Winter is officially over and spring has arrived with sunshine, flowers, and longer days. Throwing open the windows and letting in the fresh blossom-filled air, reminds all of us of renewal and new beginnings. You may be thinking of giving our living spaces a deep cleaning. But could you spring-clean your business?
Here at Beyond, we’ve found that looking back and making needed adjustments is essential to preventing future chaos. Even small changes can lead to big benefits. Let’s discuss five ways you can spring-clean your business.
1. Review your Processes
Do you feel like you have a good handle on things in your business, or are you pulling out your hair? Right now, the last thing you may feel like doing is thinking about the headaches that you have finally put behind you.
Processes ultimately determine the end result. Sometimes we don’t see that our processes need revision until everything comes to a head, say when we’re trying to file our taxes. For example:
- What are your processes for onboarding new clients, employees, or contractors?
- What processes are in place for retrieving receipts for business expenses?
One process that can save you a lot of time around year-end is making sure that you receive a completed W-9 form before issuing payment to a new contractor. Implementing this small change to your process can save you hours at year-end.
2. Get Organized
Did you spend a lot of time this past year, tracking down necessary documents? Did you misplace a lot of receipts? The issue in these scenarios is organization.
Creating an organizational system requires an investment of time upfront, but it pays off in the long run. We recommend implementing a paperless system. For details and some inspiration to help you get started, take a look at our article on going paperless.
3. Analyze Business Components
Spring cleaning your home usually means throwing out or donating items that you no longer use. This concept could be applied to your business by accessing your books and reviewing anything that is no longer in use or not performing in the way that you would want. For example:
- Are there services that you provide that aren’t resulting in the kind of income that you would expect?
- Are you paying for tools or services that aren’t resulting in the desired benefit?
The result of your evaluation may not be to throw them out entirely, but perhaps you can change the way they are utilized. Either way, you will benefit from taking a second look.
4. Create a Schedule
A common occurrence among busy business owners is the scramble at year-end to catch up on reconciliations and other necessary tasks. For instance, when your CPA or tax professional requested reports, how did you feel? Were your reports ready to go or even nearly ready?
If you’d been procrastinating working on your books, the feeling was probably something like not cleaning your house for months and then realizing that all your friends are coming over tomorrow – Complete and utter panic!
The solution to both scenarios is the same. You need a schedule for maintaining cleanliness regularly.
The first step, of course, is creating a schedule for entering bills, invoices, completing reconciliations, etc. The second and possibly more challenging step is to stick to that schedule. But what if you can’t find the time in your schedule? This brings us to our next point…
5. Work with an Advisor
Have you ever been doing some spring cleaning and thought, “I should be doing this more often, but I just don’t have the time”? Maybe your next idea is to hire someone to help you stay on top of those tasks that seem to always get put on the back burner.
For your business, this is something to consider. Businesses that work with an advisor are much more likely to be successful. Having an advisor yields benefits all year. Your advisor will help you prepare and analyze your business continuously so that your decisions are in line with your overall goals.
Keeping your business clean and organized is essential to maintaining a sense of well-being in your professional life. At Beyond, we enjoy working with proactive business owners to not just maintain their books but also to help guide them toward their goals.
If you are ready to spring clean your business, feel free to contact us to start a conversation on how our advisory services can improve your business and your life.