When writing proposals you generate vast numbers of files, documents, artifacts, and other items that you want store for reuse. Easy retrieval becomes paramount in achieving this objective. So, how can you best organize your file structure so that you can find items?

A tried and tested approach is to have a proposal folder that contains the following subdivisions:
Level 1: year At the highest level, segregate by year.
Level 2: individual folders for each response you write

Within each response folder you should have a working folder where all drafts of the proposals are stored, a past performance folder used as a container for past performances culled from your past performance library (see Cornerstones to Proposal Success: Past Performance Library), a "Q&A" folder if there has been questions and answers activity, a solicitation folder that contains all of the proposal package documents, and a final folder that will contain the master response document once the proposal has been completed and submitted.

The individual response folder should follow a naming convention.
First portion of the name: whether this is a commercial, federal, or local jurisdiction response
Second portion: an identifier for the agency
Third portion: an identifier for the office
Lastly, a short name for the proposal

So, for example, the following would be a proposal folder name for a response addressed to the National Institute of Health, National Library of Medicine, for the sale of IT hardware: Federal HHS NIH NLM - IT PRODUCTS.

The working folder should contain as many folders as there are volumes in the response. The cost folder, where the cost proposal volume is stored, may need to be password protected if you do not want your financial information to be viewed by all team members.

The simple step of organizing your proposal folder structure in a coherent and easily searchable way will enable your proposal operation to run much more smoothly. It will allow you not to 'sweat the small stuff' when looking for prior proposal information during crunch time.