Time Management
A Bookkeeping Schedule is Necessary for Small Business
Whether you do your own bookkeeping or someone else does it for you – you need to be on a schedule in order to keep on top of it all. You are either entering the entries yourself or getting the information to your bookkeeper to do the same. Keeping to a schedule will keep you up to date. As a small business owner, knowing where you stand financially is important for planning. Plus it lets you review what you have done to know if you need to change things to improve in the future.
I have recently gotten my books caught up and now have a set schedule for them. I plan to never get behind again! It is never fun being behind the 8 Ball when it comes to books. Especially here in Canada, where we have to submit our GST (A type of sales tax) reports to the government every quarter. That really keeps me on my toes and up to date!
What did I schedule or plan in order to stay on top of my books?
- File Items Immediately. Keeping a file folder right on my desk and immediately filing any entries that occur during the week. These could be bills paid, purchases made, online purchases or payments received. I print the email notification and file it immediately in this folder or place the physical receipt in here. I call this the “Books to Enter” file.
- Send / Enter Receipts. Once a week I have set aside one hour to enter in all the receipts that have been gathered. By ‘enter’ this may mean send to my bookkeeper, for some of you, it may mean enter them in the bookkeeping programs directly.
- Reminders. As these receipts are entered, we set reminders for anything that will need to be taken care of in the future (ie domain name renewals due, tax or bill payments due, recurring payments). This practice will keep you from missing things that are important to cash flow and planning.
- Filing. Slowly as I move to going paperless, I am scanning physical slips and printing to them to a pdf file as well as doing the same for email slips, then I save them in a folder on my PC. This file system / folder was setup to be my entire bookkeeping filing system and both my bookkeeper and I have access and as much as we can are trying to save items paperless. It really mirrors what I used to save in paper file folders.
- Review. I check my reports to know where I stand financially. This is an important step as you should always have a good idea of your revenue and expenses at least monthly.
If you have a bookkeeper you can follow this same procedure but work out a method to send him/her the gathered slips. The main point is to stay on top of it and not let it get backed up. As a business owner knowing your updated financial situation is vital to running your business effectively as well as making future plans.
Create your own schedule or steps to staying on top of your books – the biggest benefit after know where things stand, is that you will be less stressed!!
Taking Back Control of your Workday
In the previous post, I gave you a template of a tracking sheet to help you figure out where you are losing time in your day – or rather who or what is controlling how you spend your time.
I left you with some homework to track work/interruptions for a week to determine the top factors (or people) keeping you from staying on task with your planned work.
From this sheet you will have discovered what or who is controlling your day and it normally will be you or someone else in the top spot.
Top Contenders for this #1 place are:
- Co-workers
- Clients
- Yourself
These interruptions can come in a variety of ways:
- Phone calls
- Someone walking in your office
- Skype or other types of Instant Message
No matter the method, they all are competing for your attention. They take your focus from the task at hand and turn it to the Interrupter. In all cases, however, you are giving the Interrupter permission to make you stop what you were doing. This permission is really a choice you have made to stop and divert your attention to the Interrupter.
You chose to answer the phone, to look at emails (especially if your Smartphone is beeping to let you know new emails are in!), to respond to that Skype ping and, yes, even to talk to the person walking in your door.
If your top Interrupter is, in fact, you, then your choice has been to drop one task in favour of another.
Now, I am not advocating being rude to all of these people because, in most cases, the Interrupter is a person. What I am saying is you need to set some boundaries to regain control of your time.
How do you Regain Control?
Regaining control is really a matter of retraining your work habits and prioritizing tasks, as well as letting others know your ‘work schedule’. You regain control with time blocks in your calendar.
*** One note regarding email: If the majority of your inbox is emails for tasks that others look after (that you delegate out), then consider sharing access to that email. Allow the main person responsible to have access so they can just jump on the task as opposed to running it through you. If you have built a team you can trust, this should not be an issue.
Create a secondary, more private email for your own communications and access this in a different way so you are not giving away the private area of your inbox.
What type of Time Blocks?
I like to mark off my calendar for the following areas:
- Start of Day Organization (or as I have written about before, your “Meeting with Yourself”). This is 15 minutes to review your plans and schedule for the day.
- VIP & Intensive Work. Generally this is used for your most intense work of the day and should be blocked off in a time where you know will have less interruptions and in a time slot where you are most productive.
- Email Review/Check In. Setting aside 2 to 4 times a day to be used for checking your email really will help you keep much better control of your day. Email tends to be the worst Interrupter and can easily get you off track by moving on to something new. For a good system on dealing with the emails during this time slot, review this blog post on Email Management.
- Team Support. If you also have colleagues, employees requiring your attention for direction, feedback, etc., then add in a time slot for these check-ins. They can be as disruptive as emails and making time for it helps keep you productive. Whether you work side by side or remotely, make time for these check-ins. Depending upon your setup, you may need one or more spots for this. More importantly…SHARE THIS! Let your team/staff know that this is their time to talk to you to ask questions.
- Regular meetings and appointments. Have these scheduled slots in your calendar so you know when you are free to book meetings or appointments as needed. Hooking these slots to an appointment booking system (like TimeDriver) is even more effective as you can allow the other party to book the best time for them in your available meeting spots.
