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How (and Why) to Mitigate Distractions While Working From Home

Eliminating distractions while working from home — especially with kids running around belting Frozen II and housemates doing mid-day workouts — might not be entirely feasible. However, it is still possible to mitigate distractions. After all, they’re hurting you — and your business — more than you might realize. You might have heard the popular statistic that you need an average of 25 minutes to get back to your original task after a distraction.

But there’s more affecting your productivity than that. We looked through some of the research behind the psychology of distractions and found some interesting insights:

Distractions have a demonstrably negative effect on our ability to perform, even when the distractions had little significance.

People who consider themselves at multi-tasking may be worse at moving from task to task than others.

Even if you attempt to “move on” to another work-related task, you may find yourself distracted by the first task of your day.

With that in mind, let’s dig deeper into the studies and find some better strategies for managing distractions:

1. Too Much Information Has a Detrimental Impact on Performance

In one UK study, researchers had volunteers carry out problem-solving tasks in a quiet environment—then tested them while they were “bombarded with new emails and phone calls.” Even though the volunteers didn’t have to respond to any of these messages, simply being aware that they were taking place had a significant impact on their ability to concentrate.

The result was that performance suffered. The average IQ dropped by about 10 points.

The conclusion is that not only are interruptions distracting, but if you allow distractions to weigh on your mind in even the slightest way, they can have a detrimental impact on performance. Given that volunteers didn’t have to respond to any email or phone call and still found them distracting, we can only imagine the impact distractions have on us when the emails and phone calls do need responses.

So try having an open dialogue with those you live with and creating a chart that hangs outside of your workspace where it will be seen that alerts housemates of your current work status. It may include options such as “available,” “busy,” “in a meeting” or “do not disturb unless facing a MAJOR emergency”.

2. Switching Between Tasks Takes Up More Energy Than You Think

A 2009 study at the University of Minnesota found the existence of what they dubbed “attention residue.” They defined it as the delay that occurs when someone sets aside one task and takes up another.

It turns out that the mental task of switching gears takes more energy and attention than we might have thought. And that led to some interesting conclusions, including the “surprising result that heavy media multitaskers performed worse on a test of task-switching ability.”

That’s right: even experienced multitaskers aren’t as good at switching between tasks as they might have thought. In fact, they may even be worse than the population at large.

This should lead most people to reconsider their approach to multitasking and asking the following questions:

Am I really a good multitasker, or do I just multitask often?

How long does it take me to “switch gears,” and do I often put off work because of the energy required to start a new task?

Where are some areas in which I might combine activities to minimize “switching gears” and improving my overall concentration?

These questions will help you identify some of the habits that may be leading you to lose concentration as you move from task to task. So whether you claim to be a good multitasker or not, try scheduling out your day in the early morning to help limit the amount of times you have to switch tasks and accommodate for the needs of those you live with.

3. The First Problem You Focus On Tends to Get Most of Your Brain Power

They call it “cognitive fixation.” If you like to multi-task, you may find that the first activity during your day is the one that retains most of your attention later on, even while you’re attempting to give 100% of your attention to something new.

This is evidence in favor of the strategy of attacking your most important tasks first. If you were to work on a big work project in the morning and only take on lighter menial tasks later in the day, part of your mind will continue to work on that “big” work project that you started off with. This can work to your benefit, so long as you’re aware of the effect and schedule your day accordingly.

4. Distractions are Disproportionately Affecting the Young

Millennials and Gen Zers—those most affected by the digital lifestyle—are also the groups that report the highest rates of distraction, with a rate of 74% identifying themselves as frequently distracted. This suggests something other studies have observed; the multi-tasking demands of the digital lifestyle have a detrimental effect on our ability to concentrate, which means that strategies for reducing social media usage may have long-term benefits for personal productivity and concentration.

One other reasons many of us may be suffering from distraction issues: using multiple devices at the same time can negatively affect self-control. So try to limit the number of devices you have within your reach while working from home. Allot yourself windows of time during the day — if needed — to check on certain devices.

5. Attention is a “Limited Resource”

Not only is our attention limited by the time we have in a day, but our energy is subject to the demands of being a living, breathing being. We simply don’t have as much energy to devote to willpower and attention as we’d like to have.

One study, as reported by Psychology Today, found that distractions eat into about 2 hours of our daily work lives. Given that our attention is a limited resource, the strategy of working on the most important task of the day as early as possible—while we still have the concentration to do it—may seem most effective.

One Reason to Use Distractions to Your Benefit

This post paints a very dire picture of the impact of distractions on our life. But if you can manage them effectively, you can sometimes use them to your benefit as well.

One study at Carnegie Mellon found that the regions of the brain that handle your decision-making process will still be in use even when you’re consciously focusing on something else. That means that sometimes, actively seeking distraction when you’re stuck on a problem can be a great way for you to relax, loosen up, and allow a solution to suddenly pop into your mind while you’re thinking about something else.

