Isn’t it great to wake up in the morning and, in your robe, toddle into your home office yawning with a cup of coffee in your hands and your hair uncombed? Who’d ever know but you? Okay, so those are the good parts. The tough parts are that once you get in there, you’ve got to be organized enough to get work done no matter how you’re dressed. So, here are a few suggestions to help along those lines. Updating and Understanding Your Technology. What kind of equipment or software do you not use because you don’t fully understand it? As I write, there’s a router that didn’t work stuck under my monitor so it won’t tip the heat-seeking cat off. What software have you downloaded that seemed so cool but you never used it? How long has it been since you backed up your PC or defragged the hard drive? Take an inventory of “drag-along” tasks that have been “pending” for a long time. Consider a good-guy-day-off just to get those tasks done. Be sure you upgrade Internet Explorer on that day, too. Those patches can make your working day run a lot smoother. Website Stale? You want those clients to call you, right? Do you have a method in place to track your website statistics? Are they dropping? A little site maintenance goes a long way to getting the numbers back up again. Refresh your testimonials, at a minimum. Think about adding a links page to your website and trade banners to your friends and colleges. This will attract more visitors to your site in a big way! Marketing to the Local Press or on the Internet. How long has it been since you’ve sent out Press Releases? Remember how important you thought that was in the beginning? How about a freshly-written one with the benefits you are absolutely certain you can provide now. And have you avoided those internet articles? That’s one of the best ways to get the word out about your company and it’s services. pat@paperworkpartners.com wrote this one! Catching Up on Filing. Filing is a hateful beast until you absolutely have to have a specific piece of paper and it’s nowhere to be found. We think you should use part of that good-guy-day-off to look at your filing systems. Are they working for you? Should they be revamped? Would a straight alphabetical system be best? Or can you see the sub-directories clearly and then you alphabetize within them? Here’s an invaluable tip for staying abreast of filing. To get caught up, hire a student to do the filing under your supervision. To stay caught up, keep an alphabetizer on top of the filing cabinet. Put things To Be Filed in their appropriate slot in the alphabetizer. They might not be in the drawers, but you can get to them in a jiffy. Other Tools. Do you detest invoicing? So did Seth Matson, of Matson Graphics, a home-based entrepreneur in Huntington Beach, CA. So Seth invented EZI. EZ Invoice, Inc™ brings effortless simplicity to your small business. It installs on the back end of your web page. You can invite all of your customers to the EZ Invoice, Inc™ Client Lounge where their password-protected data allows them to review all the invoices billed to them in one central location. They can pay only one or all of the invoices at one time using their credit card via PayPal or they can pay regularly via check. At the end of the year, EZ Invoice, Inc™ provides an annual summary spreadsheet that’s downloadable to your computer. This feature is a snap for calculating year end taxes that you can readily email or carry to your accountant! Enough about organization. It’s time for another cup of coffee! Cheers! Pat Matson has been writing for pleasure, business and now her son's new business for over 50 years.
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