Time, there is just enough in the day. You arrive at work start working. You are running late and clients are complaining. The e-Mails are piling up and your tax return is due tomorrow.
Sound familiar, there are many small business owners in this position. Competition is tough and you have to work harder just to make ends meet.
Business fails when systems are not in place, the most important one is your administration. If you cannot afford to outsource your admin and must do it yourself, you need to keep it up to date or you could find yourself in trouble.
if you get into the habit of doing small tasks at regular intervals, for example, when you switch on your computer in the morning, connect to you bank and check what money came in overnight and what went out. You then know if that overdue payment needs chasing up or if money is missing from your account. A 5 minute task done daily, will save you grief.
When you buy something for cash or using a credit (debit) card, you tend to walk around with a wallet of receipts that eventually get lost. So, a ten minute task this time, take the receipts out of your wallet and scan them, save them and when you do get round to doing your accounts, you have them handy.
If you set aside one morning every fortnight, you can check that you have invoiced out work, that outstanding money is collected and that expenses are tracked. And you do not need any fancy software, everything can be tracked using a spreadsheet.
And here is a cost saving hint, you do not have to buy Office Software to get a spreadsheet, Google will let you use Google Docs Free!
Administration, sorted!