Otherwise, if you want to be productive while working from home, try to keep the distractions at a minimum (as much as possible), schedule out your day, and focus on your most important task of the day as soon as possible. Your calendar will thank you.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/Eliminating Distractions While Working From Home/ via IFTTT

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SEM vs SEO vs PPC: What’s the Right Balance for Your Business?

SEM. SEO. PPC. What’s the best mix for your business?

The question is more complicated than it might first appear. After all, who wouldn’t want to optimize their SEM, SEO, and PPC efforts? But limited budgets, limited capabilities, and limited expertise can be obstacles—particularly if you’re stronger in one area than another. Let’s discuss what these phrases mean and how you can find the right mix for your own small business:

SEM vs. SEO vs. PPC: What’s the Difference?

If you’ve had enough acronyms thrown at you in your time in business to fill a bowl of alphabet soup, you can be forgiven if you sometimes miss the distinctions in these digital marketing terms. But let’s separate SEM, SEO, and PPC from each other and get really clear about what they are—and what you should expect from them.

SEM, or search engine marketing, is an umbrella term. It’s there for marketing efforts (both paid and organic) that are directed at boosting traffic from search engines. However, keep in mind that SEM, as an umbrella term, may sometimes be used to refer to PPC marketing in some contexts, which helps explain some of the confusion.

SEO, or search engine optimization, is a marketing strategy aimed at organic search. The concern here is how to improve your natural position in popular search engines without paying anything additional to said search engines. Yes, you can buy a position with PPC, but with SEO, you’re concerned about the quality of the links pointing to you, the quality of your content, and the relevance of your topics to the search queries that users are typing into Google. The goal is to create high-quality content that will continue to drive your SEO strategy in the future.

PPC, or pay per click advertising, is aimed exclusively at paid ads in search engines. In PPC advertising, you can bid on certain keywords to buy your traffic. But it’s not always as simple as that. PPC often requires that you build high-converting advertisements to ensure that the search engines aren’t just putting anyone with money at the top of the listings; they still want to serve their users.

What is SEO?

Let’s dive into greater detail on SEO. Search engine optimization is the art of designing your page and your content for targeted placement in organic search results—no paid advertising required. Although the search engine algorithms are highly sophisticated, SEO remains a top priority for many business owners; 61% of marketers list improving SEO and rankings as their top goal.

Today’s top search engines include Google, Bing, and Yahoo, with many of the content marketing and internet marketing campaigns aiming at Google and Bing. You’ll find that the majority of your SEO efforts will tend to focus on Google, thanks to its dominant place in the market.

The beauty of SEO is that any business can compete for organic listings; you just have to have the most relevant, valuable information available for any search query. Sound difficult? You don’t have to start creating the world’s greatest blog posts just yet. Search Engine Land has a guide for small businesses so you can begin optimizing your site as soon as possible. From on-page SEO to technical SEO, there are always small improvements you can make to give your site a leg up on the competition.

Here are some of the other terms you’ll want to be familiar with in SEO:

SERPs: Search engine results page.

Backlinks: The links pointing to your site, used by search engines to determine your page’s popularity and relevance.

Crawlers: Automated bots that search engines use to scan your site and log the latest information, which they can then use in their search results. Crawlers might dig through your meta descriptions, title tags, and on-site SEO to get a gauge of what your site is and what your business has to offer.

Technical SEO: search engine optimization focused on the technical aspects of your website, not necessarily popularity and relevance.

Link building: The practice of promoting your site to as many potential linking avenues as possible in an effort to drive up your relevance. These days, legitimate link building practices tend to be those that are mostly organic, such as guest posting on popular blogs.

What is PPC?

PPC has potential benefits for small businesses in that it offers an opportunity to buy your way to traffic if you have the budget. Small businesses that need growth now will find that PPC generates the quickest results when it comes to getting on the first page, while content and SEO tend to require focus on the long-term future.

To optimize your PPC, you’ll want to make keyword research a hallmark of the way you market. Tools like the SEM Rush PPC tool will help you identify those keywords that are most relevant to your business, all while driving a substantial amount of traffic. Google Adwords, the most popular PPC platform, also has plenty of tools for you to use as you research. But don’t forget that Bing also has keyword tools you can use to gauge interest in keywords.

With PPC, your goal is simple: combine relevance and traffic. Relevance is how well you can answer the “question behind the query.” In other words, relevance is how well your website answers what customers are really thinking. Someone typing in “vacations,” for example, may be looking to book a travel agency. But your travel agency business won’t do well by serving those who were only curious about vacation statistics.

With search ads, your goal should be to get as much relevance as possible, because you’re going to need to optimize your click-through rates.

When comparing SEO vs SEM and the strategies listed above, you’ll find PPC can produce the most immediate returns. After the proper keyword research, a PPC campaign can quickly give you access to a large amount of traffic that is highly targeted to your keyword and your business—that is, if you’ve put in the time to ensure that your business lines up with the search queries you’re looking for.

