Love Those Colors

I admit it. I carry a wad of colored markers the way Wyatt Earp carried his 6-shooters, and feel just as helpless without them. Colors (unless you’re color-blind, obviously) are an easy visual way to discriminate among things, whether it’s 25 sheets of paper in a client’s folder or an array of six 3-ring binders on your desk. Any time you don’t spend looking at something irrelevant can be spent on something more productive, and color can help you go straight to what you want.

The primary reason to color is for identification.
You can use color in the following ways:

• Colored forms
• Colored file folders
• Colored labels or dots
• Colored notations on paperwork

After creating time cards for a contractor, I instructed that they always be photocopied onto green paper. Now, eight years later, the crew still refers to them not as time cards, but as “green sheets.” A cabinet-making company using a form to log those items purchased in bulk but later incorporated into specific customer projects copies its forms onto blue paper. Nobody calls these sheets “In-House Inventory Forms” but when the supply runs low, any employee can request more blue sheets. Color-coding forms reduces confusion when forms may have similar names or purposes; a form on colored paper inside a folder is easy to spot. My lead sheets are on goldenrod and whenever I open a customer folder I can instantly pick out the address or other information I need on that sheet. In the clutter of paperwork that any desk is periodically subject to, colored forms are easy to spot. If you’re requesting that employees hand paperwork in, it’s clearer to have a box called BLUE SHEETS (and be sure to make the sign blue, too) than one called “In-House Inventory Forms.”

Colored file folders can make filing faster and more reliable. When training a new employee or creating procedural manuals, color can reflect general systems (customers have green folders for “money in” and vendors have red folders for “money out”). If a file is left out, it can be identified instantly and refiled with more confidence.

You can use colored files, labels or colored dots to distinguish among related files contained within a single box-bottom hanging file. Use color to identify customer files containing invoices, specifications, and proposal and change order information. In my office I generally have several files for each client: one includes all invoicing information (red dot); the second contains hardware information, passwords, serial numbers, and registration information on software (green dot); a third folder (blue dot) holds organizational charts, samples of forms I’ve designed for them, and general notes. I never have to wade through irrelevant pieces of paper this way.

When I enter a bill into my computer, I always put a check mark on it, using a big pink Hi-Liter. The Hi-Liter doesn’t obliterate the text yet is big enough to see. If I drop a stack of bills on the floor I want to see at a glance which have been entered into the computer and which haven’t. When I’m reconciling my bank statement, I use a green Hi-Liter to check off the deposits and credits and a pink Hi-Liter to check off the checks and debits. This helps me keep my place and on bank statements where the debits and credits aren’t displayed in separate columns, the color separation can save you time.

Try it. You may even have fun with it.