Most small teams begin with files scattered across personal drives, email attachments and chat threads. It works until someone is away, someone leaves, or a client asks for a document nobody can find. Fixing it later, once there are thousands of files, is far harder than setting up a simple system early.
Start with the structure
Organize by what the work is about, not by who does it. People change roles and leave; projects and clients persist. A typical top level for a small agency or studio might be:
- 01_Clients (a folder per client, then per project)
- 02_Internal (policies, templates, brand assets, HR)
- 03_Finance (invoices, tax, contracts)
- 04_Archive (finished projects, read-only)
Numbering the top-level folders keeps them in a stable order. Use the same pattern inside every client folder so anyone can find their way around without asking.
Keep shared and private separate
Give each person a private area for drafts and personal files, and keep everything the team depends on in shared folders. The rule is simple: if someone else might need it, it belongs in a shared folder. That single habit prevents most 'where's the latest version?' problems.
Set permissions on purpose
Apply the principle of least privilege: give people access to what their job requires and nothing more. That limits accidents, and it limits the damage if an account is ever compromised.
| Role | Typical access |
|---|---|
| Owner or admin | Everything, including finance and HR folders |
| Team member | Edit access to the client and project folders they work on; view access to internal resources |
| Freelancer or contractor | Edit access to a single project folder, for the length of the project |
| Client | View or download access to their deliverables only, through a link with a password and expiry |
If your storage service supports it, grant access by group or role instead of person by person. If it doesn't, keep a short list of who has access to what and review it regularly.
Onboarding and offboarding
The moments people join and leave are where access goes wrong. Write both down as short checklists.
When someone joins
- Create their account and turn on multi-factor authentication.
- Give them access to the folders for their role.
- Point them to a one-page guide covering the folder structure and naming rules.
When someone leaves
- Transfer ownership of any files or folders they own before their account is removed.
- Remove their access to shared folders.
- Delete or expire any share links they created that are still active.
- Change any shared passwords they knew.
Sharing with clients
Never send clients your internal folders. Create a dedicated deliverables folder for each project, and share it through a link with a password and an expiry date. Tell them when it will lapse, and ask them to download what they need. It looks professional and keeps your working files private.
Agree on a few rules
- One naming convention for files, documented in a short note in the root folder.
- One place for the final version of every document. Drafts live elsewhere.
- Use links to files rather than sending copies by email, so there is only ever one version to update.
- A quarterly ten-minute review of who has access to what.
NGDS lets you share folders with specific people at view or edit level and create password-protected, expiring links for clients, which covers the structure described here. As the team grows, the same principles apply, only with more folders.