Do you find that when you receive phone calls or voice mail messages, you can't remember who called, what time they called, who they were trying to call, etc? Do you wish that you could be able to track calls and make sure that you have all of the details in place?

This happens to everyone from time to time. In my case, I am lucky, since I only have to track calls for myself and use my daily journal or agenda (call it what you will) to make notes. I also use it for meetings at work and personal errands, but that's another story.

I used to track calls for one of my past employers, when I used to work at a securities firm as an Investment Advisor Assistant. The way I would do it is that I would create a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet for the month. I say month, since I would create a sheet for each week, having the "from" and "to" dates in the sheet name.

Then I would create worksheets within each sheet with headings such as:

• Name
• Time of Call
• Reason for Call
  

If you work for more than one manager or you need to track calls for more than one person, you might want to create a heading that states something like "Person Receiving Call" or something along the lines of this.

Remember to create a filename for each year, so you can keep yourself organized. Also, remember to archive these files, just in case you need to go back and check who called when for what reason. You can purge the files as needed, depending on your company's situation and/or policy.

So try creating a spreadsheet yourself and let me know how it works out for you. If you think of anything else you could add to this, please share with the rest of the readers here.

If you're looking for a business phone system, check out the PBXs that are currently on the market.

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Until next time,

Take care - of your clutter!


Post from: Administrative Assistant Tips