Prestige Showcase
Paperless forms for all types of business
Let your smart phone or tablet set you free!
Operations that do not keep records must have great difficulty in keeping control of the business. We all think we can remember exactly what we did yesterday, but can we really? In fact, can we really remember the details of what we did an hour ago? Not just “I wrote an email to Marilyn” but “I wrote an email to Marilyn telling her that she needed to transfer £2,362.49 from current account A into JRT Co’s account number 64325000 at Moneybank sort code 11-11-11 in payment for invoice number JRT170815”.
Businesses have kept records for as long as there have been businesses. Some of the earlier records would not be recognised as such today, but they were an essential part of every operation. The records range from how much the wood cost to make the archer’s bow to how many trees we felled to supply the wood for an army’s bows.
One of the really important things about records is that you have to be able to read them so that they make sense. Years ago, people used books for keeping records. At first, these would be ordinary ledgers with no provision for recording information in a tidy, easy to read format. Some early manufacturing records are nearly impossible to interpret – they may start with a hand-drawn sketch with dimensions marked in a way that the writer understood. There may be arrows pointing to particular parts with written descriptions or explanations. The finished record may include who the item was made for, what it cost to make and what it sold for.
Sophistication reached some areas of record keeping when the pages of some books were printed with headed columns so you knew what was needed where.
Even then, the records were hand written, sometimes with poor quality implements using crude inks and even cruder handwriting. Of course, some were works of art! What may not have been apparent was that the requirement was for accurate, easy to assimilate records rather than beautiful calligraphy but dubious quantities.
Moving on from printed ledgers, some businesses used printed loose sheets of paper which they filed in binders. The binders progressed from a couple of sheets of thicker paper and some string to board or even leather folders with split rings or clips, or various other mechanisms, to hold the records in place. These generically-named ring binders, together with ledgers, still survive in some places today. Certain areas of business are very reluctant to move from one system to another – we callously refer to it as “resistance to change”, but it is not always as simple as that.
The development of computers, small enough to be useful in the working environment, heralded the move in some areas from hand-written records to electronically generated and stored data.
For some time this was only possible in large, wealthy operations, but it has now become the norm in a lot of places. Developing alongside the computers were a number of automated measuring and recording tools, some of them a long way from the work place. Further development has resulted in the integration of the measuring and recording equipment with the computers. So now a mechanical or electronic instrument takes and records a measurement and then transfers it to a computer for someone to read on the other side of the world.
But we still need to record things where they happen, so the humble pen and paper are not finished. The average office worker in the UK still uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year, or 20 reams. That is 4 boxes of paper that their company needs to find a home for and which, when it is finally finished with, goes into landfill. The total cost of using that paper is estimated at between £520 and £1200 – and that is just from one worker.
How good are these paper records? Take a critical look at the records produced in your business and see what problems there are:
Providing food safety and food quality consultancy and training since 2003
82 Sheffield City Region Chambers of Commerce Directory 2018
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