Organize for Success
3 Tips for Getting Your Files in Order
One of the most underrated skills as a finance team is staying organized. Now I’m not talking about org charts or hierarchies. I’m talking about file organization. This is such a simple, but important skill to learn.
How often do you or your team ask one of the following questions?
Where is the ‘XYZ’ file?
Which copy of the file should we be using?
What’s the difference between these versions?
Which one did we present to leadership?
I bet if you’re reading this then you have come across all of these issues way more than you should be. As a manager or CFO, it is critical to eliminate these bad habits from your organization, especially in finance where there is high turnover for positions. This means it is crucial to stay organized to ensure that your team is as efficient and effective as possible.
I’ve worked for many multi-billion dollar global corporations in my career and the one commonality each company sheared was how disorganized they were when it came to their files. Every team I’ve worked on has wasted countless hours stumbling to find the files they needed, combing through files to figure out what changes have been made and talking to countless people to figure out which copy of a file to use. (Hint: It’s not always the one called ‘Final’!)
Luckily, through these experiences, I have come up with 3 simple tips to help you and your team get your files under control.
Understand your overall structure
Have a file naming convention and stick to it
Add comments everywhere
Understand your overall structure
Before you proceed any further, you need to understand how your organization or team is structured. Start with a single ‘Finance’ folder for your entire company and add sub-folders for each main finance group.
Ex. Finance
Sales
Operations
Treasury
Accounting
Consolidations
Next, take some time to understand the needs of each group. Every team has its own specific needs for staying organized properly. However, there are some general rules of thumb for what should be in each sub-folder that team members can expect to see. Under each of these groups you should have at least the following folders:
Actuals
Forecasts
Ad Hoc / Miscellaneous
Actuals will hold your month-end close files. Forecasts will obviously be the location of your annual forecast and any other mid-year updates you may do. Ad Hoc / Miscellaneous is the place for everything else that doesn’t fall into the first two categories.
Within each of the Actuals and Forecasts folders you should also have a breakdown by fiscal year and by month. If you are closing the books for June, then put your June 2026 close files in that folder under 2026 —> June. Pro tip: add numbers to your month name folders. So if your company’s fiscal calendar matches the annual calendar then you would have 01. January, 02. February, 03. March, and so on. What does that accomplish? It allows you to sort the folders by name so that they appear in order!
Have a file naming system and stick to it
Now that you have a nice clean structure for your files, it’s time to fix your messy file names. My advice for file names is to be as descriptive as possible. If you have a file that you know will be going through multiple iterations, then I suggest the following format:
‘Descriptive File Name v1.0 (Description of changes made since the last version)’
No more calling files ‘Final Final Final’ (yes, we are all guilty of having done this at some point). Now you’ll have a clear record of every file and what was changed since the last update. This is critically important towards the tail-end of forecasts where you may have to make a bunch of quick last-minute edits. Just update the version number and give a brief description of the changes made. You can either override the description each time or create cumulative descriptions like in the example below:
2026 Annual Budget Forecast v3.0 (Adding merit increases)
2026 Annual Budget Forecast v3.1 (Adding merit increases + updating bonus target)
2026 Annual Budget Forecast v3.2 (Adding merit increases + updating bonus target + benefits decrease)
At this point you may be wondering, “Doesn’t having all these copies make a mess of having to sort through so many copies of the same file to find the right one?” This is where an archive folder comes in. Generally speaking, for every folder there should be a sub-folder called Archive. This folder’s job is to hold all old copies of files that are no longer relevant. In the example above, versions v3.0 and v3.1 would subsequently get moved to the Archive folder. This keeps the main section of each folder clean and organized. Instead of looking at a dozen copies of a file, trying to determine the right one, you only have the relevant files that remain on the surface.
One a side note, I will generally reserve updating the first digit in the version number for instances where I make significant changes to the file itself. This gives me a good idea of what I can expect if I am going through old copies. First number updates are large changes and second number updates are more minor changes.
Another great example use case for naming this way is for official submissions or presentations:
2027 Annual Plan v4.0 (Presentation to CFO)
2027 Annual Plan v4.1 (Updates from CFO Review)
2027 Annual Plan v4.2 (Presentation to Executive Leadership Team)
2027 Annual Plan v4.3 (Presentation to Board)
2027 Annual Plan v4.4 (Official Budget Submission)
Getting into the habit of using this naming convention will help you stay organized and make finding the right file a breeze.
Add comments everywhere
Now that we have a file structure and a new naming convention, we are ready for the final piece of the puzzle. While it is great that we now have descriptions of changes in the file names, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to see those changes in the actual file.
The way around this is to be liberal with the use of comments in files. Comment on everything! Seriously, if you’re in Excel, make notes about every cell possible. Explain where values come from, the logic used in a formula, what edits have been made to the values and why, etc.
Too many times I have come across a formula or hard-coded cells with no note about where the number came from or the logic used to get it. That is exactly how you end up stuck or confused. This is 100% avoidable by simply taking the time to make comments.
Don’t be afraid to link cells within a file or even to like to cells in a different file (though be careful here!) Excel has this super useful shortcut, ‘Ctrl + [‘ which will jump you to that exact place you’re referencing, even if it is in another file.
Another option for cataloging changes is to have a ‘Changelog’ tab in your files. This is the perfect place to track changes to a file over time. Put the date of the given change, who made the update, the impact it had on the model, then add additional commentary as necessary. This part can seem tedious at first, but doing minor housekeeping along the way is always easier than having to deep clean all at once. As the Japanese proverb goes, “Maintenance is always cheaper than repair.”
Conclusion
By implementing one or more of these tips I hope that you can start to push your finance organization in a new direction. These instructions should improve your team’s overall effectiveness by cutting down on wasted time and effort.