6 ways your business can save time

Image via Flickr by Courtney Dirks

Time is important in every business, but it’s especially so when you run a small business. Your staff is minimal, and everyone wears multiple hats, so you should see that all the work done in your office is productive and essential. Do you run a tight ship, or does your business have room for improvement? Here are a few ways you can save time in your business.

Cull Your Email

A clogged inbox is a huge time waster for every employee at a small business. As the boss, impress upon your employees how important it is to correctly manage one’s work inbox. First, set specific times to check your email each day, with time limits on how long you can spend answering. Then, always answer the most important ones first. Finally, unsubscribe from lists and newsletters to ensure all your inbox content is business-related.

Create Goals and Lists

From to-do lists for each day to quarterly business goals, lists and goals help you stay on track and manage your time well. Break down large goals into small steps that you put on a timeline. Get a whiteboard or a bulletin board where you can post these goals so everyone in the office can see them. By giving yourself and your employees a clear direction for small and large tasks, you’ll waste less time on small tasks and use more time productively furthering the business.

Use Online Programs

Trying to do certain tasks, like your own accounting, is difficult if you don’t have a degree in the field. Hiring an accountant, a payroll specialist, or an inventory manager, however, is often outside of a small business’s budget. That’s why you should consider using online accounting to make these tasks easier for you. Learn more about software like Sage that will make creating invoices, tracking revenue, and dealing with taxes intuitive and easy for you instead of struggling through on your own.

Delegate Tasks

Your small business is your baby, and you want to watch over every single thing that happens in the office. But you should resist this impulse. The more time you spend hovering over your employees, the less time you spend actually running the business. Micromanaging isn’t good for employee work production, either. Hire good people, teach them how to do their jobs, and let them do those jobs. Delegate tasks to your employees, then go back to your own desk and deal with your tasks. Everyone will be more productive as a result.

Prioritize Work

Your first priority is urgent matters and deadlines. Then, get the big, important stuff done first thing in the morning. Let’s say your to-do list has seven things on it; five of them are simple, while two of them are more complicated. Your instinct might be to do the five simple tasks first, since more of your to-do list gets crossed off. But by completing the harder tasks in the morning, when your brain is at its freshest, you can leave the easy work for later in the day, when you’re likely to go on autopilot.

Outsource Some Work

You and your employees can’t do everything. When it comes to specialized tasks such as your web design and advertisements, it may be quicker and more cost-effective to hire someone to complete this work for you. The result will be more professional than if you’d done it on your own, and you won’t waste your time trying to learn a skill outside of your expertise. The same goes for extremely repetitive tasks. Hire a temp to work in the office for a few weeks if you get an overload of paperwork that needs to be scanned or a bunch of files that need organization. Sometimes the extra money you spend on outsourcing pays off in efficiency.

You started your business for a reason, so make sure other things aren’t getting in the way. You’re the boss, so it’s not surprising if you feel bogged down by too many little concerns. Just use these tips to remember where your time is best spent.