How to Strike a Balance Between PPC and SEO

There’s no single answer for whether search marketing, SEO or PPC is best for you right now. But if you start with competition research, you should notice opportunities for advancement—whether that comes in specific keywords, sponsored ads, brand awareness, or even simply building a better landing page. Look at your budget and understand where PPC and SEO most help businesses—and make your investments accordingly.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/Striking the Right Balance between SEM SEO and PPC/ via IFTTT

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6 Tips to Help a Struggling Small Business Stay Afloat

It’s a fact that most new small businesses struggle. It’s part of the process. And though some don’t ultimately survive, those that can power through early problems can emerge strong (and profitable). Still, reaching that point is difficult, particularly in a rough business climate. However, there are certain steps you can take to keep you from feeling as though you're drowning and to help keep your business financially healthy.

Tip 1: Set Yourself Apart

In a recent look at common struggles of small businesses, we talked about the problem of having too many competitors. There, we suggested that business owners use competition to inspire innovation. More simply, use this problem as motivation to figure out how to set yourself apart. In the early stages, that might come down more to messaging than actual business products or services. But the sooner you make your company appear distinct among its competitors, the faster you’ll gain customers.

Tip 2: Address Your Debts

The idea of tackling debts before seeking more gains is actually an investment principle many adhere to — whether or not they’re running businesses. The idea is that debt is usually a compounding burden, with interest mounting over time, and should thus be addressed as efficiently as possible. This is particularly important for a small business in which time is of the essence. While it’s not always as simple as deciding to pay off debts, small business owners should start prioritizing debts. The sooner they’re addressed, the sooner the business can be free to grow.

Tip 3: Take Reinvestment Seriously

When you’re running a small business, it’s important to consider the idea of reinvestment. This is basically the idea that it can be beneficial to take some of the company’s profits and invest them directly back into company needs. Whether that means marketing efforts, a new employee, better technology, etc., it’s sometimes recommended that you reinvest half of what the company makes. It’s seen as a way of fostering fast growth, and it can also build the business up such that you have to do less on your own. In that sense, reinvestment can double as an investment in your own time as well.

Tip 4: Consider Personal Investment as Well

While there’s always some risk involved, you might also be able to expand your own funding by doing some light personal investing. However, you’ll want to do so carefully. If you’re looking to invest in the most traditional sense — in the stock market, for instance — it may be best to do so through alternative methods. Full-on trading is essentially a job, and it’s a lot for any small business owner to take on, particularly without the requisite expertise. However, there are other ways to grow funds in the market. If you still want some say over your portfolio, CFD trading is an option to explore. This is a method that allows the trading of shares purely with regard to whether they’ll increase or decrease in value. So, rather than buying a share of stock and timing your sale correctly to maximize profits, you merely make a decision of whether you want to buy it (anticipating gains) or sell it. CFD trading also enables stop-loss orders, which can allow careful investors to automatically limit their losses. If this is still a little too hands-on, there are also more automated or hands-off trading options such as mutual funds or apps that will trade on your behalf.

Tip 5: Cut Costs Where You Can

Usually, a struggling small business will already have cut costs wherever possible. However, it never hurts to do another thorough, numbers-based assessment of where you stand. Is there something you paid for in helping to launch the business that you no longer need? Are you using a supplier you might be able to move away from in favor of a cheaper alternative? Is there anything you have the time and ability to take on your own that you’re currently paying someone else to do? These are all questions worth asking when you’re struggling to make the business work.

Tip 6: Employ Freelancers Where Possible

This is not a suggestion that your small business should be staffed entirely by freelancers. You’ll need some employees to build a sustainable operation. However, where possible, you might want to look into freelance contributions. In-depth analyses have shown that freelancers cost less money, and these days — with so many people unemployed and/or looking to work remotely — they’re theoretically more available than ever. So, for the odd job here or there or for regular contributions that don’t necessarily demand full-time employment, you might want to explore the freelance market. There are ultimately no guarantees for a struggling small business. Each company’s strategy should be distinct, and a little bit of luck comes into the picture as well. With these tips though, you might hope to keep the business afloat — in a challenging climate or when future struggles arise. from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/6 Tips to Help a Struggling Small Business Stay Afloat/ via IFTTT

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How to Write an Effective Email the First Time Around

What does the perfect business email look like? For some go-getters, it might be the 21st century of War and Peace: it’s long, it leaves no stone unturned, and it contains enough detail that anyone who reads it will be impressed by your work ethic and flowery language.

This is wrong.

A good email is less art than it is science. It’s a means to an end, with a clear objective: get someone else to understand something that you already understand. Whether that means a project just finished or you have a new proposal, a well-crafted email should be clear, efficient, and engaging—without demanding too much from the reader.

We spend some 1/3rd of our office time checking and managing our email. It only makes sense to get it right.

