Business documents can take up a whole lot of space, as they are generated on a day-to-day basis. Unfortunately, you can't just throw away these documents, as they contain legally and financially important information that you will likely need to access at some point in the future. Therefore, in order to free up some space in your office or place of business, you may want to consider putting your business documents into a storage unit. However, before doing so, there are a couple of things that you should do in order to ensure that your documents are protected and organized for easy access.

Choose an Organization Method

First things first: you need to decide how to organize your documents so that you can easily access them when you need to. It's usually best to organize the documents in the same way that they were organized in your office, but if you did not have a system already in place, now's a great time to develop one. Two common methods of organizing documents is either to group all documents by year, or to group all documents together based on type and then organize those documents by year. What works best for you depends on your business and the amount of documents you have, but be sure to pick one system and stick with it.

Proper Packing

Once you've picked a system, you can begin to pack all of your documents up. It's a good idea to place all documents into a secondary plastic folder that is clearly labeled. This accomplishes two things: firstly, the label makes it easy to determine where specific documents are when you're looking through your storage unit, and secondly, and perhaps more importantly, is the fact that plastic will keep water away from your documents, which can protect important information in the event of a leak or flooding in your storage unit. Place these folders into sturdy cardboard boxes and clearly label the boxes based on their content.

Storage Tips

You should also invest in racks or shelving to hold your boxes of documents within your storage unit. Just like the plastic folders, this allows you a chance to organize your boxes and place similar documents near each other, and it also keeps the boxes off of the ground, which is where moisture is most likely to enter your storage unit from, and so helps protect your documents from unforeseen damage.