It is. This is actually the second most important part of your business record-keeping. Records that are kept under the same roof or in the same company should be different.
It might seem like this is somewhat of a no-brainer, but the actual process of keeping records (i.e. who has what, when, where, how) is often the hardest part. Keeping track of things like bills, receipts, and other records requires a tremendous amount of time and attention and you risk losing track of them if you aren’t careful. Because of this, it’s a good idea to have records kept separately on personal and business devices.
The reason this is important is because if you don’t have separate records, you are forced to make them. This means that you should not have your business records stored on your personal devices and vice versa. In a sense, this is the same concept as the “fog of war”. If you are not careful, you can start losing track of important notes and documents.
Having a separate business and personal device makes things easier because you can easily sync the two. For instance, if you are a business and you need to send a document to your clients, you can just send it to your business device and sync it there, and it is ready to go. If you need to send a document to your personal device you can sync that device to your personal device and send it.
So, as I have always thought, it is absolutely essential that you keep all your important documents and notes together on your personal device, and that you sync your device to your business device when you need to send a document there. If you’re not careful, the two devices will be out of sync and you will lose important notes.
This is a common mistake I see people make. For one, nobody uses two devices for anything. They just use a phone, a laptop, an iPad, or some other device. Why? Because they have a phone. They have a laptop. They have an iPad. And they have a phone. As such, they have no need to sync these devices. In fact, they rarely do.
This is another common mistake. For one, it’s often because people have a separate business device for business purposes. That’s a bad idea. For another, people often use their business device as their personal device for personal purposes. They use their phone as their personal phone, their laptop as their personal laptop, and so on. The point is, if you have a personal device, chances are you don’t really need to sync your business device with it.
A lot of people do just fine with personal devices for personal. You might have the phone you use for calls and the laptop you use for work. However, you probably should sync your business device with it. Then you can log into your business device from anywhere on the internet and access your personal device from anywhere on the internet.
