beverage of your choice, no judgment here. And that includes your business and finances, too. So, Let's chat about business organization.

For those who don't know me, my name is Candice Montgomery. I'm the founder of “Beginner's Guide to Budgeting” and “Monetize Your Dream” –  a course to master business basics. I help new and aspiring women entrepreneurs master business basics, so they can achieve personal and financial freedom. If you're new to me, I own three businesses. The first one, my husband, and I started in 1996. And it's now in its 28th year. It's unbelievable. We've paid off over $450,000 in seven years. And since 2022, we have been completely debt-free in our personal and business lives. I'm passionate about business and budgeting and sharing that with you. 

All right, so welcome to 2024. I mean, I can't believe that it's 2024. Really. With the new year, we got to talk about organization, and there are so many exciting changes happening with all of our businesses!

Last year, I started a new way of filing for our businesses, with everything, there's an adjustment, but so far, I'm happy with it. After 26 years and 4 businesses, our files were disorganized and saved in all different ways. I've had several people work for me over the years, and each one put their own spin on it and then files were never purged. There was a bunch of crap that was no longer needed, and my minimalist brain was freaking out. I finally decided I was going to make a change. We've been putting processes in place for the last two years.

As you can see in this first system, I started with a master folder. And as you can see the filing system master. So, I started there and then from there, I added all the folders that needed to work with our business. And then once I had the master complete, I made a copy for working in the current year. So, the way I envision this working is that no files will ever be stored in the master – it's just there as a reference moving forward. And as you can see, folders 0 through 12 are folders that never move, this information is not specific to a year. So we will keep them.  Now, if something is no longer needed and one of those files, but we still need to keep it for this seven-year period, we will then move it into the year that it was last used. So folders 13 through 18, the internal folders will be moved to the previous years when a new year begins. You keep the top level folders, for example, Accounting Department, Insurance Department, Vendors, etc. And then you move the things that are on the inside of it. So for example, let me go here and I will show you the Accounting Department, you would then move these folders here to your previous years, and I'll talk about that in a minute. So those years would be updated annually. Then you would go to your master and copy over the folders that you need changing the year to the current year. And then 2016 is going to be deleted this year, and the folder will be named 2017 to 2023. So this is the previous year's tax, there are previous years' folders that we have to keep. So we have to keep current plus seven years – we have to keep our tax information, our insurance policies, vendors, subcontractors, merchant account, anything that we need that might be used in an audit, or we would have to reference for an audit or you know, maybe we have receipts, a receipt, an invoice from somebody a couple of years ago. And we need that for a customer to prove a warranty or anything like that. Within this file is tax information from 1998 to 2022. Then we have each year's file folder, and all that information is held on the inside. So like I said, this is going to be named (I haven't done this.)

As some of you know, our office manager of 16 years passed away at the end of November. And so things have been changing since before then. But it's been a little slower now. We miss her terribly. I miss her terribly. So anyway. So well, when I get a moment, I'm doing a whole lot of things right now I'm recording new updated videos for my course. And I'm planning to go to go through a launch. So, so many things are happening. 

This is not the priority yet, but just so you know, while I am waiting for anything to be moved to be created for 2024, I would just move it here, I would save it here, so that it's in our shared drive, but it's not filed as it should be. Hopefully, that's not confusing. So, like I was saying, then you would copy from your master. So, this is your master, you would copy these folders, and then you would move them into here, you recreate a copy, move them into here, and change this year's name. Like here, we had our policies when they were new, so those things would be moved to the previous year's folders. I'm kind of getting tongue-tied over here. So and then I've created a naming convention that is the same for everything we save, so that no matter what anyone can find what they're looking for, with little to no assistance. Hopefully, that didn't confuse you. As I said, in the beginning, adjustment is needed with anything new.

So I teach this in-depth in my “Monetize Your Drea” course. If you're interested in finding out more about this, you can certainly book a free call with me the link is in the description. And, and I can help you I mean, not everybody's going to look the same, but a lot of them will, so I can help you with setting that up and answer any questions that you may have. So, all right, well, I'm gonna quit sharing my screen.

As always, if you found value in this video, please like, share, and comment so that my video gets seen by more people, I need my message to get out there to the universe. I know business is confusing, but I can help. If you or someone you know needs business help share this video with them. That kind of sounds like if you know someone needs help, like maybe for an addiction or something like that. So it's not like that at all. If they need help with business, I'm your girl. When it comes to starting a business, I've been where you are, and I know how you feel. And you don't have to do it alone. I did it alone most of the time. I mean, my husband was there, but he didn't know how to do those things that you need to do to get the business started. He was the operations of that, he did all the work that created the business, and I had to do all the stuff in the background that was needed to do so. A lot of learning and I help expedite that and fast-track you in my course. Thank you for taking time out of your day with me if you're here or catching the replay. I hope you have a fabulous Thursday and a fabulous weekend. And I will see you next week. Same time, same place for coffee chats with Candice