Part 2 Organizing Your Embroidery Business To Run Smoothly-Design Information

In Part 1 of Organizing Your Embroidery Business, I talked about organizing your information that you use in running your embroidery business. In Part 2 I will talk about your customers design information.

I have all of my design or digitizing information in a separate drawer than I do all of the information that applies to the applications and how to run my embroidery business. This keeps a separation and keeps it a little more organized and not so confusing.

As far as paperwork and disks, I have always kept the disks that are applicable to the job in the same envelope as the paperwork. Today, for many machines and computers, the disks are now obsolete. In this case you must keep your designs in a customer folder on your computer using exactly the same name or ID number that you use on your customer design order form and design worksheet. All of your design information and blank goods information is kept in the same folder for the finished job.

After the job is completed, all of the paperwork that has been used and created to do the job is then placed into a catalog envelope along with the disk, if this is applicable, and filed by number into a file cabinet. In a small business, you can file them by alphabetical order, but this does not work in a larger one. In a larger business, you must file them by order or ID number in a file drawer by customer.

To save space and avoid file cabinets, all of the job information can be scanned and kept on your computer inside of the customer‚’s folder again by job number. When a re-order comes in, have all of the information printed out, placed in the job folder and connected with the garments and design ID number. I never have to guess on a re-order using this method of organization.

In Part 3, I will talk about the Production Organization.

Part 1 Organizing Your Embroidery Business To Run Smoothly-Business How To Information

Organizing your embroidery business to run smoothly is not a hard job. Organization is a huge subject in itself, but there are simple things that I do to keep myself organized. In this first part, I will talk about how I organize all the information I have collected and use in my embroidery business. Most of this information is used in running your embroidery business.

I have all of the information that I need organized in notebooks which are stored in the areas where they are used. For example: I have a large notebook of hooping information that I have collected stored in the hooping area where it is easy to grab when I need to refer to it. I have it divided up into sections such as placement locations, hooping techniques for different types of garments, special applications, and others.

I started going thru the magazines many years ago tearing out the articles that I wanted to keep and filed them in a folder marked with whatever the subject was. I have them on every subject that would be applicable to the embroidery business and business in general. I then throw out the magazine. I do not keep them at all anymore. I had boxes of magazines that were not doing me any good because I did not know which one to grab when I needed it. I still do that to this day. Most of the articles that they have today have been repeated so many times that I don‚’t even bother with most of them anymore, but this is not true for the new embroiderer.

I treat the information that comes into the computer the same way. I print out a copy, I cannot read on the computer directly, and file it within the same file folders as the articles from the magazines.

Stay tuned for Part 2 of Organizing Your Embroidery Business. Tomorrow we will get into organizing the customer design information for your business.