my DP has asked me to help his 'makeover' his disaster of an office- urgent request to come and join in the fun please!

[Somethingwicked]

Hello organised types,

I have an urgent mission and need all the help I can get. My highly creative and talented DP has two of his own businesses which have been going for a year and are doing well, but his desk, his papers and his finances are a disaster. He has just realised that filling out last year's tax return is going to be hideously scary beyond belief, and he does not believe he has the skills to keep his businesses going. I am not going to be his admin assistant- I don't want to and I am full time carer to 3 under 3 so I have enough to do, but I have been given full license to sort out some 'systems' that will force a whimsical arty spontaneous character to be as boringly organised as I am.

He needs to keep his desk and files tidy and his accounts up to date, as well as keeping track of his expenses, all with the greatest ease possible.

Please help me out with some good ideas!

How much space do you have?
Filing cabinets, one for each business or at least a draw for each business with hanging files for filing would do the trick

Buy a couple of trays for getting things out of the way quickly as well, and lots of plastic wallets and a couple of plastic folders to put things instantly together

Good luck! I love organising stuff like that

DH is very tidy and organised in his tiny office. He keeps everything in lever arch files (invoices, purchases, bank statements etc) a new set each financial year.

He keeps track of purchases/invoices on spreadsheets.
He prints out a purchase order sheet for everything and staples it to receipt. He has filing trays and does the accounts every month or so (also VAT registered so that's usually the deadline). A good discipline is to have a paper/proforma attached to every transaction before you stick it in the tray so you are not thinking "who is this cheque from and why?" a month later.

Basically you need to go through the piles, separate project related stuff from invoices, receipts, bank stuff. Then go through bank statements and match up transactions so you know what has come in and gone out. I think.

It would help to have online banking set up if not already, and own account for each business or at least separate from domestic finance.

Have a desktop printer that is also a fax/photocopier is a great help in keeping proper records.

thanks all.

Plenty of space, it is just the ability to organise that is the issue!

Tootootired- great to hear about how your dh does it- mine could never be like that but he could definitely use some ideas. What is a proforma? And how does having a printer help- he has one but it doesn't seem very helpful to me so far!

I think he should declare a "backlog" and then you set up a system for going forward with filing and accounts etc.

The you deal with the backlog 15 mins at a time.

Flylady has an office control journal. which will give yo some ideas.

I think that you need to help him set up some routines for the beginning and end of the working day.

It can be easy to procrastinate about a filing system. What I do is I have numbered dividers in an A4 folder and then stick an A4 sheet at the beginning of the folder and then stick things in a section and use the A4 sheet as an index. If you use pencil then you can erase and amend as you go along.

I can recommend Freeagent online accounting software.

If you get online banking then you can upload your statements and very easily categorise all your expenses.

It's perfect for people with their own smallish businesses.

It is really good for expenses as you can enter these each day and you have the option to bill to the client and you can record hours worked every day. Then invoicing is at a click of a button.

I've just started using it and it has massively cut my time spent on accounts.

You can do a 30 day free trial and if you decide to go with it let me know as I can refer new joiners and get you 10% off.

Hi Tabouleh he might go for the freeagent thing- it looks perfect. If he does, I will let you know for the discount- thank you very much!

oh dear - speaking as one who is also hopelessly disorganised and who was self-employed for several years I can safely say that for me, all the organisation strategies in the world didn't really help me on a day-to-day basis; I still had a mass panic just before tax return deadline every year and only just managed to get it in on time.

However - I did create spreadsheets in excel of all my incomings/outgoings, I just didn't fill them in regularly - had to do a mass catch up in January. (online tax return - a gift)

I had a filing cabinet, filing shelves of different colours - didn't really help day to day; the thing that "worked" best was having a "pile" that could be sorted out every 3m or so. But I guess your DP already has that!

That might not be very helpful - but it might help to know that I did always get my tax return in on time, despite the apparent chaos. It can be done.

Hi Tabouleh, can we go through you for freeagent and get the discount? Thanks very much for the recommendation it looks great.