Keep your images, datasheets and notes together
A folder shape that takes five minutes to set up and survives the person who set it up leaving.
Sourcing generates files: photographs, datasheets, quotations, drawings, email threads. They end up in a mailbox, a downloads folder and one shared drive folder called "valves".
The structure below is deliberately small. Anything more elaborate does not get maintained, and an unmaintained structure is worse than none.
Five things, one level deep
One folder per exact model designation - Not per supplier and not per project. The designation is what somebody will search for, and the same model recurs across projects.
photos/ - Named model-view-date: XF-25-outlet-20260924.jpg. The name says what it shows.
docs/ - Datasheets, certificates and drawings, each with its revision in the filename.
notes.md or notes.txt - Plain text. What was asked, what was answered, by whom, when. Newest at the top.
open-questions.txt - The things not yet settled. The single most useful file when somebody else picks this up.
Two rules
Two rules keep it honest. Nothing is edited in place - a corrected file arrives as a new revision beside the old one - and nothing is deleted just because it was superseded. The point of the folder is to answer "what did we know when we decided?", and deleting the old version removes the answer.
If a file turns out to be wrong, say so in notes.txt and leave the file where it is. A wrong file that is labelled wrong is harmless. A wrong file that has quietly disappeared takes its context with it.
The tool does not matter
If your team keeps files somewhere more formal, the same shape maps onto it. The part that matters is not the tool - it is that the folder is named after the model designation, and that open questions are recorded as open.
Tell us you are keeping a record and we will reply in a form you can drop straight into notes.txt.