Here’s how to construct one without constantly editing yourself:

The Basic Rules of Email

Before you optimize the efficiency of every email you send, let’s get rid of some of the simple mistakes that are only making your written communication worse.

First, double-check that you’re sending it to the right people. In one famous mistake, Aviva Investors sent an email meant to fire one person…to a list of 1,300 people.

Before you hit “Reply All,” take a few seconds to consider what “All” includes. Here’s an example of a faux pas you can avoid if you were to double-check the email recipients every time:

“OK, so I was online dating a lot,” Shirley Goldberg remembered. After each date, she liked to send a summary to her girlfriend. “On the day I hit ‘Reply to All,’ I had four emails open, one of them directed to the entire staff of my school. Somehow I got the emails mixed up.”

This can be even more damaging in the professional environment. That’s why you should aim to keep each email as professional as possible. After all, email still counts as written communication. If you don’t want yourself on record as having said something, don’t email it. In company-wide email threads, it’s possible that even if you don’t send the email to the wrong person, what you wrote can still end up in someone else’s text.

Unsure if your writing is grammatically correct? Consider adding an app like Grammarly to your browser if you’re using web-based email.

Focus on Clarity

The ancient Roman rhetorician Quintilian once said:

We should not speak so that it is possible for the audience to understand us, but so that it is impossible for them to misunderstand us.

Before you do anything else, make sure that your email is clear. That usually means the shorter it is, the better—there will be fewer opportunities for misinterpretation in a 100-word email than a 1,000-word email.

Write short sentences. Turn to HemingwayApp for help here. It will point out where you’re over-stuffing your sentences and making too many demands on the reader.

Use active voice rather than passive. “I finished the project” is clearer than “the project was finished by me.” It’s also more efficient. 

Organize your email paragraphs by topic. Similar to the way you’d structure a high school essay, keep your organization simple: one topic per paragraph.

Don’t “bury the lead.” Burying the lead happens when you hide an important nugget of information somewhere within the content. This leads to less emphasis on the important point. If you’ve ever wondered how you can write someone an email and they forgot about its most important message, it sometimes comes from buying the lead.

Read before sending. If you keep the email simple, you won’t have a problem reviewing it quickly before sending off. Don’t make more work for the recipient by asking them to read your mind. Make sure the email, as Quintilian recommends, is “impossible to misunderstand” from the outset.

Don’t Waste Time

You’ll enhance clarity when you stick to this rule: don’t waste time.

If you’re sending an email proposal to someone you don’t know, there’s a temptation to spend two paragraphs apologizing or explaining yourself. Don’t! Just include a brief sentence that mentions how you found their email and move on. If their time is valuable, thank them for sparing some. Then proceed to stop wasting it.

One brief sentence at the top of an email is usually enough to let someone know that you’re aware when an email might be out of the blue, or coming in some sort of strange context. If you’re networking, include a sentence that describes a mutual contact, for example. While you should focus on clarity, you’ll still want to display some social acuity when you’re emailing someone new for the first time.

When Scripts are Available (and Make Sense), Use Scripts

If you’re sick of staring at a blinking cursor and want to make some progress, you can always lean on email scripts to get you started.

The key here isn’t to copy and paste everything you write, but to remember the human touch. But once you’ve determined that you’ll do that, you can use some email scripts as reference points:

Groove supplies 17 email scripts, including influencer outreach scripts and guest post pitches.

Ramit Sethi’s networking scripts aren’t only useful, but the article explains how to avoid many of the same pitfalls as other networkers.

The Muse offers 27 templates for difficult workplace emails as well. You might want to use these only as a reference, however, and avoid direct copy-and-pasting when it comes to the most sensitive emails.

Practice Makes Perfect

You might not write perfectly effective emails every time. But as you get used to the work environment and routinely send out similar emails, you’ll get a sense of what works and what doesn’t. Pay attention to the questions people tend to ask in their replies and you’ll soon learn that you can answer them ahead of time. Over time, you’ll settle on a natural rhythm to your emails to help you avoid long email chains, back-and-forth question sessions, and even the occasional faux pas. from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/How to Write an Effective Email the First Time Around/ via IFTTT

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Five Mistakes That Make Customers Hang Up

When a customer hangs up on you mid-conversation, it’s easy to tell what you did wrong. In fact, they probably spent the previous five minutes telling you exactly what their issue was.

But when customers hang up on your phone system before you even get to speak with them, that’s another problem.

According to some statistics, about 80% of callers will hang up on a phone system if they don’t feel like their call is going straight to voicemail. That means that you’re already missing out on most important customer calls by not having a robust, organic phone system in place.

How can you turn it around? Make sure that when you set up your business’s phone system, you avoid these other key mistakes that make customers want to hang up:

Mistake #1: Putting Them in the Driver’s Seat

It sounds counterintuitive, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t any self-respecting customer want to be in the driver’s seat in an interaction with a company?

