Archive for the ‘Administration’ Category

Happy Tuesday!

This is a quick little tackle it Tuesday so that you can get right to work..

“Clean Up Your Inbox”

Set aside a day (yes, I said a day) to thoroughly go through your email inbox with a fine tooth comb.. what needs to be dealt with, deal with it.. If the task at hand (in the email) needs more than a reply back, transfer it onto a piece of paper so that you can do that task later, and then move onto the next email.

Check out your deleteds and sent items.. if you’re like me you keep a LOT (Hey! Sometimes I need those messages from 2001 ok?!) Anything that is not from 2009 till now, DELETE it.. it’s ok! You have my permission…

Once you’ve done that, you will feel much much better about opening up your inbox – I PROMISE!!!

Till tomorrow

A

TGIF!! Welcome to our very first edition of Financial Fridays! I’d also like to extend a warm welcome to our very first guest blogger (who’s going to be a regular) Hilary McDonald – Accountant.

Every Friday Hilary will talk money; the ins and outs, ups and downs of small business finances. If you have a financial question – she is the person to ask.. Ask away and your question will be answered here – on the Foundation Studio blog!! FREE Financial Advice?! How cool is that?!

Hilary starts off the series with what to do now that the year has come to a close…

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Year-End and the New Year

Most unincorporated small businesses are required by the government to have a year end of December 31.  So while we rang in the New Year most of our businesses had “year-end”.    Did you miss it?!   No worries.  Thankfully, year-end for businesses is more a process of closing the books for 2009 and preparing for 2010.  Whether your record keeping system is manual, computerized or like so many of us, a box of receipts in the corner of the office, there are a number of things you should be getting ready and organized.   Tax deadline has a way of sneaking up on us each year.

1. Separate 2009 and 2010 – Close your computer record keeping software for 2009 and open a new year.  Follow the guidelines included in your software package and make sure you print everything your system suggests in hard copy and make a backup of your files before you close.   Any manual ledgers that you keep should be totalled for the year and new ledgers set-up for 2010.  If you are a box person, get a new box and write 2010 on it.
2. Round-up paperwork – Start getting your tax paperwork together and keep it all in one place.  T-slips from employer’s, investments and other income sources, UCCB, RRSP receipts, Fitness receipts for the Fitness Tax Credit,  2008’s Notice of Assessments and copy of tax returns, etc.  T-slips must be issued by end of February so if you are missing any slips at that time, call the issuer to get new ones as quickly as possible.
3. Communicate with your accountant.  Ask questions if you are unsure of how to handle “year-end” related items and book an appointment now to get your taxes done.   If this is your first year end, ask your accountant for a list of what information they are going to need to prepare your taxes for your business.

Getting organized will save you time and money.  Let’s make sure 2010 is a truly prosperous one for your  business!

Hilary L. McDonald – Accountant
www.HilaryMcDonald.com

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Got a financial question? Ask Hilary a question and you may have it answered in the next Financial Friday post!!

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Howdy! Hope you’re doing well!!

On Tuesday, I gave you a “Tackle it Tuesday” task – Gathering up all of your marketing efforts into one place. Now, for Thoughtful Thursday, I want you to take a moment and give some thought to your gatherings.

Grab a piece of paper and jot down the following questions and the answers to these questions:

• Does your marketing mesh with your current vision?
• Are you happy with what your message says?
• Do you need to revamp your message or your brand?
• Are there any additional places that you can be marketing?
• Any other ideas or thoughts that come to mind?

These will be the basis of your marketing plan for 2010. This will help to direct your sales vision. This information is crucial to your success in 2010!

Think…Think…Think…

And then let me know if you need help!

A

Happy Hump Day!
Hopefully you’ve had a chance to check out yesterday’s Tip sheet on Managing Your Time Effectively!
We had lots of Retweets for yesterday’s post; entering themselves to win one of the great prizes we’ve got lined up, including a new one!!
Make sure you join us on Twitter and Retweet this post for your entry into the prize pot!

