Good old boring folder structures!
If you have never worked in an office, you may not know what a folder structure is. Although there are many articles that explain exhaustively what this monster is, I believe that if you have any files at all saved in your computer, and if you are working as a professional, or even as a freelance translator, you’ll now the pain of not finding something when you need.
What is it?
In any case, usually, a folder structure is a way of organising your folders based on a specific directory that will focus on the different areas of your business/life. It is widely used, in fact LSPs, companies of any kind and any professionals use this method to keep track and on top of their files in order to always be able to find what they need when they need it.
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Photo by Sanwal Deen on Unsplash
Why you need it
At this point, the reason why you should be using a folder structure should be self-explanatory, but maybe you are not convinced yet, and this is why we will ask you, why not? Although this seems like another boring task that will take an hour of your time that you could use working on another translation project, we do believe that organisation is key. You will understand this when it’s time to claim your expenses, fill in your tax return, return that dress that you really don’t like or whatever you’ll need to do that is related to receipts, documents, pictures and files.
So, now then, why should you try it?
[if !supportLists]- [endif]To find your files in your computer, cloud, server.
[if !supportLists]- [endif]To have what you need it when you need it.
[if !supportLists]- [endif]To avoid working on the wrong files - who would want to translate completely the wrong file to then realise that they have done all that work for nothing, pre-translate and fill in the gaps, or even worse, start again…
Are you convinced yet? Let’s see how to do it.
Ideally, you should have what you need as a file that can be stored on your computer or on a server, and maybe you could consider scanning those written receipts and invoices that you have to throw all that paper away once and for all.
Let’s get cracking then - you should categorise the different parts of your business in different folders, we could call them: Finance, Orders (or Translation projects), Reference material, etc.
Considering these three folders, why not filing in them what’s related to their respective areas: for example, if you are working on the Finance folder, you may want it to look like this:
Finance:
[if !supportLists]• [endif]POs
[if !supportLists]• [endif]Invoices
[if !supportLists]• [endif]Log file, in which you will keep track of all your invoices and POs to know how much you are invoicing each month and know if your clients have paid you and if they have done it on time. For organising this file, you can use many programmes, depending on the operating system installed on your computer: Mac uses Numbers, Windows has Excel, but maybe if you are working on a machine that has both, you could make good use of online programmes like Google Sheets, that looks pretty much like Excel; or Airtable that is very similar and allows you to work on very cool templates.
Another example that in this case includes a hierarchical structure could look more like this.
Orders > Clients > Order Number:
[if !supportLists]• [endif]Source
[if !supportLists]• [endif]Trados folder
[if !supportLists]• [endif]Delivery
[if !supportLists]• [endif]Log File
Everyone has their logic, what’s important is that the reasoning behind the organisation makes sense to who’s using those files. In addition, what’s even more crucial is that a copy of the files must either be stored on a external hard disk, on a cloud or at least on a USB stick, to make sure nothing is lost while working on it or when it’s needed. Please be careful on where you save certain files, because if they are protected by an NDA, you may not be able to share them on a cloud based platform, or you may want to look into the rules and requirements of such platform.
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Last but not least, file naming should always be consistent and everyone should try to make the most of it, not only because of the automatic alpha-numeric ordering functions on our computers, but also because you may not want to send your client an invoice that is called “Invoice 01”, as everyone does. Maybe adding your initials at the end could be a good idea, so that the project manager will not go crazy and will definitely thank you because your invoice will be different from the other 50 invoices all called “Invoice 01”.
We hope that this article has been useful to help you keep your folders and business organised and therefore more dynamic!
