"Stay organized. Find a system that works for you." Linda Case, Founder

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Color Coding Keeps Things Straight

Have you ever had this happen? You remove a document from a file and notice that someone in your office has amended it. You can’t quite make out the changes and need to talk to the person who made them, but you don’t know who revised the document. Now what do you do?

To make things easier, have everyone in your office pick a certain pen color to use, and have them use that color on every document they work on. At Schroeder Design/Build, Inc., in Fairfax, Va., general manager Trish Schroeder is partial to pink ink, sales director Andrew Schroeder uses blue, and president Tom Schroeder likes red. The company’s selection coordinator, office manager, and production manager all have their own colors, too. “When we change a form or a contract, we use the same color pen each time and we can always tell who made the edit,” Trish says.

Schroeder’s color coding extends to the company’s contacts database, too. Whenever someone enters a new contact in ACT! software, the person makes sure to use his or her own color to fill in the information on screen. “If it’s a Tom sale, it’s entered in red and if it’s an Andrew sale, it’s entered it in blue,” says Trish. “We can tell just by looking at the entry who made the sale.”

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