Yes and no. If you give your customer too much power—or give them too many choices—you run into the problem known as Paradox of Choice, first popularized by an author named Barry Schwartz.

In one study, shoppers were exposed to an astonishing variety of gourmet jam: 24 whole choices, with samples to boot. On another day, the available jams were limited to six.

Researchers found that while more choices attracted more initial attention, fewer choices meant that customers were ten times as likely to make a choice from the jams and bring it to purchase.

What does this have to do with your phone system? Simple: don’t give them too many choices. Give them options, sure—they need to navigate your business as well as possible. But keep the choices limited. Don’t let customers grow frustrated with your never-ending web of call forwarding.

We’ve all been in the situation of being the customer who loses all patience with a phone system and shouts into the phone, “just get me a human!” Don’t make your customers do that.

Mistake #2: Creating a Fancy, Elaborate Script

If a customer calls you on the phone, it’s important to give them a sense that you’re a real person—or at least a real company.

The problem is that some companies believe that to come across “real,” they need to simulate the feeling of authenticity by creating a script. Then they lose sight of why they created a script in the first place and simply want to create the most flowery, over-the-top script possible.

Avoid this instinct. When SoftwareAdvice.com ran a study, they found that customers had a strong negative impression of calls when they thought agents were reading from scripts. If a customer perceived a call as unscripted, their perception of the call improved 78% of the time.

If you’re building a voicemail system for directing phone calls, you will have to use automated messages to guide your customer. The way to avoid the negative-script effect is to keep things simple and professional. Get the essential information to the customer and let them move on.

Mistake #3: Weaving a Tangled Web of Call Forwarding

If you’ve ever been on a long phone call with a company, you know that it can feel like a temporary boost when you’re forwarded to the appropriate expert. That’s all well and good, but when your phone call gets passed on and on again, you start to feel like the entire effort is futile.

The same effect occurs when you create an overly complicated phone structure for answering customer phone calls. Yes, it’s important that you get the customer to the person who can solve their problem or answer their question. But if it takes too many steps to get there, customers won’t care about your good intentions. They’ll just care that they couldn’t get through.

Mistake #4: An Unprofessional Voicemail Greeting

If you have clients or customers call your personal number, it can be a bit disorienting to hear a casual and obviously personal voicemail greeting on the other end.

Even if you work out of a home office, it’s important that your phone system—or even something as simple as your voicemail greeting—displays that you have a professional business presence. Heed a few of the tips that we’ve provided in our post on voicemail greetings and make sure to:

Limit background noise. Hearing family members in the background is an obvious no-no. But even hearing general office sounds can have a negative effect on the quality of your voicemail greeting.

Smile as you record. You’d be surprised at the effect a smile can have on the tone of your voice. You want to be positive, upbeat, and professional—and sometimes, there’s no way to fake that except to smile.

Mistake #5: Too Little Information

If you’re convinced about the paradox of choice and you want to avoid an overly-elaborate script, it’s tempting to go too far in the other direction and record a Laconic voice greeting like “Hi. Leave a message at the tone.”

There’s nothing wrong with simple. But if you want your customers to stay engaged with your phone system, there’s no harm in infusing a little personality into their interactions with your automated responses. Just as long as these hints of your personality don’t get in the way of a customer perceiving you as a competent professional, they’ll likely stay on the line.

Give Your Customer a Reason to Stick Around

Just as you work hard to earn sales through marketing, analytics, and good, old-fashioned quality business practices, you don’t want the hard work to go to waste once a customer gets a hold of your phone number. Avoid these mistakes and create a simple, intuitive voicemail system that customers will understand and even enjoy. The better it is, the more likely it is you’ll retain those customers who would have otherwise given up. When it comes to your phone system and your customers, every second counts.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/Five Mistakes That Make Customers Hang Up/ via IFTTT

[aydenadler]

5 Common Struggles of a Small Business Owner

Launching a business is hard, and sustaining one is even harder. As a business owner, it is very likely that you will find yourself in situations wherein you are left with no choice but to take on more than you can handle. A good example of this is the global pandemic we are all facing at the moment. To ensure that you and your business are able to stand up to challenging situations, you have to familiarize yourself with some of the typical problems small business owners face and adequately prepare for them. That being said, here are five of the most common struggles that small business owners experience:

Feeling anxious about the future

Even before the circumstances changed due to the ongoing pandemic we are all facing, lots of business owners struggled with anxiety when thinking about the future of their companies. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, 49% of entrepreneurs suffer from at least one form of mental health condition during their lifetime. To cope with the anxiety linked to the uncertainty of what the future holds for your business, it would be a good idea to set aside some time for mindful reflection and to read biographies from successful entrepreneurs to stave off the feeling of “being alone” in the midst of your struggle.

