Organizing your Important Companies, Practices & Services

Since the hubs and I's big move, a lot of things have changed for our family. Things like our address, our phone numbers, our eye doctor, our internet provider, our bank... the list goes on and on.

One of the hardest things about moving was keeping track of all these new changes. For some services, like Abilene's college fund, we were able to use the same company even after the move so all we had to do was update them of our new contact information. For other services, like our doctors, information had to be released and transferred to new practices. Still with other services, like our internet provider, we had to completely close previous accounts and open new accounts.

It was a mess trying to keep track of who had been informed of the new information and who hadn't.

On top of that, we didn't get new phone numbers until about 4 weeks after we moved so I had to update everything and everyone all over again. We'll have to do the same yet another time whenever we purchase a home.

Keeping our contact information up to date with the companies and practices we use is definitely something I didn't want to let slip through the cracks of moving madness. That being said, I searched the internet to see if anyone had come up with a way to organize and keep track of all this information.

I found a few things that helped get the gears turning in my head but ultimately ended up creating a spreadsheet of my own to keep track of all the companies, practices, and services we either use or are a part of and the last date that our information was updated with said companies, practices, and services.

The spreadsheet includes a list of:

• Banks
• Retirement / Funds (for example, your 401k or children's college funds)
• Dept. of Transportation
• Healthcare (including our Family Doctor, Pediatrician, OBGYN, Dentist, and Eye Doctor)
• Social Security
• Employers (from this financial year)
• Insurance (including Car, Homeowners, Life and Health)
• Gas 
• Electricity
• Water
• Phone 
• Internet
• Library
• Schools
• Clubs and Interest Groups (for example, your Church, Cub Scouts or kid's T-ball team)

Each of those categories have spaces for the following information:

• Company Name
• Phone Number
• Address, City, State, and Zip
• Website
• Contact Person
• Email Address for Contact Person
• Account Numbers, Etc.
• Notes (you can include usernames and passwords here if you're comfortable with that)
• Date Last Updated

I now have all that information all in one place and, for example, when we eventually buy a home, I can simply go down the list and update each company with our new address either by phone or by updating our accounts online. No looking around for phone numbers and websites and no worrying about whether or not I've contacted all the right people. Now that all the information is in one place, it will probably only take me 20 to 30 minutes to update each company with our new information. Done and done.

Whether you know of an upcoming change in your contact information or not, it's super helpful to have one document with all the important companies, practices and services you use on it. Life can change very quickly and unexpectedly and having all that information in one place will save you from a lot of headache later.

I recreated the document on Google Docs so you can make your own Important Companies, Practices & Services list. I know everyone's contacts are different so I left the document as an Excel file giving you the ability to edit it to fit your family's needs. You can find the Important Companies, Practices & Services document here. To download the file to your computer, simply click on "File" and then "Download As" and download it to your computer as an Excel file.

Please, please, please let me know if you have any questions or are having trouble downloading the document to your computer. My hope is to make people's lives easier not harder, just ask my husband...

Hmm, on second thought, maybe don't ask my husband, just take my word for it.

Here's to being prepared and being organized!

Happy Company, Practice and Service organizing!