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Six Quick Productivity Tricks So You Can Go Home Early

December 13, 2023 By Leave a Comment

If you have an endless to-do list, you’re not alone these days. Most of us are constantly looking for ways to work smarter and get more done. Here are six quick tips to help your productivity so you can go home early.

1. Group tasks

If you have lots of errands to run during the week, why not set aside one day or a part of a day to get them knocked out all at once? It saves start/stop time and may also save gas and time getting dressed up (if you work at home).

You can also try grouping tasks such as personal care appointments, doctor’s appointments, sales calls, and client visits. Your schedule will be freed up in big blocks of time so you can focus on creative projects without having to constantly watch the clock.

2. Use checklists

Checklists are best when you have a task you need to repeat. They’re great when you’re stressed and don’t want to forget a step (such as in packing your suitcase for a trip). They’re also great for tasks that repeat infrequently (Now how did I do that last time?)

Stop and take a minute to create your checklist the next time you perform a routine task that you will repeat in the future. You’ll thank yourself the next time.
3. Organize your email

If you are using Microsoft Outlook for email, consider getting it to work as hard as you do. As your email comes in, you can have Outlook sort the low-priority emails that come from lists, Google alerts, social media notifications, and subscriptions into folders. Create a subfolder in your inbox called “lists.” Then set a Rule to have that type of email go into the “lists” folder. This one step will substantially de-clutter your inbox.

4. Delegate more

If you’re a little wary about delegating, try this exercise: Look at your to-do list and put an hourly rate next to each task that you are doing. If someone paid you to do that job, what would you get on the market? Then look at the tasks with the lowest dollar value next to them.

If you feel your time is worth more than the lowest rated tasks on your lists, it’s time to help someone else out who is unemployed so you can be freed up to use your more valuable skills.

5. Order online

When is the last time you’ve been to the office supply or pharmacy when you know they deliver? (Yeah, me, too. Enough said.)

6. Avoid long learning curves

Whenever you realize a task will have a really long learning curve, then it’s a red flag that it’s time to find someone to hire to do it for you. Here are several examples:

• Doing your taxes and researching all the tax law changes
• Installing a new accounting system and customizing it
• Learning about every new social media platform out there
• Writing a legal contract
• Creating a report
• Troubleshooting a computer problem

The cost of going through the learning curve can be dozens of hours of your precious time lost compared to bringing an expert on board who can perform that task in a matter of hours or minutes.

How did these six ideas compare to your favorites? I hope you picked up an idea or two so you can get home earlier.

Filed Under: Basic Bookkeeping, Blog, Group Tasks, Small Business Bookkeeping

Seven Year-End Adjustments to Make to Your Books

December 13, 2023 By Leave a Comment

Year-end is coming up for many businesses, and it’d be nice to know what your final revenue and profit numbers will be for the year. Before we can calculate these key numbers, there are year-end adjustments that may need to be made to your books that will change the numbers. Here are seven common ones.

Bonuses

It’s great to give bonuses to employees at year-end, but it’s not so great to forget about the tax part of it. Bonus checks should always be run through payroll, but often are not, which requires an adjustment after the fact.

Retirement Plan Contributions

If cash is available at year-end, it’s a great idea to maximize the allowable deductions for the retirement plan you qualify for. One example is a SEP IRA. You can deduct up to 25% of your or your employee’s salary (up to $50,000 deduction maximum per employee for 2012, but please check with us for numerous exceptions and rules.

Withholding

If you are both the owner and an employee of your company and have not made enough tax payments throughout the year to account for all that money you’ve earned in 2012, you can adjust your last few paychecks to withhold the amount you need. Sometimes, this also reduces or eliminates the penalty for underpayment of estimated taxes. To find out more, please check with us.

Depreciation

If you have assets that will last longer than one year, such as factory equipment or a fleet of automobiles, an adjustment may need to be made to reduce the value of those assets. This adjustment will reduce your profit and will also reduce your tax bill.

Amortization

If you have a loan of any type, the payment consists of both principal and interest. Each time you make a payment, the principal and interest amounts can vary. At the beginning of the loan, you pay more interest and less principal. At the end of a loan, it’s reversed. Each payment is different, and if they haven’t been recorded correctly each month, it’s time to make the adjustment so that the loan balance is correct.

New Acquisitions or Obligations

If you’ve made a significant acquisition, such as real estate, buildings, large equipment, or another company, and somehow the transaction did not get properly recorded on your books, then now is the time. Similarly, if you’ve taken on new debt, the new liability needs to be put on the books.

Noncash Transactions

It’s easy to overlook transactions that do not require a cash outlay, but these need to be recorded as well. For example, if you performed consulting services in exchange for a spa gift certificate, this transaction should be reflected in the proper revenue and expense accounts.

Year-End Profit

Once your books are adjusted for all of these changes, you’ll have all the information you need to find out how your business performed for 2012. You can then use your 2012 revenue and profit numbers to set new goals for 2013.

Filed Under: Amortization, Balance Sheet Analysis, Basic Bookkeeping, Blog, Bonuses, Business Balance Sheet, Depreciation, Group Tasks, Profit and Loss Statements, Retirement Plan Contributions, Year End Acdjustments, Year End Profit

Five Favorite Freebies You Can Steal

September 4, 2023 By Leave a Comment

 

If you’re looking for ways to boost your productivity, technology is a great place to start. The good news is there are many free options available. Here are five favorites you might not know about.