Struggling with huge changes

As explained in our previous post on ‘How to Effortlessly Connect a Team of Remote Workers’, the current situation has driven companies, big and small, to encourage their employees to work from home. This sudden change places small businesses – especially those who never experienced having remote workers before and hence haven’t instituted the right infrastructure that supports these kinds of workers – in a tight spot. To soften the blow, The Balance suggests conducting SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis frequently to help identify which areas require some improvements and a little more attention. It’s also a good idea to adopt a forward-thinking attitude and to keep a positive mindset.

Having trouble with hiring

In a recent report by Wasp Barcode Technologies, 50% of the surveyed small business owners admitted that the biggest challenge they face is hiring the right employees. Recruiting new talent has never been an easy task, even for big enterprises, but small businesses struggle more because they have limited funds and resources. A good way to address this issue is by aiming for new graduates who have a lot of potential but do not (yet) have the experience to command a large salary. It’s also advisable to provide lots of non-financial benefits that are proven to be more persuasive when it comes to hiring employees such as healthcare, flexible working options, mentoring programs and time off.

Having difficulty with cash flow

Due to the lack of available funds, the majority of small businesses tend to struggle to make payments on time. According to a recent survey on Forbes, 66% of business owners claim that delays in payment processing causes major issues with cash flow. To combat cash flow problems, many small businesses turn to loans for aid, even going down the route of personal loans when things get really bad. Marcus explains how personal loans come with a fixed payment schedule so that borrowers are fully aware of how much they need to repay. It can also be used to pay off credit card debt, finance structural improvements, cover costs associated with moving and even handle vacation costs. Aside from applying for a loan, cash flow problems can also be mitigated by expanding your payment options and by having a proper budget plan.

Having too many competitors

One of the toughest things small business owners face is getting ahead of the competition. To withstand the problem of having too many competitors, Business 2 Community discusses how it’s essential for small business owners to use competition to stimulate innovation. Innovate and be inspired to provide products and services that are better than that of your competitors. Examine your competitors – know the strategies they’ve employed before, and try to determine and understand the ones that worked for them. By doing this, it will help you steer away mistakes, thus saving you a significant amount of time, money and energy. Entrepreneurs are known for their determination, tenacity and grit. However, before they become the very figures we all look up to, they had to go through different struggles at the beginning of their career. To come out successful, you have to power through every challenge and learn from them.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/5 Common Struggles of a Small Business Owner/ via IFTTT

[aydenadler]

How to Build a Remote Customer Support Team for a Seamless Customer Experience

Did you know that 86% of consumers are willing to pay more for a better customer experience (CX)?

Also, 49% of buyers have made purchases after receiving a personalized experience and over two-thirds of businesses now compete primarily on customer experience.

Your support team is the primary (and often the only) customer touchpoint. Therefore, it’s important to build a customer care department that can deliver a seamless CX.

Meanwhile, it has become more cost-efficient for companies to leverage a remote workforce for customer support. They can take advantage of the reduced overhead cost, access a larger candidate pool, and provide round-the-clock support to customers in different time zones at no additional cost.

However, running a remote customer support team isn’t without its challenges – especially if you want to deliver a top-notch and personalized experience to every customer.

Some common hurdles include:

Ensuring timely communication and information sharing so every team member is on the same page.

Tracking work and monitoring results to help employees stay focused and productive.

Making sure that team members can deliver an on-brand and consistent customer experience.

Enabling team members to work autonomously, especially if their supervisors are in a different time zone.

Implementing endpoint security to protect your customer data.

Here’s how you can overcome these challenges and build a remote customer support team to deliver a seamless customer experience:

Hire Team Members With a Customer-Centric Mindset

The interaction between support team members and your customers will define the quality of the customer experience. Hiring the right people is key to delivering an outstanding contact center experience and here are some important traits to look for:

Basic soft skills such as patience, empathy, attentiveness, communication skills, positivity, and the ability to “read” the customers.

Technical knowledge about your product and general understanding of your industry.

Self-management and time-management skills, as well as self-motivation to complete tasks on time.

The drive to act proactively and make decisions autonomously.

Collaboration skills and a track record of working in virtual teams.

The ability to thrive under a low-touch and flexible management style.

A customer-centric mindset that drives them to think outside of the box and prioritize the delivery of an outstanding customer experience.

Use Cloud-Based Communication and Collaboration Tools

Cloud-based software applications, such as project management, communication, and file-sharing platforms, allow team members to collaborate cost-efficiently from anywhere with an internet connection.

Meanwhile, a unified communications (UC) platform and contact center software enable your team to communicate with customers via multiple channels (e.g., phone, email, chat, social media.) You can have all the interactions synched up in a centralized location to ensure a seamless support experience.

Many of these platforms integrate well with each other so supervisors can manage progress at a glance on a unified dashboard. Also, they allow employees from different time zones to catch up with all the communications when they start their shifts to minimize errors and delays when they interact with customers.

Set Up a Centralized and Searchable Knowledge Base

Customers expect your support team to help them resolve issues quickly. In fact, 99% of consumers say that interacting with knowledgeable reps is an essential part of a great CX while the first contact resolution rate is a key indicator of customer satisfaction.

