One of the main tasks of administrative assistants is to handle records for the organization in which they work. In law firms these are often case files. In fact, this is one kind of file that you get in many areas: patients medical and dental records are kept in order by admin people.
The level of complexity of handling these varies. So to, does the proportion of the work that is run using computer systems, or done using paper methods. In other cases, the system at the organization uses a combination of these. Also, organizational files are normally subdivided. Here is how it can become complex.
In my own experience, as it happens, I have worked in libraries, for universities and in industry amongst other environments as an administrative assistant, or closely related position. In an industrial atmosphere, inventory records and invoices are both often tasks for administrative assistants. However, billing itself and anything having to do with the accounts normally goes to another department that is also divided into two areas: accounts payable and accounts receivable. Now, inventory record management is a task that changes with the size of a company and with the diversity of what’s in stock. I have worked in small businesses where I handled the vast majority of the inventory records as an administrative assistant. I have also served in large companies where this would not directly be possible as the company is too big combined with the way it is organized. If the organization is massive, then often times, the entry level administrative personnel perform data entry to keep inventory movement in order. Often computer data bases and a sizeable computer network are used to enhance communication between the warehouses that deliver goods, the people who place the orders within specified budgetary constraints and the manufacturing of products themselves.
A library can be similar to an industrial atmosphere in that the volume of inventory is huge, even though in this case materials are meant to come and to go and to come back instead of being sold off for good. Libraries have been using computerized systems along with hand methods of organization for decades in many places, and these systems have included technological innovations such as CD roms which allow for more and easier to access records of library inventory than even the greatest microfilm equipment could do.
Administrative assistants at libraries are often trained to handle several aspects of the interface between inventory and the card holders, but of course this depends upon the department. Librarians themselves handle most of the higher level administrative functions.
Universities can be most similar to law firms and to the health fields in terms of record handling since in every type of environment there are customer or case files (like the card holders at libraries) even though most of us do not think of college students as ‘customer w/file #’. If you work with student records for more than half a year, you will.
