16 Methods to Preserve Your Small Enterprise Organized in 2021 and Past
If you want to grow your small business in 2021 and beyond, you need to organize every aspect of your business. This can be tricky if your small business doesn't have the money or resources to put in place systems that result in a long-term organization.
I know from personal experience that even when you use the best tools to grow your business, success can lag if you don't invest your time and energy in the right things.
This will keep you organized through 2021 and beyond.
1. Organize your office space and small business storage space
To get started, you need to make sure that your physical environment is neat and organized.
This ensures that you can work at the highest level. In many ways, the organization of your entire business depends on how well organized your desk is.
First of all, make sure everything has a certain place, even if that place is on a pile of papers on your desk.
To get the most out of your desk, you can follow simple tips, such as: B. Have space for everything, segment your desk, spend time every day organizing the papers on your desk and labeling everything.
Since paperwork is time and resource consuming in most modern offices, consider storing it offsite.
This means that you can spend less time managing your documents and rest assured that they are safe and better protected than you could do yourself. You can also scan documents and upload them to a cloud-based storage service, or just save them on your computer (back up your computer regularly!).
However, if this isn't exactly your style of work, I'll show you another method that can cut down your paperwork in a minute.
2. Track customer support for your small business
Your loyal customers are at the heart of your business.
Although they take up a lot of time and resources, when they are satisfied and satisfied with the services you are offering, it is a good time.
While automating your customer support system is important, automating your customer relationships is a bad idea.
To reach your customers directly, consider using a program like Groove that can effectively manage your customer tickets.
That way, you can spend less time managing customers and more time improving your product and business systems.
However, don't try to automate the whole process. Personal touch and direct communication benefit both you and your customers.
3. Plan your small business’s social media campaigns in advance
When running a social media marketing campaign on a budget, you need to cut down on the time you spend keeping things online.
Instead of wasting time posting posts every few hours, plan your posts in advance. You can also schedule your CMS system or social media platform to post posts for you.
This simple organization technique will save you countless hours and help you to improve your efficiency and productivity.
Meet Edgar is a great way to manage your content in advance. So you can write social media updates once and then send them several times.
This is a great way to keep things organized without repeating yourself by constantly updating your social feeds.
4. Manage your small business expense receipts
If you've run your small business for a long time, you know how frustrating it can be to manage all of your expense reports.
They are a hassle to track and record, but they need to be managed so that you can stay on top of taxes and make sure your finances are in order.
However, you can't just move them when there is more important work to be done. You should track every purchase and transaction on a weekly basis.
To make this more efficient, use software like Expensify, which does all of the work and organizes and tracks your expenses so you can focus on the things that really matter to your small business.
When you talk about software doing your paperwork, you can expand it to other areas of your business for great results.
5. Make your small business paperless
If you want to reduce the clutter and management that comes with all of the papers you need to keep up with, it may be time to go paperless.
This means that instead of constantly keeping an eye on dozens of files and folders, you have to reduce everything to digital scans of the most important documents.
If you want to try this, you need to be able to scan documents quickly and quickly so that you don't have to keep up with the workload.
CamScanner is a great app for quickly and easily scanning your bills and other papers.
CamScanner allows you to keep the files in the app, but you can also transfer them to your computer.
If you need to share these files with a team of individuals, I recommend storing your archived files in a program like Dropbox.
This ensures that everyone in your small business is up to date with the latest documents. However, you don't have to worry about extensive offline file management.
6. Organize your passwords
If you're like most people, you have one of two systems for managing your passwords.
Either you always use the same password for different websites or you keep forgetting the passwords you set for each website.
Instead of both, I recommend a third system: Let an app manage your passwords for you.
You can do this automatically in a browser like Chrome. Unfortunately, this is not entirely safe as anyone with access to your computer can use them.
Instead, I recommend using 1Password to manage your passwords. This program saves your passwords together in a mobile and a desktop app.
However, unlike Chrome's auto-fill feature, you need to enter a single password to access your other passwords.
This is a series of words that are easy to remember but hard to hack.
Let's say you need to sign into your account with Stripe. First, go to the Stripe login page.
You can either click the 1Password icon in Chrome or enter Command + .
This will bring up the 1Password form for you to enter the word-based password which will be used to access other passwords.
1Password then automatically fills Stripe with your login information and the saved password. You will also be signed in automatically so you only have to do one click less.
1Password stores information for a variety of accounts.
The best part is that each site can have a complex, unique password, but you can access all of them with a single phrase. 1Password can also generate a random high-security password if required.
This means that less memory is reserved for passwords and you can do more by working efficiently and keeping your logins organized.
7. Improve your work area for greater productivity
If you want your business to move forward, you need to create an environment that supports that vision. There are some proven techniques that you can use to get more out of your workspace.
Believe it or not, adding a few plants to your office can increase productivity by 15% through improved concentration.
You also get a boost from using a standing desk and cleaning your cables.
These techniques will help you stay energetic and focused, without the distractions of a crowded workspace.
These changes can only take a few minutes to set up, but even small changes can improve your productivity and make a big difference in how your small business is organized and productive.
8. Track your small business notes in the cloud
When you're writing notes, tasks, ideas, and contact information on scraps of paper or whatever is closest to you, it's time to get better organized.
Programs like Evernote are a great way to do this, and you should start implementing (or similar software) right away.
For Evernote to work optimally, you need to decide which philosophy to apply.
Will you record everything there and use the search feature to find your notes later? Are you carefully placing your notes in folders and using tags and headings to make sure you know what's in the program?
