Workflow – Less filing, more tracking
No one likes filing.
It’s time consuming and doesn’t add any value to the production. But, we’ve all received that call from a random crew member, 6 months after wrap, inquiring about a check for $42 and 3 peanuts that might not have been cut. And that’s when filing pays off. If it’s done correctly, filing lets you figure out quickly what’s been done and what hasn’t.
Filing for the sake of filing is useless. We file in order to find documents down the road. This is an important concept that renders traditional filing obsolete. And I’m going to convince you to switch to the future of filing.
How to be bad at filing
Most production companies have already started the move towards digital filing. They’ve ditched the big production binders, and invested a bit of money into some online database/project management tool, or simply run everything using Google Drive.
Some of them have also created a basic “naming convention” for files. Something like “Vendor name_Document Type_Document date”.
What most people fail to understand is that a good naming convention renders filing obsolete. As I’ve mentioned earlier, the only reason to file is to find documents down the road.
Before digital files were a thing, it made total sense to go through a project binder that was sorted alphabetically, then go through the pages (ordered by date) to extract what you needed.
Now that we have moved to the digital age, we have created something amazing, called “the search bar”.
When you search through your emails to find something, you don’t pile up all the emails related to a project, then go through that pile to find the ones sent to a specific person, then go through this new pile to find the one you’re really looking for based on it’s date. You simply search for the exact thing you need.
I may sound like I’m enunciating the obvious, but by looking at the state of filing in the industry, it’s not.
How to be good at filing
Step 1 – Enforce the perfect naming convention
A naming convention should be tailored to your production company. There are, of course, basic elements that are found everywhere, but since all companies run slightly differently, it’s crucial that the naming convention account for all the exceptions that take place in yours. The 4 base attributes of your file naming convention should be:
- the project name
- the payee (or contracted entity)
- the document type
- the date
You want to list all these attributes but also create a condensed file name. Some systems have a character limit, but it’s also a lot easier and faster to read through short file names.
The project name is by far the hardest, and deserves it own naming convention. I won’t go into too many details, but a good rule of thumb is to abbreviate a project to it’s initials. There are many, many possible exceptions, which is why I’ll dedicate a whole other post to that.
The payee should always be the name by which an individual or company is referred to on a daily basis. So if one of your regular crew guys is called Joseph Smith but goes by Joe Smith, use the latter. The file name and the name on the document can be different, and that’s fine. It only needs to make sense to whoever is searching.
One exception: if Joseph Smith goes by Joe Smack, I would advise to name the file “Joe Smith AKA Smack”.
The document type also needs it’s own naming convention, based on the names of the documents you use. Not every company uses the term “Purchase Order” for instance. If you do, shorten that up to PO. If instead, you just refer to invoices, then use INV. It’s that simple, but everyone needs to be on the same page. Document type can be more elaborate. For instance, if yo wish to create reports that outline how many purchase orders for camera equipment or truck rentals have been issues in the last month, you’ll need to add that into your naming convention (“Camera PO”, “Transpo PO”).
When it comes to the date, I like the MM_DD format. It’s quick and easy to read. Making sure that single digit numbers start with a “0” ensures that files are sorted in the right order. I usually don’t care for the year, but that’s a matter of personal preference (add it in front of the month if you decide to use it). The underscore is one of the symbols that always gets recognized properly, so I always encourage this one over dashes. You can remove it if you prefer, but that takes away some readability.
There are a lot of other attributes to throw into the mix. It all depends on the kind of reports you want to generate. These 4 basic ones guarantee that you will find anything you want, quickly.
Step 2 – Tracking everything
When we stop filing, we of course lose the “project at a glance” binder. You can download all the files that match the project name, but that’s about it. So we need something to replace the binder. Something better than the binder.
Obviously, it’s a spreadsheet. A good tracking spreadsheet is better than any tool currently on the market. It’s the most versatile database there is, it’s highly customizable and lightweight. A tracking spreadsheet starts when the project starts, and is used for everything: it can generate other documents (a crew list can become a call sheet’s back, a distribution list, a payroll log, a list of credits..) and requires very little additional work compared to filing. It also helps prevent a large number of items from “falling through the cracks”.
A binder or a folder doesn’t let you add up rates, or export lists of vendors. A binder and a folder contain enough private information to steal dozens of identities, and should not be sent left and right. I’ll go even further and say that a production folder should only be accessible by the people that handle these files. Everyone else can either look at the tracking documents or make a request for information.
A tracking spreadsheet contains all the information you need, and only that, making it the best tool for the job.
“But I still want a folder with all my project’s files”
If you just thought this, then odds are, you are working on a larger project. Or you work in a structure that needs to deliver the entire project’s documentation to a third party.
If your naming convention includes the project name, you should be able to file pretty quickly. But here’s a pro tip:
Computer are really good a repetitive tasks. Check in with your IT guy, or ask your niece or nephew, who’s computer skills are far above yours and mine already. Odds are, one of these people can write a “script” that will file a document based on it’s name. If all your file names look like:
ShowName Payee DocumentType MM_DD
Then a script can easily differentiate these elements (using the spaces in between them or matching them against a pre-established list) and create folders and sub folders based on the project, payee or document name.
Remember: we live in the digital age and it’s time to act accordingly.
Databases
Filing does help in a very specific situation: when you need to access a document often. For instance, filing W9 forms is a good idea. But again, you could avoid that with a good tracking document that stores the URL of all W9 forms, check authorizations, articles of incorporations etc…for each payee.
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