Every payer file,
in date order

The payer is the thing everyone asks about, so make it the folder. One folder per payer, named the way your billing team says it, such as Harbor-Health. If one insurer has several plans with separate agreements, give each plan its own folder or a clear suffix.

Inside, keep it flat. The contract, every fee schedule and every amendment live together, because an amendment only makes sense next to the document it changes. Add a single Archive folder for payers you no longer work with.

Lead with the effective date, then the document type, then a number if there is more than one: 2026-03-15-Amendment-2.pdf. Use the date the terms take effect, not the date the file reached you or the date it was signed, since the effective date is what billing questions depend on.

With that pattern, sorting by name gives you a timeline. The latest fee schedule is the last one in the list, and an amendment shows up right after the contract it modifies.

Several documents can apply to the same payer at once: the base contract, a fee schedule that took effect later, and an amendment that changed a clause. To know what applied on a given day, read the folder in date order and take the most recent document of each type that took effect on or before that day.

Watch for documents that have been signed but have a later effective date, and for scans where only the signature page was kept. A note in the file name, like Amendment-2, makes gaps in the sequence easy to spot.

Most practices start with a shared drive and a spreadsheet that lists each payer, the term end date and where the PDF lives. It works while one person owns it. When that person leaves or the sheet falls behind, nobody trusts it.

Larger groups sometimes move to contract management software, which is a heavier setup with its own data entry. A lighter option is to keep your drive and describe the filing rule to Filex in plain words, so each document is read, named by effective date and filed under its payer as it arrives.

It files and names documents and can remind you of dates it reads from them. It does not interpret contract terms, check what a payer actually paid you, or tell you whether a rate is correct. It also needs the payer name and effective date to be readable, so a poor scan or a signature page on its own may need a quick look from you.

It files documents from the day you turn it on. Sorting an older backlog of contracts is a separate job you can do by uploading them in batches.