What Is a Cross-Reference System?

Filing Systems

• A good filing system should be accessible. If the records you're keeping can't be easily found by anyone who knows the system, it's not effective. While different types of information require different systems, most filing systems are broken down by subject before they're alphabetized or put in chronological order. All files pertaining to "current projects" for instance, would be grouped together. However, a single file may belong under more than one subject heading, and this is where cross-referencing comes into play.

What Cross-Referencing Is

• A cross-referencing system allows you to make a note on a given file that tells you where related information fits within your filing system. Say you have a current project that references research notes you made on a given subject. That research belongs under the heading "research," not under "current projects" because it may be relevant to other projects or files. If you filed it only with your current projects you would have to search to find it when you needed it for another project. Filing it under "research" and then making a note under "current projects" about where to find it, is cross-referencing.

The Uses of Cross-Referencing

• Cross-referencing allows you to keep like subjects together for easy access and to find related information without needless searching. If, for instance, you were inventorying your collectible baseball cards, you may need to find those cards that relate to a given year, team or player, but you can only file them in one place. You may group all the cards about a given team together and put them in chronological order, but players change teams. Making a note of all the teams that a given player has been on and in what years, allows you to easily track that player's cards.

How to Cross-Reference

• Effective cross-referencing relies on simplicity. If you try to organize everything using too many categories, you wind up with a mess of notes. Breaking your files down by subject only works when you use broad, general subjects and then cross-reference between those subjects. For instance, you might break your personal files down into categories such as "budgets," "receipts," "invoices" and "bills," and then put them in chronological order. With just four categories, you can cross-reference which invoices and bills you paid by having a notecard in the file with a list of which ones can be found in your "receipts" file. This lets you know at a glance what's still outstanding. But if you try to categorize by company, you have to go through each company's file to find this information. That process can be necessary for a large business that deals with many specific companies, but impractical for personal expenses or smaller businesses.