Is Your Office Too Crowded? Try Moving Your Documents Into Storage

Even if many of your business documents are digital and stored on a computer, you probably still accumulate a lot of paper records over the year. If you run a large operation, it doesn't take long for document storage to become a concern. One solution is to keep documents in an off-site storage facility. Here are some reasons why this might be a good idea for your company.

Records Are Safe

By keeping your documents in a storage facility, they will be safe in case your building is vandalized or destroyed by fire. To ensure their safety, you want to choose the storage facility carefully. Make sure it has adequate security measures in place, such as restricted access and security monitoring. It should also provide climate control and be designed with fire resistance in mind.

Storage facilities also offer protection against natural disasters such as hurricanes and floods. You can take care in choosing the physical location of your storage room for maximum safety. Your business building is probably much more vulnerable to disaster and theft because of its design with windows and its location in a business district.

Frees Up Space

Of course, one of the main benefits of moving your documents into a storage facility is the extra space you'll have in your building. This allows you to create another office area, work room, or waiting area without having to move into a larger building. Although you have to pay monthly for off-site document storage, you may save money in the long run by better utilizing your current building space.

Easier To Stay Organized

If your files are currently crammed into a small storage area in order to conserve space, you probably have a hard time finding what you need. The advantage to renting storage space is you can rent as much space as you need so all your documents and files are readily accessible and organized. To do this, you'll need to work out a file shelving and labeling system that makes it easy to find files. If you are holding onto files for legal purposes, and don't expect to ever need them, you may get by with keeping them in labeled boxes.

Before you move your files into storage, talk to your attorney to find out what the legal retention date is on the documents your company creates. Then you can shred everything that you no longer need to keep. By thinning and shredding your documents on an annual basis, you can reduce the storage space you need, and your important files will be easier to find. For more information ,contact a local storage company, like Sentry Mini-Storage Inc.