Timesaving tips for business

It’s the one thing that small business owners will never, ever have enough of – time.

“Owning your own business” is another way of saying “there aren’t enough hours in the day”, so finding ways to shave minutes or hours off the tasks that fill your week is an important step if you want to be able to grow your operation.

Conjuring some spare hours allows you to focus on business strategies and look at the bigger picture, rather than being bogged down in the day-to-day.

Here are some key tips from small business owners who’ve managed to successfully juggle competing demands.

Not good at it? Outsource it!

Whether it’s landscaping, selling children’s clothing or hairdressing, you’re probably an expert at what you do. But you’re most likely not an expert at other jobs that are important in the running of your business.

So rather than waste time tackling those tasks yourself, hire someone who knows what they’re doing to do it for you.

Verve Beauty Therapy owner Pia Kynoch learned the hard way, and says she began outsourcing certain tasks after realising the amount of time she was wasting trying to do everything.

“I used to go home after working a 10 or 12-hour day and spend five hours trying to put together a graphic or a newsletter. It’s having that bigger vision, I guess, and it’s really hard when you’re trying to do all the different tasks and run a business.”

“I don’t do accounting anymore, I pay an accountant to do all that sort of thing because it’s not my forte, it’s not what I’m good at.”

I don’t do accounting anymore because it’s not my forte.

Embrace new technology

While your phone, tablet and computer can sometimes be a drain on your time, every day there are more and more ways to make technology work for you.

Whether it’s video conferencing that’s saving hours of travel between offices, or software that streamlines your business processes, you’re guaranteed to find something that will win you back some time each week.

Cinder Agency client strategy manager Naomi Slater says an expense-tracking app called Xero has been a godsend for her and her colleagues.

“I’ve found Xero to be a lifesaver when it comes to tracking expenses. You can take photos of receipts as they come in and log them via the app, which only takes a minute,” Slater says.

“It saves that dreaded wallet clutter and means items are less likely to go unreported. Everything can then be tracked and submitted through the Xero website.”

Working order: Office must-haves

Film your training

If you’re training a new staff member and it feels like Groundhog Day, you might want to consider ways that you can avoid having to spend time teaching the same things every time you hire someone.

Kynoch has started filming all of her training sessions so that her staff can quickly and easily brush up on their skills and so that the business can continue to run when she’s not there.

The business can still run when you’re not there.

“It’s so that I can create a video library that people can access at any time, so that it doesn’t matter if I’m there or not. We can still do one-on-one training, but then they can go back and look at that video whenever they want or whenever they’ve got a query,” she says.

A list is your friend

It might be the oldest tip in the book, but writing down all your tasks and knocking off the most important ones first can help you ensure you do get everything done properly and on time.

“I prioritise my tasks and tick them off as I go,” Seight Custom Clothing owner Tristan Wright says.

“Which ones are the most urgent, which ones can wait until tomorrow?”

“Don’t multitask; don’t do multiple things at one time. It’s easier if you tick one thing off at a time and then there’s a sense of achievement. If you’re multitasking it takes 20 minutes to do a job rather than five minutes to do a job.”