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I was thinking about the difference between ready assembled furniture and flatpack.

The former is generally more substantial, better made and may last for generations. The latter might be cheap and convenient at a certain point in our lives but we have the hassle of putting it together, it often wobbles and I have no idea what do with the ‘spare’ parts.

Where else do we try to cut costs but spend more time for an inferior product?

Should you use a professional for your bookkeeping/accounts? Many accountants/bookkeepers do this to focus on their core business!

What about your graphic design? Outsourcing our visual brand and design to a professional meant that we were shortlisted in the British Accountancy Marketing Awards last year.

Should you self-publish your book quickly or use an independent publisher? Choosing a good publisher helped The Number Business to win the specialist category at the Business Book Awards last year so I’m using the same publisher for Growing by Numbers

And what about IT? I’m pretty good with tech but I’ve spent several months with a niggle on my emails and now I’ve called in the professionals (good/bad news is that it’s not a simple issue for them either). It’s costing me time each and every day!

What should you be delegating or outsourcing in your business?

At the moment there are too many tired people trying to do too much under difficult circumstances. They’re out of routine and possibly disturbed sleep too. No wonder that more than a few business owners are feeling bruised and shaken.

So how to get a quick confidence boost irrespective of what is going on around you?

• Read through the testimonials on your Linked In, website or elsewhere. If you don’t already have a collection then start now with every nice think that is said to you.
• Stand tall. Imagine that somebody is pushing down on the top of your head and push back up. Shoulders back, down, and relaxed (easier than it sounds). Strong core; abs, stomach and back should all be strong. If you look confident you will start to feel confident
• Have a favourite incantation for times like these. My favourite as a teen was Coue’s “Every day in every way I am getting better and better” repeated 20 times, twice a day.
• Forgive yourself. These are “unprecedented” times, as you have probably heard far too often recently, but that means that we’re all making up at least some of it as we go along. Relax and let go of any mistakes.

I’d love to hear any more quick confidence boosts

After the initial crisis a couple of weeks ago we now seem to be settling down to a new “normal”. Now that we are through the worst of the firefighting we can start to improve our current situation for the next 3-6 months.

As always start with the biggest processes and look for ways that they can be improved. Not all changes will be worth making as they may not reap sufficient benefits in the timescale to justify the time or money required to set them up. This shouldn’t stop you coming up with the ideas; it is just that there are now two potential payback periods of “lockdown/recovery” and any benefits after this time.

It is also worth thinking about what sort of business you want to run after the virus. Have you learned new things or implemented new processes or products/services that are worth keeping?

This week has been exceptionally busy for some of our clients. To cheer them up a little I ordered a little something to be delivered to all our course alumni.

It took a while to find a suitable supplier who was still trading but I took a certain geeky delight in receiving an invoice emailed from their Xero software. Not just any old invoice but one with buttons!

1. One button to upload the invoice directly into my own Xero software. Even simpler than forwarding the email to my Xero mailbox
2. One button to pay straight away by card so I didn’t need to add bank details for a transfer. In the current climate I knew that paying straight away would help that small business and so did the owner.

As systemising for efficiency and speeding up cash inwards are two of the areas we look at on all our courses it I was in tech paradise

How can tech help you in your business?

We’re delighted that MTD (Making tax Digital) prompted so many businesses to review their accounting procedures. For those of you who would still like a hand to do so or to take it further then please do get in touch.

But are there any other systems that can be moved away from paper?

Document management system

Often it’s just a case of not printing out the documents you creating but defining an online filing system for Word, Excel and PDF items. You might want to invest in a document management system for maximum searchability but even ordinary File Managers are quite powerful. Storing these in the cloud with Onedrive, Googledocs etc can make them accessible to your whole team if you wish to share them.

When devising a filing system you should bear in mind how often documents are retrieved and ensure that filing time does not outweigh retrieval time.

Software

Sometimes additional software is required:

• If you’re not already doing it then we can recommend software for your purchase invoices and receipts to be automatically uploaded into your accounting software through a photograph, a forwarded email or a scan. The invoice will be stored electronically as well as creating the accounts record.
• Can you keep an online appointments system which works with your CRM?
• Can you schedule and keep a record of staff hours? (See Deputy) It may be possible to link this with your payroll software too.
• Can any site inspection documents completed and stored electronically?
• Can your clients book appointments online? (see Calendly.com for a free tool)
• Can your team share work and ideas online? (see Trello.com, Slack, Asana)
• What about meeting records? We’re communicating much more online now with Zoom and Teams. If you record a Zoom meeting (do let participants know) you will have a record of these meetings. If you need a text record then you can use transcription software with the saved audio file
• Online signatures can save printing out reams of paperwork for contracts. Signable.co.uk is UK based so complies with GDPR.

There are all sorts of possibilities which can help you to operate remotely,  more efficiently, and reduce your environmental footprint.

Post in

Any paper post will need to be scanned. Depending on your volumes you might want to invest in a fast feed scanner or just photograph single documents.

Legacy paperwork

Old paperwork can be scanned OR you can just move to paperless from today and gradually archive the papers as time passes.

There are so many ways that you can go paperless and, as always, we’d love to help your business efficiency and sustainability.