- Client Work. Set aside a time block for working on projects, client work and the other work that you do in your day.
- New Work. You also want to add in time for new work that will inevitably pop up during the day / week. Give yourself the space to add new items in your day or you will become stressed about when and how you can get that done.
VERY IMPORTANT!!!
If others were your main Interrupters on your tracking sheet, you will need to share this schedule information with them. The people you work with need to understand your limits and that you have made time for them in your day but that it is going to be in a more controlled manner than before.
Subtly share with people (clients and colleagues) that you check your email certain times during the day and will not always respond immediately. You are simply asking for respect of your time. You will have times when you need to choose not to jump up and respond.
Turn off Skype, don’t pick up the phone (that’s why we have voice mail), and stick to your email time. I am not saying always ignore every call that comes in, but watch how fast you are to respond to every call, Skype or email…If you are working in your block of time for emails or team check-ins, etc., then by all means, answer. But, if you are working on your most intense work of the day, most calls can wait.
So grab your tracking sheet and your calendar. See if you can work these 7 steps into your weekly schedule (some may be daily slots and some may only be a few times a week). Leave room for flexibility and try not to make it too blocked off. It may seem like a daunting task to get this organized, but if you can try this for three weeks, you will have formed a new habit and also may find yourself in total control of your workday. This generally means you will get more work done! More work tends to lead to more sales which means more revenue!
Please let me know how your progress is going, share your successes (or questions) in the comments below.
Who Has Control of Your Workday?
One of the biggest issues every business owner has is time…or rather the lack of time. We all want more time in our day, but the reality is there is no known way to change how the universe is setup and add more hours to the day. What has to change is us and how we use our time.
No matter how in control things may feel, if you track your activity throughout the day, you generally will be surprised at the results. You will see where your time is being spent and who or what is controlling that time. It is the control of your time that can help you find more hours in the day.
To figure out how you spend your time, you will need to do a bit of work, but it always pays off in seeing what is actually happening to your workday. You start by keeping a record of all your activity – everything you do, how long it takes – do this for one week. Picking a normal week too – not a week when you are at a conference or not doing your ‘typical’ work.
Your time log should include:
- The Task
- The start time and stop time
- Interruptions
- Who or What interrupted you
- The start and stop time after the interruptions too
- Whether you completed the task
This will take dedication to do and do for a whole week. I suggest doing it on paper – keep the sheet of paper by your side so you can quickly take out your pen and fill in the sheet. Using a computer-based tracking means leaving your work and interrupting the task at hand to enter the time. Paper is a little mightier and more effective in this case. (I have created a sample sheet you can print out and keep handy. You can copy the sheet template from this Google doc.)
Once the week is up, tally up your results. Review the “interrupted by” column more than anything. Make a tick sheet of the interruptions and the instigator of each. Tally up your top 10 ‘interruptions’. This list will tell you who or what is controlling your workday and you may be surprised at what you find.
If the list is full of names, other than yourself, this tells you others are in control of your day and time. If your name or just a new task is the top factor, then it is, in fact, you controlling your day by the choices you make. Now you know what or who is in control. So, what can you do about it???
Take the next week and track yourself, even if you think everything is fine. You may be surprised at what shows up on the tracking sheet that can help you regain control of your day.
Missing appointments? This Tool can Help
Last week I scheduled an appointment with a renovation company to go over possible work, get an estimate and get it started. I am asking this of someone who I have worked with before, so the odds are good I will hire them again, and home renovations is not chump change.
But they ‘forgot’ about me and never showed up. When I called because I wanted to check on when they were going to be there, I was told “Oh I completely forgot, sorry. How about Friday morning?” This could be enough for some people to say forget it, you missed this appointment, how will you be when it comes to doing the work? Your presence for consults or estimate say a lot about how you work – making them appointments you should never miss, never forget. I will give them one chance, and frankly if they are not here when noted; I will be writing them off.
As a small business owner working in a any business but even more so a business like home renos or other work where you get calls for estimates and have to followup on these you need an easy reminder / appointment calendar system. This is a must if you don’t want to miss out on business.
Most likely you have it already and just do not use it. Few people working in the trades these days go without a cell phone or smartphone, they are on the go and do not want to miss call or be unreachable. That phone is the answer. Almost everyone of these devices has a calendar system of some sort. USE IT! Make this calendar your friend.
- Learn how to enter appointments in your calendar and set reminders as well.
- Have reminder times that make sense. If it takes you on average 30 min to get to an appointment (if in person) then set your reminders 1 hour ahead. Give yourself reminder time to be on time, if you forget a lot.
- Use it immediately. If someone emails, then move that email to your calendar and setup the appointment. Or once you hang up the phone then enter the name / info into your calendar right there. DO NOT do one other thing until this has been done.
It’s all about keeping yourself organized no matter what line of business you are in. I have even started getting my 12 year old son to start using his phone for his homework / assignments. It’s the one device he always has on his person, so we’re using it to make certain he stays on track.
What tools are you using to stay on track? Please post a comment here with other tips you have to share.
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