Special Colour Coding
There are various special codes which can be added to a file to give the file added dimension or meaning. One way of colour coding for meaning is through the use of plain solid colour designators. Designators might mean, for example: type of insurance, sections or departments of a company, doctor grouping or whatever would aid in retrieval, sorting or selecting types of files. The alpha-numeric example showing a state abbreviation and number also has a solid colour designator. In this case, it denotes special files pertaining to the job number; blue meaning union contracts; green meaning sales contract; red meaning insurance forms, etc.
Another useful and popular special code is time dating or purge codes with the use of year colour labels so that the files can be removed when they became so old and inactive that they are just taking up active file space. Many firms date files for removal and storage after 3, 5, or 7 years. Therefore, year codes become important to keep the file free of inactive files and to save cost on equipment and space. New year codes are added or replaced as the file is updated. The colour makes this easy and time saving because we can remove all old files by their colour; there is no necessity to read or to even look inside the file. The year code colours usually repeat every ten years. All year codes should be spaced away from any other coding on the file folder.
