Bits of Silver

Recently Intuit came out with the results of a survey they took of Bookkeepers and Accountants who work with various businesses. The leading question of the survey was What is Keeping Small Business Owners Up At Night?

The top three problems viewed as most important from various questions were the following:

63 % Generating New Customers

41% Paying Their Bills

38% Managing Time/ Productivity

I would like to address Time Management today. I my view, there are three things distinct categories that create problems here-

1. Lack of Promise

2. Lack of Priorities

3. Lack of Policies

Promise- You must have written goals, or you will not get things done, nor will you know when you have accomplished something important. Create a default diary which holds the items not accomplished yet, check off the things as you finish. Have goals for the day, the week, the month.

Priorities- Managing your time must take priority, because if it's not that important it will surely be overlooked. If spending quality time with family every night is your priority, you will learn how to work faster and smarter, picking what is more important and delegating the rest.If you have no one to delegate to, then move to outsourcing may be your key to success. If you are a one or two person shop, it might be time to give up some responsibilities on a part time basis so you can get things done.

Policies- If you have Policies and you know what the procedure to accomplish something is, it will go much faster. Repeating something over and over? Make a form. Paper all over your desk? Get a short filing system for your desktop and use it faithfully. The key to reducing stress and getting things done is to repeat the processes, eliminating the unnecessary steps and streamlining the activity.Ifyou are not good at organizing, hire someone to come in and work with you to create the processes. It will be worth every penny in future savings! Remember, your time is money.