Both are valid options. The key is to create a system that will work for you and then keep using it.
9. Keep your computer desktop organized
Just as your physical desk should be clean and tidy so you can stay organized and get your work done, so should your digital desktop be clean and organized.
As a rule of thumb, if you can't see your desktop background, you should work on reducing and removing the clutter from your computer.
When you've cleaned up your main screen, you should remove your downloaded files and remove any links or other files that you don't use.
You can even clean up your Recycle Bin and save hard drive space if you want.
This is a great way to get a refreshing look at your work processes that will help you stay organized.
10. Improve the planning systems for your small business
If you have frequent meetings, video chats, or windows where others can schedule times to collaborate with you, you need a way to manage those blocks of time effectively.
Most people tend to go back and forth using email and calendar invitations to plan events like this. Unfortunately, the continuous schedule adjustments can be stressful and a waste of time. Instead, find a perfect time to hang out with a program like Calendly.
With Calendly, others can schedule a time to collaborate with you so you don't have to send messages back and forth at all.
This is an easy way to keep in touch with others without the confusion that usually comes with planning problems.
11. Track your time effectively
If you are a freelancer, you know the importance of tracking your billable hours.
But even if you don't have to record hours to get paid, using a program like Toggl is a good idea.
Toggl is a quick and easy way to track your time that can help any small business owner.
By creating separate projects and tasks in Toggl, you can easily keep track of the hours you invest in achieving your most important goals.
Instead of wondering why you didn't hit the benchmarks you set earlier, Toggl lets you stay organized and track how you are spending your most valuable resource – your time.
12. Keep track of your small business's bills and payments
Every small business needs to manage payments, bills, and bills. This is an important role that keeps the business going, but keeping everything organized can be difficult.
Instead of constantly working to make this effective for you, consider using a program like FreshBooks to process your invoices.
Remember that the vast majority of the payment information that you need to manage doesn't directly affect the quality of your work or address your core competencies.
Look for software that can make these types of management tasks more efficient and save you time.
The fewer tasks you have to do in a day, the more you can focus on the areas that you really address and help you achieve your highest priorities.
13. Plan ahead for your small business's quarterly taxes
If your business is based in the United States, you need to make sure that you pay quarterly taxes every few months.
Even if you are not a US resident, it is important to keep up to date with the tax policies for your country and region.
This is not just something to think about. Failure to comply with the tax rules that you live in could result in fines or even getting closed.
To make sure you are keeping up with taxes and paying the amounts due at different times, check out a service like inDinero.
This will help ensure that you are keeping up with your taxes and doing some of the organizing for you.
14. Tame your email inbox
If your inbox is cluttered with unread emails, it can be frustrating and take far too much time.
You will be more successful with your small business if you reduce this to a small number of important emails and clean your inbox regularly.
Productivity expert Brian Tracy recommends keeping your email inbox clean, deleting your junk email, and resaving the emails you need.
You can also create folders or flags to filter emails from your inbox into specific categories. This will help you determine which emails are important or require a response compared to what you can see.
You can process your inbox even faster by skimming the less important e-mails.
This is one of many different tools that can help you spend less time sending and receiving emails. This will save you many hours and be better organized at the same time.
15. Clean up your reading list
If you're like many business owners, you are constantly finding articles that you know will help you grow your business and increase your sales and conversions.
However, if you don't have the time to read the article, chances are you'll save it in a different location, such as the top of the B. as a bookmark in your browser or by email to yourself.
In that case, you want to change that unwieldy item list into something that you can easily manage.
I recommend Pocket, which is a great way to keep track of articles and videos that you might want to read or watch later. It's a simple system that saves interesting articles that you save.
To use it, you first want to find an item that looks interesting. If you are installing the Pocket Chrome extension, you will need to click it in the browser window.
From the drop-down menu that appears, you can add a tag and view related articles that others have saved for later reading.
The new article you save will immediately appear in your main list of articles to read on Pocket.
Even better, the articles you save in Pocket can be read on all of your devices. This makes it easy to read on your phone while traveling.
Having a reading list of articles on Pocket (or a similar program) is a quick way to save parts of interest without creating a messy list anywhere on your computer.
If you read a lot online, this is a great way to organize your reading material and keep it available for access on all of your devices.
16. Reduce your small business's physical paper storage
I mentioned earlier that paperwork is a huge frustration for many small business owners.
You can reduce the time it takes to manage papers by first creating an organizational system for your entire workplace.
If you'd like, you can move your paper management from an internal task to something that another company does for you.
If none of these sound appealing, all hope is not lost. First, arrange your saved documents in a logical order.
Keep your most important documents close by for easy access.
Remove any paper that you no longer need. The more papers you remove, the less space you have to worry about.
This is the most effective way to organize your papers without extensive management systems. Just throw away what is not needed.
If you have important files and documents that can't be thrown away, consider using a service like Shred-It to destroy your documents.
This is a great way to stay safe and reduce the workload and hassle associated with the papers you have to manage on a daily basis.
The fewer things you have to do in your small business organization system, the more you can focus on what matters most to your business.
Conclusion
If you are looking to grow your business in 2021 and beyond, you need to make sure that you are sufficiently organized to handle your small business growth.
You should consider simple organizational behaviors (like tidying up your desk and workspace), automating tasks (like your marketing campaigns), your finances (like your taxes), and most importantly, your time (using time tracking and scheduling software).
If you need help getting your marketing and digital efforts off the ground so you can focus on defining organizational strategies, let's talk!
What strategies will you use to organize your small business?