1. Bridge lines.

If you need teleconference lines, you’re in luck: there are many high-quality options that are completely free. You can have several people, even hundreds, dial into a line and conduct a meeting or training session via the phone. You can record the session and download the recording as an MP3 file that can be played on an iPod.

Some of the more creative ways to use these free teleconferencing services include:

 

  • Staff meetings when someone is absent so they can listen later.
  • Free teleconference, providing tips to all your clients.
  • Free teleconference, allowing prospects to call in and sample what you offer or find out what you’re like to work with.
  • When you need to record anything. (You often need 2 people on the line to be able to record, but not always.)
  • To record a quick training session or how-to that can be distributed later.
  • To have a client record a testimonial you could put on your web site.
  • To record a meditation or therapeutic session you can listen to over and over again.
  • If you’re a coach or trainer, you can record the client training session and give the download as a service perk.

 

Our favorite: http://www.freeconferencecallhd.com.

 

2. FileZilla.

The FileZilla client version allows you to transfer large files between computers that are connected to the Internet using FTP (File Transfer Protocol). It’s handy for many reasons:

 

  • When you need to load large files such as videos or audios to your website
  • When you need to upload something to an artist, a transcriptionist, a warehouse, or other supplier
  • When you have documents such as white papers that you want people to have access to but don’t want to have to keep contacting your webmaster

 

Download the FileZilla client and find out more here: http://filezilla-project.org/

 

3. Gmail.

 

It’s just a great idea to have a backup email address in addition to the primary email address you use. Gmail is perfect for this.

 

Go one productivity-boosting step further, and make your gmail account the one you use for all that email you don’t need to read as frequently. This could include notifications from social media like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, blog notifications, list posts, Google alerts, and any other nonproductive email, you don’t need to respond to.

 

Open your Gmail account less often than your primary email (even once a week if you dare) and gain that productivity boost. You’ll have freed your inbox from a bunch of clutter and can focus on your clients’ and employees’ emails instead.

 

Visit this site to find out more: https://mail.google.com

 

4. WordPress.

 

WordPress is free blog software that you can install on your web site or blog site. Once installed, it’s super-easy to use for both blogging and a website. You can add photos, graphics, white papers, videos, and audios to the library to put on your blog or your site.

 

It’s also great for search engine optimization; the search engines love it and will rank you higher when you blog and post fresh content.

Visit http://wordpress.org/ to find out more.

 

5. Ning.

Ning is a community platform where people can come together and post a profile, participate in discussions, join a group, and interact. Not all business models will benefit from Ning, but many of you are involved in a club, church group, nonprofit organization, or community where Ning could be very helpful.

 

Ning is almost free, at $19.95 per year or $2.95 per month, but it’s such an amazing platform, I include it here. Whenever you’d like to have a private (or public) community of people who are joined by a common interest, Ning can provide that extra online community connection that can help you group interact and bond even more.

 

Find out more about Ning at http://www.ning.com.

 

What are your favorite freebies?

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Filed Under: Blog, Boost Productivity, FileZilla, GMail, Group Tasks, Small Business Bookkeeping, WordPress

5 Bottlenecks to Avoid that Stump Your Business Growth

July 13, 2024 By Leave a Comment

As a business owner, you have likely acquired many skills and are wearing many hats in your business. Although admirable, your versatility can often lead to slower growth for your company. This happens when you become the bottleneck. Here are five places to check to make sure you haven’t become the bottleneck in your own business.

  1. Managing everything.

It’s definitely good to keep tabs on everything that’s going on in your company, but once your company grows, you may find yourself inundated with information. Instead, try managing by exception.

You don’t really need to know everything that’s going on in your company; you really only need to know when things do not go smoothly, or when there are exceptions. Design a set of management reports that allow you to see these exceptions easily without having to wade through a bunch of information. This will save you time and help you focus where your expertise and skills are needed most.

  1. Doing too much production.

Probably the most common small business mistake is working in your business instead of on your business. If you’re still generating billable work or working too much in production, it should be work that no one on your staff can do and work that requires a very high skill set. Otherwise, it should be delegated to staff. And if you don’t have staff, then they need to be hired.

  1. Not doing enough marketing.

As a business owner, you are the key person that will be bringing in business, forging partnerships, and creating new opportunities for revenue. If you spend your limited time doing other things, marketing often goes undone. Not marketing enough can dry up the pipeline, cause cash flow problems, and get a company in trouble really fast.

  1. Being the only one who knows how to do something.

When employees have to wait on you to show them how to do something, you can easily become the bottleneck in the process. As you train each employee, do it only once by writing procedures for the task as you train. That way, you never have to train anyone on that task again. The newly trained employee can show others, and you can be out of the loop, freed up for more important things.

  1. Having to review and approve everything your employees do.

A great employee is one who is empowered to make as many decisions as possible without further layers of supervisions getting involved. Often, a decision can be “cookbooked” so that the decisions can be pushed down the lower layers of management. Take a look to see if any of the decisions that you are making can be documented and pushed down so that you don’t have to get involved. That way, your employees will have the right balance of authority in order to do their jobs.

How did you measure up on these five high-bottleneck areas? When you can clear up the bottlenecks in your business, your firm will be able to grow even faster.

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Filed Under: Blog, Boost Productivity, Business Balance Sheet, Group Tasks, Marketing, Modifying QuickBooks, Small Business Bookkeeping