However, a remote customer support team member can’t simply walk over to the next desk and ask for help when she encounters a question for which she doesn’t have an answer. Therefore, you need to provide the resources your agents need to resolve customer queries independently.

To do so, set up an online searchable knowledge base (e.g., a private wiki) on which your team can access the latest information about your products. Such information should include detailed step-by-step instructions, troubleshooting procedures, and links to how-to videos that agents can share with customers.

Your team should also have the ability to update the information, ask questions, and add answers on an ongoing basis. This will create a supportive culture, increase employee engagement, and ensure that the knowledge base is current and relevant.

Implement a Customer Service Software Application

A customer service platform enables you to manage customer interactions across all touchpoints in a centralized location so any team member can pick up where the conversations have left off to deliver a seamless customer experience.

Some key features to look for in customer service software include omnichannel communication capabilities, ticketing system, live chat support, customer self-service portal, customer sentiment analysis, and survey tool.

These platforms also allow supervisors to see all customer interactions and metrics on a unified dashboard so they don’t have to micro-manage team members.

For example, managers can see the number of calls taken, the number of issues resolved, hours worked, high-priority issues, and tasks assigned to each team member to ensure that every agent is staying productive and delivering a high-quality customer experience.

Implement a Comprehensive Onboarding Process

A thorough and well-orchestrated onboarding process is particularly important for getting remote employees up to speed since they may not have immediate access to their colleagues or supervisors due to time zone differences and have to make decisions independently.

In order to deliver a seamless customer experience, your reps need to understand internal processes, communication protocols, and other operational procedures so they can resolve issues appropriately or route inquiries to the right departments.

Your team also needs to be trained on how to use all the communication and customer service applications effectively so they can optimize the tools they have at their disposal and ensure the effective functioning of the team.

In addition, since team members need to connect to your systems and access customer information using their own network and equipment, it’s important to ensure the security of the connections and the privacy of their networks.

Data breaches aren’t only costly but will also impact customer experience and erode trust. It’s therefore important to provide the necessary support and training to team members from day one to make sure your network is secure and your customer data is safe.

Educate Your Team About Your Customers

Your team requires an in-depth understanding of your ideal customers in order to deliver the most relevant CX, meet customer expectations, make product recommendations, and resolve product-related issues.

Create customer avatars/buyer personas and share them with your support team. Educate your agents about your audience, such as demographic information, their expectations, what they want from your products, as well as their preferences and values so your team can build rapport with your customers and anticipate their needs.

Also, enable your support team to deliver an on-brand customer experience by educating them about your company’s vision and values. When you build a team culture based on your brand identity, you can empower your agents to proactively take initiatives to surprise and delight your customers with an outstanding CX.

Final Thoughts

Delivering seamless customer experience is the key to acquiring and retaining more customers so you can increase sales and boost your bottom line.

Not to mention, hiring the right customer service agents and providing them with the appropriate tools can improve employee satisfaction and retention. These long-term employees often possess the much-needed institutional knowledge, insights about your audience, and enthusiasm about your brand that will turn any customer interaction into an outstanding experience.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/How to Build a Remote Customer Support Team for a Seamless Customer Experience/ via IFTTT

[aydenadler]

Choosing a Credit Card Processor for Your Business

Whether you’re the owner of a brick-and-mortar storefront, you’re strictly an online merchant, or you run your business from a food truck, you want to ensure that customers can pay conveniently and that you understand exactly what it costs your business to make that happen.

  With the arrival of innovative payment options like digital wallets, businesses of every size have had to transition away from accepting cash-only to choosing merchant account services and mobile payment processors that can keep up with the newer demands of potential customers.

Understanding merchant accounts and credit card processors

  If your business will accept credit and debit card payments, that money needs a place to go, and that’s where credit card merchant accounts factor into your business plan.

  A merchant account is a bank account that receives money collected from debit and credit card transactions. After each card transaction, the resulting payment gets transferred to the account, and from there the money can be funneled into a standard business account.

  If your company takes both online and in-store transactions, the merchant account for card-present transactions may be different than the one you use for online purchases, but basically every modern business needs at least one merchant account to do business in the modern era. Once you have an account, you then have to think about how your customer will be interacting with your business. This will determine what sort of credit card processing solution can best facilitate those transactions.

  If your customers come to you and most of your transactions happen inside your physical location at a traditional point of sale, your needs will vary from those of a business that’s physically mobile and brings the business directly to the customer. Likewise, if most of your transactions take place without being face-to-face with your customer, this will affect what type of credit card processor you’ll want to use. Luckily, there are several credit card processing methods to choose from to ensure your business is prepared for your customers’ payment preferences.

Selecting the processor that’s right for you

If your business is a traditional physical storefront, the most commonly used processor is a retail merchant account. This allows your customers’ credit and debit cards to be swiped (or inserted or tapped) through payment terminals at your store.

