Do you have a system for keeping your restaurant office organized?
if you don't, you're going to want to watch this video.
Hey, everybody. Ryan Gromfin here – author, speaker, chef, restaurateur, and founder of
TheRestaurantBoss.com, as well as ClickBacon.com,
and ScaleMyRestaurant.com.
I'm a little bit of an organizing freak.
I try not to be obsessed with it, but I like things to be organized.
I have researched and I
study and I constantly am making improvements to the
organization in my life.
My son recently decided to start collecting Pokémon cards
and I'm up for five or six hours in the middle of the night watching videos
about how to organize Pokémon cards.
It's not even something I'm interested in.
I just know that before we get 5000 cards when we only have 50 cards,
I want to make sure that he's got a system for keeping them organized.
So today, I'm just going to share with you bits and pieces
of systems that I've used and a system that I currently use right now
to help you maybe keep your office organized because I got emailed
this questionlast week and I thought it was a great question.
I wanted to share it with you. So before we get started,
there's a couple of quick tips that I want to start you off with.
Number one) If you're not as organized as you want to be
and it's overwhelming to you if you're looking at piles of old paperwork
and stuff all over your desk and you're like, I don't even know where to get started,
here's my number one suggestion - just start over.
Just start from scratch.
There's something so freeing about starting over.
Take all the papers on your desk, all the invoices,
everything that you just have not done anything with,
throw them all in a box, label it, and stick the box in storage.
If you've got 3,000 emails in your inbox, hit select all
and archive them.
Get them out of the way because it's so hard to get started.
When you only have ten emails in your inbox,
you're going to keep those ten organized, but when you have 3,000,
the thought of going back through all those and organizing them is so
overwhelming that you just won't do it.
I play golf with a guy and I looked at his phone the other day and he had
3,700 unread emails on his phone.
I'm like, what are you doing? 3700?
Just archived them all because if you haven't read them by now,
you're not going to ever read them. So just start over.
So, I'm not going to lie to you, every once in a while, every couple of years,
I get kind of behind on stuff and I sometimes just have to start over.
Hit the reset button.
Archive all the emails and clean it up from there. So my first tip is,
wherever you're at right now, just start over. Then, going forward,
decide what's worth processing and what's not.
You get so much mail, so many invoices, so many things;
are they worth processing, certain things I mean? Invoices, of course,
you have to pay them, but some of the stuff you get just isn't even worth processing.
Just get it, do what you got to do with it, and get rid of it.
So, decide what's worth processing as in like are we going to enter it into QuickBooks,
are we going to enter it in somewhere else, or am I just going to get it and get rid of it?
My number three is - decide what's worth saving.
Some things are worth processing like bills you got to pay them,
but are they even worth saving? I mean in today's digital world,
so much of everything you do is digital that you don't even need to save the paper anymore.
Why are you leaving getting paper? But if you are getting paper and you get audited,
chances are the person who got you the paper has a digital copy of it anyway.
So ask yourself the question, do I need to process this?
And then if you do process it, do I even need to save it?
And then number four - in a perfect world, you would scan everything.
You would scan everything, you'd have it all digital, that would be great,
but there's something so simple about paper.
So sometimes scanning stuff is just going to take a little too much time.
So, I have a general rule when it comes to scanning.
If it comes in digital, I keep it digital. If it comes in paper,
I keep it in paper.There's a few exceptions.
There are some things like corporate documents and things like that that
are so important that I know I'm going to need every year
for the rest of my businesses existence.
Those things I scan out and put them on the compute,
I still have a paper copy of it, but generally speaking,
nowadays, if it comes in paper, I keep it a paper.
If it comes in digital, I keep it digital.
I don't usually print out things that come digital
and I don't usually scan them things that come paper.
That's my general rule of thumb.
And then number five - whatever your system is,
be consistent with it. Whatever system you do, be consistent with it.
When I was researching these Pokémon things,
the number one thing people said is if you're going to organize by value,
then organize your whole set by value.
If you're going to organize by the number on the card,
do the whole set by the number of the card,
but what happens is some people as their goals change,
they do some by numbers, some by value,
but then they can't find which ones they want.
So if you decide to change at some point,
change but go all the way back to the beginning and change. Okay, so now,
let me kind of briefly tell you what I do, how I
take stuff in and process it.
So like I said earlier, if it comes in digital, it stays digital. If it comes in paper, it stays physical.
So, I have two places the deposit information - one in my file structure on my computer.
I do all of that in Dropbox.
All of my digital files are held in Dropbox.
The only thing that's stored locally on my computer
are just things that I'm working on for a few minutes or a few days that I know I don't care about.
Like, if I download something or if I take a screenshot
or something because I have to email to someone,
but then those get deleted on a very regular basis.
So any documents that I'm keeping are in Dropbox,
then I have Dropbox divided by personal and work,
and then within work, I have like my everyday files and then
I have like my corporate files.
So my team members are blocked out of my personal Dropbox
folder and they're also blocked out of my corporate, like my bookkeeping and my finances
and stuff like that, but then my emails and my everyday
stuff and any documents that I need for marketing purposes for my business
are kept in my sort of general business folder. And then of course, from there,
it gets smaller and smaller and smaller, the file structures I mean,
but the reason I do Dropbox is so it's available, I can share it with other team members,
I can share certain folders with them.
It's available on any computer because I have a desktop computer, I have a laptop,
I have a tablet, I have a phone.
So, if I'm traveling, no matter where I am, everything's accessible.
My team has access to it. So for me, Dropbox no question about it.
For my paper files like for bills or things like that that come in paper,
I just have an alphabetical system. I just have a file drawer that's A through Z,
and then if there's something that comes in a lot,
like let's say whatever bank I bank with,
I get a lot of documents from that bank. Well then, within the letter of that bank,
I then have a separate folder for specifically that bank
within the letter that it starts with,
but basically, the general idea here
is that if it comes in paper, I keep it paper,
if it comes in digital, I keep it digital.
Every year I clear out my file cavern.
I take all the papers out, I put them in one of those file boxes,
I write the year on it. That file box stays in my office for one more year,
then I take the two-year-old file box for my office
and I put that in the garage or in storage somewhere,
and then that stays there for another six years.
So, seven years in total is how long I keep files.
Honestly, I think once in my life I've had to go back through
a file from three or four years ago to find something.
So, this is going to be totally up to you how much you keep.
I'm definitely adopting a simpler philosophy nowadays,
where I just don't process as much. I don't save as much,
I don't take as much time saving and organizing documents as I
used to because everything is so easy and so digital now.
If you do get audited, if you need something, chances are,
you can find specifically what you need
by going through the bigger businesses, the Cisco's of the world,
the people that you work with, the vendors
who have to be much more strict in the file as they keep.
Now again, there are certain documents in your restaurant that you're going to want to hang on to
for a while,
certain temperature log things, shellfish tags you have to save for 90 days.
So, I had a file in my office for shellfish tags
that I would do I think every quarter,
and then I would do a quarter of shellfish tags and another quarter of shellfish tag,
so when second quarter was done,
all of my first quarter were at least 90 days old when I threw those out.
And then I had a third-quarter and got rid of the second quarter, I think you understand, but basically,
let's just quickly kind of go over
these first things again as a recap.
One - Wherever you're at right now, start over if you have to.
Two - Decide what's worth processing.
Three - Decide what's worth saving.
Four - Keep what's digital-digital and keep what's paper-paper.
And then Five - Be consistent with your system.
I hope this helps you keep your office a little more organized
and I hope you enjoyed this week's video.
I look forward to bringing you another one just like it next week.
Have a wonderful day.
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