8 ways to save time (and money) in your business
Anna Stubbs • March 1, 2024
Like everyone, business owners are always looking for ways to save time.
Every minute spent on admin or fixing mistakes is a minute that could be spent on business-building work
When time really is money, it’s worth finding ways to reduce those tedious and repetitive tasks – and technology is the answer.
- Better billing - Billing can be a huge time-waster. Using a digital accounting system to extract data from supplier emails and auto-populate invoices can save hours each week.
- Streamline expense claims - Use a digital solution to automate the expense claims process, and your team saves time submitting receipts, approving expenses and dealing with mistakes.
- Reduce human error - Manual data entry is fraught with errors. Eliminate the issues by automating key admin tasks, and spend more time on data analysis, not data entry.
- Automate approvals - Streamline bank reconciliation with an automated tool, so you don’t waste time manually approving individual transactions.
- Quicker invoicing - Invoices and late payments take up a huge amount of time. With an automated invoicing platform, that time is reduced significantly – and manual follow-ups for late payment are eliminated.
- Payroll perfection - Use your accounting software to upload staff details and calculate tax contributions. You’ll not only save significant chunks of time, but you’ll avoid mistakes.
- Quick, accurate taxes - Digitising the tax process can make a real difference. Instead of Excel spreadsheets, receipts and physical documents, everything is accessible through your software.
- Better access to business data - With smart software, you get accurate business data wherever you are. No more going back to the office to check a number, getting back to clients with final details, or reworking quotes because the numbers were wrong.
Want to save time in your business? We’ll set you up with the software to make it simple.
In 1961, President John F Kennedy famously announced his goal of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth before the decade was out. As we know, in July 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon, and were brought back to Earth safely, achieving JFK’s goal. At a time when most people hadn’t even been on an aeroplane, landing on the moon would’ve felt unachievable and overwhelming. However, such a massive goal united people with a purpose; the story goes that even a cleaner mopping the floor at the space station said his job was to help put a man on the moon. So, how did they make the goal achievable? They broke it down into milestones, with each one taking them closer and closer to achieving their ultimate goal. The first milestone was to achieve lift off. So, they set about resolving this challenge. The next milestone was to reach orbit, so they had a team working on this milestone. Then, they had to reach the moon’s atmosphere, land safely on the moon, take off from the moon, enter Earth’s atmosphere and land safely back down to Earth. You can see how breaking the goal down into milestones gave everyone a more achievable objective to focus on which was less overwhelming. Those milestones were then broken down into the actions which needed to be completed. Each action was essentially a small step towards reaching the ultimate goal.
Are you undercharging for your services? It can be hard to tell, particularly if you’re in a niche industry or you’re a contractor. Costs have been rising, so it may be time to rethink your own pricing.
For your business to make money, you need to generate revenue. You produce revenue through your usual business activity, by making sales, getting your invoices paid, or taking cash from paying customers. So, the better you are at selling your products/services and bringing money into the business, the higher your revenue levels will be. But what actually drives these revenue levels? And how do you get in control of these drivers?