Need help moving office documents safely and securely? R4 can help you! We offer office packing services and document management to securely destroy and/or store documents for your business. 

Moving is a good opportunity to go through documents and data that you may have accrued over the years. This may sound overwhelming and stressful, so here are some tips on how to prioritize your sensitive data when moving. 

Any documents that aren’t frequently renewed or that have to do with your business’ integrity are important to keep:

• Social security cards
• Birth certificates
• Death certificates
• Marriage license
• Business license
• Property records
• Vehicle titles
• Passports
• Wills, living wills and powers of attorney

What can go (eventually): up-to-date versions of the following documents are necessary to keep.

• Insurance policies

• Retirement plan documents
• Social security statements
• Tax documents (about 7 years)
• Credit card receipts/statements​

Once you decide which items are necessary to keep and which items can go, R4 can help! We offer effective and secure on- and off-site destruction and can handle all types of media -- whether it be paper, hard drives or even x-rays. 

For more information on our confidential and secure document destruction services, click here.

For the data/documents you need to keep, R4 can store it for you. If your business is limited on space, we have many secure offsite storage options. There are many benefits to utilizing an offsite storage facility. 

• Free Up Square Footage: Storing documents offsite in a large warehouse gives you the chance to free up square footage to use for cubicles or conference rooms.
• Cost-savings: Explore the option of storing documentation offsite, and you'll see the price differences between office space in a highly sought after urban setting and storage fees for a warehouse in an industrial complex.
• Expand Your Mind: At R4,  we have efficient systems in place to make retrieval of your files quick and easy. This allows you more time to focus on other aspects of your business. 

For more information on our secure storage capabilities and facilities, click here.

Moving can be a hectic and stressful time. By utilizing R4’s services you will be able to focus on other responsibilities within your business and successfully complete your move.

Contact us or call 773-843-3915 today to find out how we can relieve stress and save you time during your company’s move!

Other R4 services include: 
Document Management
​Shredding Services
Office Packing Services
Destruction Services
Hard Drive Destruction
Electronics Recycling
Vault Services
Indexing
Disaster Recovery
Web Access​

We find ourselves in a new working landscape due to the evolving pandemic, which for many of us means working remotely, even as the country continues to open up. Keeping an organized workspace for yourselves and employees is crucial to maximizing efficiency in a time of such uncertainty. It's all too easy for papers and boxes of files to start piling up, especially in document-heavy professional fields such as the accounting, healthcare, banking and legal industries. Staying on top of your game when it comes to clearing out your office is important -- it's easier to stay organized than it is to reorganize, and R4’s document management & scanning services can help.Here are some helpful tips on how to organize important documents at home.

1. Scan and index your important files
By scanning and indexing your important documents at home, you're not only creating backups of the hard copies, you're digitizing them for maximized accessibility. Gone and forgotten are the days of sifting through boxes and digging through file cabinets. With your digital documents, you can pull up any file from any computer with a web browser. Through a secure connection, you can easily search for files, pull them up, make notes on them and directly print, email and fax. All of our digital scanning, indexing and mobile access software are fully HIPAA-compliant.

2. Get rid of unnecessary files
After scanning and indexing, you might not need hard copies anymore, so there are a few options for you. The first option is to destroy them. We have discussed the importance of maintaining a rigid retention schedule many times in the past, and it still holds true for nearly every industry. Outdated medical records with sensitive patient information, old financial statements and tax info (including SSNs) may be unnecessary to keep around the home office. Here's a list of documents you should destroy, but probably aren't. Keeping hard copies of outdated files doesn't just clutter your physical office space, it opens you up to legal liabilities and tax audits. R4 Services has the state-of-the-art document destruction equipment that can securely and confidentially destroy any media type from paper, film, tapes, monitors, disks, x-rays and hard drives.

3. Store your documents offsite
Perhaps you're looking at how to organize important documents at home without destroying those mountains of paperwork. Whether it's for sentimental value or to remain legally compliant, you might need to keep those documents -- yet, you don't want it taking up your real estate. In that case, consider storing your documents off site via vault services. It guarantees to keep your records accessible 24/7 for any media type: computer tapes, disks, video/audio recordings, microfilm, microfiche, x-rays. We can also provide climate-controlled storage space for older, sensitive things such as paintings, archival documents, books, photography, and business-critical documents (eg. disaster recovery plans).

