Small business owners know that the accounting or business admin side of their business is a massive challenge. If left unchecked, it can lead to a mountain of slips and invoices lying all over the place. 

They run for the hills and only do it when they are forced to or really have to. Even then, it will be at the last minute.

How do you eat an elephant? *answer down below

Make time for your business admin

Many will say they do not have time for admin as they are “out in the field” making the money. This may be and often is, the case.

The flaw with this theory is that business owners do not realise they only spend about 40% of the job of running the company. Sending out invoices to clients is only a part of what running a company is all about.

If you are eating a meal, would you leave 60% of the meal on the plate? Of course not! Unfortunately, this is what happens in many small businesses out there. It is not actually limited to small businesses. There are large businesses that do the same thing. So how would you eat an elephant – and why do I keep asking that? 

Backup, backup, backup

The answer is . . . one bite at a time.

This is exactly the approach that one must take in order to get all the “paperwork” up to date. An example: You buy something from a supplier, you receive an invoice. File it NOW! If not immediately, make time today to put it away. You will NEVER have to think about it again.

If someone asks for it – you can go to the file and get it. If you have a backlog, do five pieces of paper a day. Just make sure you arrange them, so you remember where they are. In months is the best way. The key to arranging paperwork is labelling the file to make it obvious what is inside.

With the technology available today, it has become more common to keep a digital copy of all documents. The same applies to storing them. Do not leave the invoices in your email inbox – save them onto your computer’s hard drive.

Warning! Always keep backups of all your documents. Keep a backup on site and another off-site. This includes the accounting system you are using. Ideally, it should be a daily occurrence.

The best way is to do an incremental backup which adds anything new at particular intervals rather than saving the whole backup again.

*answer – One bite at a time!

 

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