Residential Real Estate Investor · Kansas City, MO · Member since 2014 · 10k+ posts · 5k+ votes
11y
I try to keep everything online, if it has to do with property management, we keep it in RentManager. Our saying is that if it's not in RentManager, it didn't happen. With closings and rehab docs, I put every computer document in one folder for that property on our network. Then we scan in the rest and put that new scanned document in that folder. Then we put that hard folder away in a big filing cabinet in case we ever need to go searching for some document. I hope that helps.
Investor · Atlanta, GA · Member since 2014 · 132 posts · 40 votes
11y
Microsoft OneDrive or Google Drive!
I like OneDrive more. It's not you just save your files online, you have copies on each computer you have, so you will never lose your important files. I like sound sleep at night.
And it is so easy to use, you download a small software, and it is used just like a normal folder in your computer. But everything you save at one place, is sync to your remote drive automatically.
I create a folder for each property and have subfolders like documents/loan/management/insurance/etc.
You will never lose your file and also have access to the file.
Investor · Kansas , MO · Member since 2015 · 27 posts · 5 votes
11y
Great, thanks everyone? My thing about it is recycle, I don't want to have hard copies of everything, I think I'm going to get one of the mass storage drives from wallies I have a file cabinet but I hate the thought of boxes full of files stacked up in my house or to have to pay for storage of boxes. I rather it be a click away and save in more then one drive for security purpose, like a back up.
Investor · Fishers, IN · Member since 2014 · 47 posts · 7 votes
11y
This is very interesting topic. I think there an unlimited combinations on how to do this. I agree with @George P. in that Google Drive is unorganized. A customer service rep told me that their design is to minimize the folders and take advantage of their great search capabilities. Hard to get used to doing it that way if you have been keeping sub-folders for a long time.
DropBox is another great alternative. We use this for another business. It seems a better way to keep organized, and its free.. up to 15 GB (I think... more if you recommend friends).
Best thing I ever did was purchase a Fujitsu ScanSnap (high speed scanner). I know scan everything. I back up my originals scans to an external USB hard drive, and then I also use a backup service, CrashPlan, to back that up in the cloud. If your not doing this you are just lucky and have not lost your data YET! You will at some point! :-)
That being said, I still keep important original documents in several fire filing cabinets.
Organizing your data (be it hard copy, or electronic) takes a lot of time. However, for me, it has really paid off as I can access what I want when I need it.
Property Manager · Big Bear Lake, CA · Member since 2013 · 585 posts · 330 votes
11y
I scan absolutely everything into my computer. I have Carbonite set up to automatically back up everything online. I don't have to manually back up anything at all. The only thing I keep originals of (after scanning) are leases. I have one file folder for those and that's it. No filing cabinets at all.
Investor · Atlanta, GA · Member since 2014 · 112 posts · 80 votes
11y
Dropbox is tough to beat. You can send someone a link to the file folder online where they can access the documents rather than sending huge files if necessary.