Any and all of these methods work for any industry from medical, legal, education and more. These best-practices will help to keep your home office organized to maximize efficiency, while keeping a more breathable and uncluttered office space. 

To find out more on how to organize important documents at home, contact us at 773-843-3915 or orders@r4services.com

Other R4 Services Solutions include: 
Document Management
​Shredding Services
Destruction Services
Hard Drive Destruction
Electronics Recycling
Vault Services
Indexing
Disaster Recovery
Web Access

​Take a moment to think about your file management practices. After some serious thought, you may feel overwhelmed. You might not know where most of your files--physical and digital--even are. The good news is, you’re not alone. Many business-savvy people save documents wherever the default settings are set to, and have no clue where to locate them later.

Years of bad file management could be to blame. Regardless, it might be time to make some serious habit changes to how you store your files.

Physical Files:

1. It’s time to implement the right classification system
A functional classification system is important for filing comprehensive information and maintaining consistency in naming items. Having a classification system in place will allow you to retrieve and file items easily. To properly classify your files, make labels for hanging file folders or manila folders. Then organize all your documents into the appropriate folders.

2. Centralizing files: keep everything together
Having all your files in one, central location will give you peace of mind knowing where everything is located. Bringing all of your physical files into one space, such as a file cabinet, or an off-site storage facility will improve user efficiency, security, reliability and space utilization in your workplace. Having all your physical files in one location should also make it easier to manage and keep records of your most important information.

3. Tickler File System
Setting up (and committing to) a tickler file system could be a game-changer if you’ve never used it before. The tickler file system is simple. Create 43 hanging file folders. Label 12 folders for each month of the year. The remaining 31 folders can be labeled 1-31, one for each day of the month. Organize the folders in numerical and chronological order in a file cabinet, and then file away any paperwork that has a due date into it’s given day of the month. Every morning you can open up that day’s folder and know exactly what you need to work on.

Digital Files:

4. Store all of your data in one location
Organizing your digital files and folders on your computer is no different than keeping your physical files in one location. The most efficient way to do this on your computer (for Windows users) is to utilize the default Documents folder built into Windows. Be sure to name your folders according to subject and store appropriate files into each named folder. To clear space on your own computer, consider R4 Services’ imaging services, where we scan your paper files, then store and manage them as digital files for you. 

5. Take advantage of shortcuts
One of the easiest and most productive ways to keep your digital files organized is to use shortcuts on your desktop or laptop. Rather than copying a document to your desktop, make it a habit to create a shortcut to that file.  This will ensure your files remain where they belong. To create a shortcut to a document, right-click on the file and choose Create Shortcut. 

6. Go with short file names
Keeping your file names short and concise will help you find documents and properly organize them. WIth a shorter, condensed file name, you can quickly access the document you are searching for and avoid confusion when sharing the files with other people.
 
7. Be descriptive as possible when naming folders
When you have multiple digital files across several different topics, it’s a good idea to separate the files into different descriptive folders. Having descriptive folders can help you easily identify what the topic is about. Let’s say you have multiple files throughout the year, and you want to break them down into months of the year. You can create 12 folders, one for each month, and file documents into their respective monthly folders. The more detail you have in your folder names, the easier it will be to locate the files when you need them.

8. Couple folders within folders
When you have a big project that you’re working on, you’ll likely have many documents going at once. Those documents will go into their own (newly named and descriptive!) folders. But what happens when you have too many folders? You can nest folders within folders. So, when you have a project or task to manage that is ongoing for several years, you can have one folder naming the project. Within the project folder you can create folders for each year. Eg., “2012”, “2013”, “2014”. This way, when you’re looking for a file from a previous year, you know exactly where to find it.

9. Regularly backup your files
This is perhaps the most important tip for good file management. When you need a copy of a physical document, you go to the copier machine and make a copy. It’s no different for digital files. Whether you backup your files onto a jump drive, or external hard drive, getting into the habit of backing up files is a smart idea. 
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Need additional advice when it comes to your businesses’  document storage and file management plan? Contact R4 Services here!