So far, our Small Biz Week Prizes include:

• A $265 Small business Tax Package from Hilary McDonald Accounting
• A Virtual Office Subscription from 5050Biz
• The Couponizer coupon system
• New York Times best seller “One Year to an Organized Work Life” from the author herself Regina Leeds
• Limited edition T-shirts from RIPT Apparel
• The book 101 Media and Marketing Tips for the Sole Proprietor from Nanette Miner, a.k.a. The Training Doctor
• “How to Do Space Age Work with a Stone Age Brain: using your brain style for small business success with less stress” from Eve Abbott, Organizer Extraordinaire
• .. more prizes arriving daily!!

Every time you Retweet this post you’ll receive one entry to win a prize!
Prizes will be given out at the very end of the week – Keep the Retweets and Comments coming!

Please accept my apologies in advance as you will be receiving 1post a day (only for this week), but I know you will not be disappointed with the content!

Today’s article is all about Turning Your Admin Nightmares into a Dream.

Absolutely every business owner agrees on one thing – Administration is a “nightmare”, a “burden of time” and usually results in “just not doing it”. A few experts weigh in on how to change that nightmare into a fully functioning dream. Read on..

Getting a Handle on Paperwork

Take 5
Always take first five minutes (or last five minutes) of the day to file.
Jeffrey Cohen, ImageWorks, LLC – www.ImageWorksLLC.com
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Just STOP!
It’s key to STOP doing – versus doing everything on your lists. Daily & Weekly Entrepreneurs and their teams should find stuff to not do at all. Get rid of or don’t bother doing stuff that seemed like a great idea at the time but now isn’t. Start focus on working on the critical few things versus the important many. I could give you lots of ideas and specifics around this if you’d like.
Cameron Herold, Founder, BackPocket COO – www.BackPocketCOO.com
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Everything Happens in 3’s
On my desk, I have 3 file folders: one for things to do this week; one for things that need to be filed; and one for things that I eventually need to look into. Inside my filing cabinet, I have 26 files – one for each letter of the alphabet – and everything is filed by the company name that issued the document.
I clear out the “needs to be filed” folder at the end of each day. It’s only purpose is to allow me to work each client more effectively. Once I’ve gone through my emails at the end of the day, I also look at the “to do this week” folder to ensure I haven’t missed anything, and to create a must do list for the following day.
Dawn Martinello, Monday Morning VA – www.mondaymorningva.com
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Become Regular
DO file on a regular basis. Filing regularly prevents eventually having to face a mountain of filing.
DO make a habit of filing on a particular day or at a particular time. That will remove the decision making process from the mix and put filing on auto-pilot.
Alice Price CPO-CD®, Organize Long Island Inc – www.organizelongisland.com
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Digitize It
When it comes to filing – build a computer based structure of folders that matches the paper filing system, then, you only have one logic to follow.
Susan Lannis, Time Liberation Agent, ORGANIZATION Plus! Inc. – www.LiberateTime.com
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Go Paperless
We worked very hard to reduce the amount of paper in our office;
All faxes are coming into a computer – and are left there. They are not printed out!
Invoices and quotes are sent via email directly from QuickBooks – none are printed
Bills are filed based on vendor
We registered with every credit card we have – as opting out of any offers, etc – this has reduced our junk mail by about 90% ( aside benefit is that we spend less time processing mail.)
Orit Pennington, TPGTEX Label Solutions, Inc. – www.tpgtex.com
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Go Mobile
Make time and expense tracking brain-dead simple by using mobile/web based solutions like Xpenser
Parand Tony Darugar, Xpenser – http://xpenser.com
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Outsource It
Small business owners that outsource their Human Resources have more time to focus solely on the day-to-day tasks of running a business, without having to spend time and energy on employee issues. Overall an HR outsourcing firm shoulders the tasks that business owners don’t have time to deal with — including HR, providing competitive health coverage, claims management, payroll taxes, direct deposits, etc. It is a way to simplify a small business owner’s life by taking away the administrative burdens.
Rob Wilson, Employco – www.employco.com
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A VA is Always the Way
Hire a part time administrative assistant who comes to my home based business. It’s helpful to have another computer (or a laptop.) – She works 3 to 10 hours a week. She does typing, filing, manages my customer contacts, addresses Christmas cards, takes meeting minutes and cleans and organizes my supply and filing cabinets.
Valerie McCaw, President – VSM Engineering, LLC
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Don’t Bungle – Tungle!
One area where a lot of small businesses are wasting time is scheduling. The endless back and forth of emailing & phone calls to find a time to meet is a huge time suck. Add in the fact that small businesses do a lot of business with people outside their organization and it gets even more complicated.
Enter Tungle.com. It works in sync with existing e-calendars making it quick and easy to make meetings happen. Syncing your calendar with Tungle lets you share calendars across systems and companies, send meeting invitations that propose multiple times, publish your free/busy schedule and more.
Erin Lariviere, Marketing Analyst, Tungle – http://www.tungle.com

