Our finances, the paperwork associated with our finances, and the clutter that results from that paperwork are things that keep many of us awake at night. The goal of my Sunday financial blog is to share my thoughts and tips on how we can minimize both the physical and mental clutter that our personal finances often give us.
One of the things they never taught me in MBA school was how to be a master of my own business administration. I started to learn what I hadn't learned when I was several months into running my business. I couldn't work at my desk. It was covered with paperwork: office equipment manuals, business plans, and various other papers presumably related to the business.
I remember thinking that, if I was going to put myself out there as an organizing expert, I had better get my own stuff in order first. The result became the first drawer of the first Absolutely Organized file cabinet.
Those papers on my desk were all related to the administration of the business. A good way to think of...
Every business has employees. Every employee has paperwork and/or electronic files associated with him or her. Even if you own your own sole proprietorship business, you need to keep some employee files for yourself.
Start by separating the documents related to each of your employees into categories:
· Employment documents. These are the papers your employees filled out when they were hired, or when they changed their withholding allowances. At a minimum, each employee's file should contain his or her W-4 and I-9 forms (for employees) or his or her 1099 form (for independent contractors). If your state has income tax withholding forms or other...
When I heard the word "vendor", I used to think of guys selling things from carts on city streets. In my mind, those "vendors" were trying to forcibly sell me things I really didn't want. When I became a business owner, my definition of a vendor expanded. I now define a vendor as a person or a company that sells goods or services to my company to enable me to engage in my business. Some of my company's vendors, particularly the ones who want to sell me advertising space, still resemble the aforementioned street vendors shoving things at...
Keeping track of your customers is critical to the financial success of your business. So your customer files are not the place for disorganization in your office.
What goes in your customer files?
Regardless of the nature of your business, you will need to capture the following information about your customers in an organized system:
· Contact information
· Contract or letter of agreement
· Records of sales: estimates, orders, invoices, sales receipts, and credits
· ...
I know, I know. Most of you small business owners would rather be out there working in your business (and making money) than creating and maintaining paperwork and electronic filing systems for your business. Go ahead and groan, but please keep reading.
Business filing does not have to be complicated. If you own a franchise business or are an independent consultant for a company, your parent company may have already given you a ready-made, tried-and-true structure for maintaining paper and electronic documents. You paid for it, so use it! If you're in business for yourself with no corporate support, however, I'm going to give you a very simple structure to follow to organize your business...
Last week I spent two and a half days exhibiting at my county's Senior Expo. I spent the other two and a half days getting ready for it and recovering from it.
I spent a lot of money on the Expo, spent a lot of time on the Expo, and didn't make much money last week because of the Expo.
It was a good week.
As a small business owner who also works IN the business a lot, I realized that I haven't been wearing my "business owner hat" nearly enough. I love working side-by-side with my clients. I love it so much that I tend to ignore my responsibility as a business owner to keep my prospective client pipeline full.
Last week I got to refill my...
"It's too expensive." "I can't take time off from work and family." "It doesn't directly increase my business, so why should I do it?" Those are three of the excuses why small business owners don't bother to attend educational conferences.
And they're not true.
I just attended the annual conference of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization. www.nsgcd.org This group (of which I am a subscriber and board member) always puts on awesome conferences, and this year's was the best ever. Yes, I had to take a few days off from work, pay the fees, travel, and sleep in a strange hotel bed. But I walked away with loads of new information I'll...
Many years ago, a very successful corporate vice-president asked me if his desk was the messiest desk I had ever seen. As a professional organizer, I'm asked that question frequently. Usually I smile and reassuringly tell the person that their desk (home, office, or whatever) is nowhere near the messiest I have ever seen.
But that day I paused and said, "You know, I think you do win the prize for the messiest desk I have ever seen."
Upon further exploration, I realized that I was wrong. What looked like a big mess to me – and to the other people in his office, which was the reason I was there – was really a system of organization that worked quite well for him. He was...
It happens every April.
Small business owners gather their prior year's business records to organize them for their tax preparer. They start making lists of their income and expenses by category. So far so good.
Until they stumble across transactions they simply don't remember. Was that UPS charge back in July for products she sent to a customer, or was it for the birthday gift she shipped to her mother? How about the Starbucks receipts? Were they for meetings with clients, or simply his normal morning caffeine run? And where did that $5,000 deposit come from? Was it really income (how could she possibly have forgotten that?) or was it money she transferred from her savings...
Last week, I talked about how business, particularly a home-based business, can take over our time, if we allow it to do so. The same can happen with our space. If we don't consciously carve out a space at home in which to conduct business, our work will quickly migrate onto every available horizontal surface in our homes.
Location, Location, Location
It was the most important factor when you chose where to live. Location is also the most important factor in choosing where you will set up your home office. If your house is small, or if it is large but full of stuff (a matter for another day!), you may have limited options as to the physical location of your home office. Whether...
Katherine Trezise is president of Absolutely Organized, based in Baltimore, MD.
She is president-elect of the National Study Group on Chronic Disorganization.
Katherine holds a masters degree in business administration, is a Certified Professional Organizer® and a Certified Professional Organizer in Chronic Disorganization®.
Absolutely Organized specializes in helping people organize their homes, paperwork and financial records to make room in their lives for the things, people and activities that are most important to them.
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