As a busy small-business owner, you know that while you can always work hard to increase your sales, land more customers, earn more money, and provide better customer service, you can never actually create time and enjoy more than 24 hours in a day. As such, it is important to continually look for ways to be more productive so that you can not only generate better business results but also lead a more balanced and stress-free life.
While you likely have started to use some technological tools to complete things on your to-do list these days, you might not have got to the stage yet where you have systemized regular tasks so that you don’t have to keep spending time on them week in and week out.
If you want to save yourself some much-needed time on a regular basis, and give yourself more chances to work on your business rather than in it, read on for some common workplace jobs that you should consider outsourcing or automating today.
Accounting
For many businesspeople, having to complete tasks related to invoicing and payments, payroll, and other accounting and finance-based jobs is typically greeted with a grimace, and put off for as long as possible. While this is understandable if you struggle in this area, unfortunately it’s not good for your venture if you don’t keep these tasks, and your cashflow and expenses in particular, all organized. Happily though, you’ll find that it’s easier and cheaper than ever to automate and outsource many of these often tedious and time-consuming jobs.
As an example, when it comes to payments, technology can be your best friend. Apart from utilizing online payment processing providers to handle credit card transactions and/or PayPal payments, you can also take advantage of top accounting programs, which automate many tasks. Programs such as Xero and Freshbooks, for instance, can be set up to automatically generate and send invoices and email reminders about late payments when bills go past their due date.
In addition, you can also link many systems to your business bank accounts and set up rules for regular transactions so that your end-of-month account-keeping tasks are significantly less time-consuming. Top systems can handle helpful functions such as coding expenses, generating reports, storing receipts and compiling expense claims, to name a few.
Payroll
Handling payroll can also be simplified if you use a tech-focused accounting program. Once the details of your staff members have been inputted into a system, you can often program the software to create and send pay slips automatically every week, fortnight or month, along with annual tax-related documents to each person at year end.
If, on the other hand, you’d like not to stress about employee-related functions at all, keep in mind that there are some fantastic HR and payroll PEO companies out there that you can outsource to for a very affordable price. They can handle everything from advertising jobs and hiring and promoting workers, through to payroll, setting up employee benefits, running training programs and more. Due to the fact that these firms specialize in the area and handle tasks for many different clients, you can typically enjoy really discounted rates while at the same time having experts handle your work for you.
Social Media
Marketing is another one of the most important aspects of running a profitable business in this day and age. Social media, in particular, is a vital component. However, you may find that you either struggle to use sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram effectively, or notice that too many hours each week get eaten up when focusing on creating and uploading information, commenting on and replying to other people’s posts, and finding new contacts to connect with.
To free up your time, it is definitely worth utilizing some of the fantastic software programs on the market these days, which can automate a lot of the work for you. There are apps, for example, which can automatically post your updates at specific times and dates for you so that you don’t have to remember to do them each time, as well as those that can share your content straight to multiple networking sites at the same time.
In addition, you’ll find free and low-costs programs that will:
• Make your photographs and other graphics more striking and sharable
• Help you to quickly identify industry leaders in your field and reach out to them automatically
• Analyze the results of your posts so you can tell which type of content or wording performs best
• Help you to discover the most shareable content for your particular readers
Jackie Roberson is a content coordinator and contributor who creates quality articles for topics like technology, home life, and education. She studied business management and is continually building positive relationships with other publishers and the Internet community.
