My Network Places vs Shared Documents

Shared documents is local on a PC (it's in the All users profile). For example, it allows sharing of documents between you and your wife. Unless you're an administrator of your home PC you don't have access to documents in her profile and the other way around.

When you're talking about a network, you're talking about different machines. In an office environment like yours it's common to have a 'server' for storing files and managing network printers and running Exchange as a mail-server. One of the advantages is that you can have a centrally managed backup.

A good rule of thumb is to have no company files AT ALL on local PC's.
This has the added advantage that in case of any trouble you don't need to find the problem and correct it, but you just put the initial image on it and go ahead without losing any data, because that's on the server. Any employee storing personal photo's and mp3's on his PC risks losing it, but that's quite acceptable.

So what you need: a folder structure with access rules (who may write and read what folders) on a common file server in the network. Your boss is the only person who can decide on the authorizations to be used.
Better hire a network person from the company you buy the hardware to set it up, if you don't have the experience yourself. That's about the same as installing the coffee machine or the airconditiong unit. You're boss wouldn't think of it to have you do that, even if you are coffee-savvy or airconditing-literate. And the same goes for servers in a network.

Kees