Work-Life Balance

Can App’s help the small business owner to redress the balance

Is your Work-life balance out of balance due to you spending more time working on your accounts & bookkeeping than you need to?

Are you prioritising the right work tasks?

Are you having cashflow problems?

Are the systems you presently use the right ones if you are looking to expand your business?

Are you using technology in the workplace?

If any of the above statements seem familiar, then the following may be of interest to you.

Are your cashflow issues caused by one or more of the following:-

1. You have done the work but have not invoiced the client.

2. You have invoiced for the work but have not chased up the client if payment is late.

Ways that can improve cash flow:-

1. Prioritise your time to ensure invoices are created and sent in a timely manner, no income = no business.

2. If you do not have the time and do not use an accounting software package but use a bookkeeping service. Add creating invoices and checking for late payment to the engagement contract.

3. If you use an accounting software package it may allow you to send a reminder email if the payment is late.

4. If you use an accounting software package it may allow you to add a payment app to your invoice.

For every individual there is a way to resolve any pain points each solution depends on personal circumstances and how you value your time against the cost of technology and the potential time saving.

Whether you currently use accounting software or not there are numerous app’s available for different functions and industries. Apart from your time a conversation with us to discuss if any of the available app’s are suitable for your business is free of charge.

Other reasons for considering why app's help small businesses are:

• They help you stay organised.

Using the principle that 80% of sales come from 20% of customers, can you identify the demographic of these customers. Contact management app's can provide the detail to help you.

If your business is looking to promote itself do you know the marketing techniques are best for you? An app that tracks inbound customers saves time and money in providing the data and therefore the best strategy for your marketing.

• They can eliminate data entry.

App's can save valuable time regarding data entry in sectors like banking where automatic downloads of bank transactions are available. Helping businesses to keep on top of cash flow in real time rather than waiting for the monthly statement to drop through the letterbox.

If your business needs to know accurate time tracking there are app's that can assist in this process, allowing you to assess the budgeted time of a project against the actual time taken.

If your business has a high level of expense management and for whatever reason not all items get recovered from your clients, but still need to be tracked then you require an app that can track expenses.

• They can help to streamline the accounting process that suits your business.

App's are designed for specific industries with functions you can tailor for your business accounting process. There are app's that can be used by any industry such as payroll. So, if you have salaried or hourly paid employees these types of app's allow you to review and approve payments leading to accurate time sheets and prompt payments.

Research by Intuit found that nearly 70% of small businesses benefited when using app's to streamline business functions. The downside was that 41% got confused as to which app's could be useful to them due to the numerous app's available