Email & Voicemail Nightmares

Broadcast Your Availability
First, choose when you will—and won’t– be available electronically. For example, if your business sees fewer customers on Tuesday afternoons, create that slot as your no-click zone, and use that time for focused thinking and action to strategize around your biggest business challenge.
Then, once you’ve decided, teach people by example. Set clear expectations with your team and others so they know not to expect email responses from you during that time. Clarify the exceptions for them (i.e., I’ll only check email if we’re on deadline and we’ve agreed in advance on a time I’ll be online.”) And stick to it—no matter what. It’s a rare business situation that has to be handled immediately—in fact, most situations benefit from taking a little time to think about the right response.
Darcy Eikenberg, President & Chief Creative Officer, Coach Darcy LLC – www.coachdarcy.com
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Make Some Rounds
Handling Email and Voicemail: In my personal business, I work in rounds. That means that when I’m working on Customer A and I receive a personal email – it’s ignored; if I receive a phone call from Customer C – it’s ignored. At the beginning and end of each day, I check ALL voicemail and email that may have been missed to ensure that I catch any potential problems and handle any rush assignments that have come up.
Dawn Martinello, Monday Morning VA – www.mondaymorningva.com

Procedures and Policies

Policy Can Be Lame, but Systems Can Save Your Life.
There is nothing worse than a useless procedure doc or process. At the same time, we found creating and using some simple systems such as work folders, file management, resource tracking, etc, saved us a ton of time. The key for us were to find the areas that were repetitive, and create a system that worked well for us. We found that in some cases clipboards and pencils worked better for us than spreadsheets. Find what works for you.
Tyler Hammond – The Engine Is Red – http://theengineisred.com
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Make it Manual
We do have an operations manual. It makes it much easier to train staff.
If an employee knows the rules, they are less likely to make up their own rules (which could result in last sales).
Sharon McRill, The Betty Brigade – www.bettybrigade.com
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Map it Out
Every biz needs to map out their systems – how they get clients, how they engage them, how they retain them, office/team mgt and financial mgt. I don’t call mine policies and procedures, but the steps are laid out clearly and can be replicated over and over.
Ann Ronan, Ph.D., Authentic Life Institute – www.authenticlifeinstitute.com
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Be on Alert
Set up alerts in Outlook if you need to, in order to keep yourself on schedule. All reoccurring tasks should be scheduled and broken up evenly throughout the week. For example, in regards to social networking, schedule yourself to add x number of new twitter followers every Monday, and every Friday delete the ones that haven’t followed you back.
Hilary Brooks, AVirtualEdge – http://www.AVirtualEdge.com

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So now that you’re set on the right path to admin euphoria, make sure you Retweet this post and come back again tomorrow because we’re discussing super cool ways to market yourself and your biz for LESS than $500!!! You won’t want to miss that!

Cheers!

A