Your workspace
Organising folders and projects
The structure that still works in two years, and the one that does not.
Almost everyone starts organising by year and ends up finding nothing. The reason is simple: nobody looks for "the 2025 stuff", they look for "that supplier's stuff".
What works
| If you work by | Structure |
|---|---|
| Clients | Client → type of work → document |
| Sites or projects | Site → subcontractor → document |
| Internal areas | Area → process → document |
What does not work
- By year: nobody asks about a year, and everything splits into arbitrary pieces.
- By who uploaded it: that person leaves and the folder loses its meaning.
- Five levels deep: things get filed wrong because nobody goes that far down.
Worth knowing
The date is already on every document and can be filtered. It does not also need to be a folder.
And even with a good structure, searching is usually faster than navigating: search looks inside documents, not just at their names.
›Can I change the structure later?
Yes, folders move without losing anything.
›Can a document live in two places?
Yes, it is linked rather than duplicated, and does not take up space twice.
›Is a per-year folder inside each client worth it?
Only if you have a great deal per client. Otherwise it gets in the way.
A real case
The situation
An accountancy firm cannot find a client's documents from two years ago.
What you do
- Reorganises from year → client to client → type of work
What you get
Anyone on the team reaches a client's material in two clicks, without knowing which year it was.
The situation
A folder is created for every document.
What you do
- Uses folders to group and projects to work
What you get
The structure stops growing with every file.
The situation
Nobody finds anything because everyone organises their own way.
What you do
- Agrees a structure and applies it
What you get
Anyone reaches the same place.
The situation
Three jobs for the same client get mixed.
What you do
- Each job is a project
What you get
One can be closed without touching the others.
The situation
The whole structure is designed before being used.
What you do
- Starts with the minimum and grows with use
What you get
The structure answers the real work.
The situation
There are folders nobody has opened in a year.
What you do
- Reviews and archives what is unused
What you get
The structure stays readable.
This article answers
- how should i organise documents in folders
- recommended folder structure
- i cannot find documents
- by project or by client