Time Saving Business Tips

A common issue we find with business tips are that they’re not actually useful.  There, we said it.  With copious articles covering business tips to help assist you with climbing the corporate ladder, investing in large quantities of overseas products and ‘how to make connections on Linkedin,’ you may have just about given up on finding any useful business tips for your specific needs.  But fear not, friends – you’ve found us!

As a copywriting business, we are inundated with clients who simply do not have time to complete necessary tasks for their business.  This ultimately leads to a snowball effect.  Instead of continuing to roll that big ol’ ball of snow up a steep and slippery hill, why not transform these pressures into a sparkle effect?  The sparkle effect rolls down hills easily.  With a quick push at the hill’s peak the sparkle effect then takes care of itself from there.  If you want to achieve the sparkle effect (um, who doesn’t), here are our top time saving business tips that will actually make a difference.

Check Out Accounting Apps

Okay, yes, yawn.  Get it out.

Now, if you’re still using the pen and paper method and it works for you, then continue on your merry way to question two.  But if you’re looking to save time within your business, an accounting app can save you oodles of time.

Apps and websites such as Wave are not only free, they’re also super convenient.  Send invoices, record payments, reconcile accounts, manage payroll and photograph your receipts for records all with the help of this handy tool.  If completing required tasks at the touch of a button isn’t a time saving business tool, we don’t know what is!

Make A Plan

Maybe it’s just us, but we find it pretty tricky to determine whether we’ve completed all of our tasks without writing down what they are.

By mapping out your strategy, deadlines and projects ahead of time, you’ll see a clear visual of what’s to come.  Further from this, scheduling your plan over months, weeks, days, hours and minutes will make even further use out of your time.  Right now, whip out a pen or your trusty planning account (we love Asana) and map out tomorrow’s plan. Start and end times, what you’ll need to do and what has priority.

Of course as business owners this seems to continually be interrupted, but should you get side tracked, you’ll have your plan to return to and refocus your day’s direction.  We recommend a monthly calendar for visual overview and then daily hour-based tasks.  This way, if you fall behind, you’ll know where you’ll be able to make up for lost time.

Habit Train (choo choo)

Good habits are positively key to saving time.

Do you leave your filing to the end of the month?  Book keeping and content plans to the last second and rarely take a lunch break?  Think about if you took a few minutes at the beginning or end of each day to keep on top of your tasks.  Just ten minutes per day could save you over four hours of arduous task completion at the end of each month.

And as for lunch breaks, although you may feel that there is simply too much work to do and not enough time to do it in, we promise that by creating new habits for strictly ‘free time,’ you’ll perform at a higher level.  Fresh air is cool, okay?

Meeting Maps

One of our absolute favourite time saving business tips is planning out meetings.  How many meetings have you had where there was so much bumbling around that an end result wasn’t even nearly achieved?

By simply jotting down a few points that you must discuss and the respective results you would like to achieve, you’ll not only be setting yourself up for success, you may even save yourself from having to attend another meeting, or twelve.

Create Templates

Still writing up forms from scratch?  By creating templates, you’ll only need to update the necessities.

Whether you’re a Word fan, an Excel champ or a Powerpoint pro, by creating thorough templates for presentations or documents that you frequently use can save oodles of time and be free of that last-minute-scuttle look.

Did you find these time saving business tips helpful?  We’d love to hear from you!