We've all heard of spring cleaning. A good portion of us even do it every year! But once summer rolls around and we're halfway into the calendar year, it's time to turn that same level of energy and attention to organizing and streamlining your business. Taking a little time to attend to six distinct areas of your operations will make your day-to-day processes easier and may even result in a better bottom line and easier tax season.
When you set your business up, you either spent a ton of time making your website perfect or you quickly threw something up in the chaos of trying to attend to everything at once. One way or another, now is the perfect time to sit down and revisit your site and see what improvements need to be made. Does your content need to be refreshed or corrected? Are your graphics overwhelming? Did you forget to put in a call to action? Would it be helpful to have a landing page or offer that would help you build your email list? The summer is a great time to make sure that your site is an accurate, updated reflection of your business that can inform your clientele and grow your business.
Once you've gone through this process, it's a good idea to check in again every month or so to see what tweaks you can make.
You know that recording all of your financial transactions is important, but that doesn't mean that it's been done in an organized way. Unfortunately, failing to keep things orderly can lead to an inability to accurately predict your business' needs, and this kind of forecasting is critical to success. Getting your books in order is an important first step in correcting this problem area.
No matter how much you trust the person who is keeping your business records – even if it is you — it's a good idea to take a deep dive into your records at least once a year, making sure that your receipts are being filed properly, that the information that you need to access is being recorded regularly, and that the information that you are collecting has been digitized. Gone is the day when you can jot down transactions in a notebook and then add it all up for the accountant at year's end.
Another important aspect of cleanup is making sure that you haven't allowed your personal expenses to creep into your business' records. Those should be kept entirely separate, and if they haven't been then cleaning up the overlap will be a good use of your summertime efforts.
If you don't know where to start or how to improve the record-keeping that you are currently doing, ask your accountant or a professional bookkeeper for tips on improving your process.
Remember how you basically abandoned your website once you'd gotten your business off the ground? There's a good chance that you did the same thing with your business plan. After all the work you put into it in the excitement and flurry of activity of starting up, you may not have thought about it since. And the truth is that that's a big mistake. Summertime offers the perfect time to buff it up to reflect your growth and future goals.
Not sure how to get started? Here's an idea. Sit down and think about what your business plan would say if you were writing it for the first time today, then compare your new ideas to what it currently says. If you've changed your product line, are looking to market to a new demographic or have changed your business' organization, your business plan needs to reflect that. You may not feel a need for an updated business plan today, but it is important to always keep it updated. It's one of the most important reflections of what your business is and where it is going.
Just as the content of your business plan has likely changed as your business has matured, so too should your marketing strategies. There is nothing that can work against a business' growth like never moving outside of your comfort level and sticking with the same, stagnant strategy.
If you're not sure where to start, consider the following ideas and questions you can ask yourself:
If you've been doing spring cleaning in your home, there's a good chance you've heard of Marie Kondo and her theories about how tidying your space can transform your life. If there is one area of disorganization that seems to be universally shared, it's the mess that is all of our inboxes. Emails come in, and it's hard to prioritize, let alone making sure that everything gets addressed.
Start by clearing things out, deleting what is nonsense and addressing what needs to be answered. Then take advantage of the tools that are built into your email's platform by stowing important emails into separate folders for easy access. You can name them for whatever your correspondence tends to be about. One way or another, you'll be amazed at how quickly you'll be able to sort through to find the specific document that you need, as well as how easy it is to delete correspondence that is no longer pertinent.
Once you've addressed the virtual and ideological, it's time to look at the physical. Is your desk a mess? Are your file cabinets overflowing? Do you have folders that have been waiting to be created and filed away for, well, months?
You may not realize exactly how much that kind of disorganization drains your energy until you've eliminated it but trust us – decluttering will do you a world of good. You'll feel like a whole new person, ready to take on the world and carry your business into a brighter future.
About Bob Mason, CPA
Santa Cruz based Bob Mason, CPA (Coast Financial Services) has been providing the people of Santa Cruz with years of expertise in the tax and accounting industry. He provides a broad range of accounting, bookkeeping and small business services to help your business succeed. Using their expertise in technology they have built an intuitive website with useful tools and calculators and a monthly blog which they post to on a frequent basis. Check back weekly for their next tax or accounting topic.