  It’s becoming less common to see businesses that don’t also have an online component for handling transactions. To process payments online, you need an internet merchant account. You can then process both credit and debit card payments through your website.

  In lieu of traditional point-of sale systems used with most cash registers, you can also set up your business to use smartphones and tablets as payment terminals. In these cases, you’d need mobile credit processors to allow your business to accept payments anywhere you have a WiFi or data connection. Nearly any type of business or individual can use this sales processing method, from artists selling paintings at local art fairs, to local coffee shops and beyond.

  One payment processor type that’s less often used these days, but can still cater to a specific type of transaction, is mail or telephone order merchant accounts (MOTO). These accounts let you process payments by phone or direct mail as the name suggests, and may be necessary for some businesses.

  There are other considerations, too. For one, if necessary, make sure the processor you're considering supports multiple merchant account types. If you already have a point-of-sale system or website merchant page set up, make sure any processors you’re looking to work with in the future are compatible with your current setup.

Facing the Fees

  You may think that you can credit and debit cards at your business along to your customers. This is mostly true, but be wary of adjusting your prices to accommodate this, especially if your business is in a highly competitive space where a rise in prices could put a competitor into a more appealing position in the eyes of the customer. Most merchants choose to eat interchange fees as an expected cost of doing business. Since costs are arguably the most important factor when choosing a credit card processor, become familiar with the types of fees you can face.

  One-Time Fees

Initial costs, like equipment installation and application fees are common one-time fees associated with credit card processors.

  Transaction Fees

When using a credit card processor for card payments, you’ll be charged an “interchange” fee for every transaction made with a debit or credit card. These fees usually fall between 1.5%–4% of the total purchase amount. For smaller businesses where low-volume and low-cost purchases are commonplace, this can be a major hurdle when trying to remain competitive with bigger chains.

  Several factors, including the type of card used and how the transaction takes place, can affect these fees. For instance, with less risk of credit card fraud with in-person transactions, in-store payments could cost you less than online or phone payments. There are no additional fees to use EMV chip cards at your business, but it does cost money to equip your business with EMV technology, which is basically mandatory in modern times.

  Monthly Charges

Look out for small monthly fees, including costs for mailed monthly statements, or rental charges for the processing terminals themselves, generally around $20 to $100 a month. Some processors may charge a fee for early contract cancellation. Plus, most processors will have minimum requirements for the fees they collect every month, and if your business is shy of this minimum amount, you can be charged the difference.

  Additional Charges

Another cost to be mindful of is the price of leased equipment, which you’d be responsible for even if you were looking to sell your business, or worse, if you were forced to close shop. Other ancillary costs to keep in mind are modern payment amenities like mobile readers to plug into devices you’re planning to use for your transactions.

  Be sure to ask all the relevant questions pertaining to what charges you’ll have to plan for when finding a processor since every business has their own considerations.

  The reason merchants may opt to charge customers more for using their credit cards is because they have to pay fees to accept credit card transactions.

Wrapping up

Ultimately, you know your own business the best, and therefore, the most rock-solid thing you can do when choosing a credit card processor is make the most informed decision you can that will accommodate you.

  from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/Choosing a Credit Card Processor For Your Business/ via IFTTT

[aydenadler]

How to Effortlessly Connect a Team of Remote Workers

Today’s world is growing increasingly remote, which means that if your office can’t handle a remote worker, it may already be out of date. And with the rise and spread of Coronavirus (COVID-19), individuals and companies around the world are rapidly beginning to question the way they conduct their business — especially during an outbreak. And this doesn’t just pertain to large businesses. Even small companies of just a few people need to be set up for success or risk major disruptions in productivity.

 Consider:

More people are working remotely. According to an Economist Intelligence Unit study, only 28% of those surveyed hadn’t worked remotely in the previous 12 months — meaning 72% had.

The technology is here. Video conferencing, Slack integration, remote diagnostics, file transfers—most of the tools you are already using are cloud based, meaning you can do them from anywhere. There’s no reason to hesitate anymore.

More people are going to want to work remotely. Even if some of the population hasn’t worked remotely yet, the work-at-home crowd continues to build momentum, increasing some 140% since 2005. And by 2025, about 75% of the global workforce will be millennials—a group that will come to expect more remote working opportunities in the future. While issues like the Coronavirus may be accelerating the remote working trend, it’s a trend that we believe is here to stay.

Why does this matter? With increased expectations of remote work availability, modern digital offices have to be able to facilitate today’s employee needs — especially as they pertain to health. Many companies that never believed their office required remote working options are now second guessing this belief. And not only because of the spread of disease, but to allow workers flexibility and the ability to compete for top talent.

Even if you don’t currently have a structure in place, here are some tips to help you build a remote team for the first time:

Step One: Build a Common Culture

The technology is easier than you think — especially with companies like LogMeIn who offer a full range of remote tools. It’s the company culture that can sometimes get in your way.

That means that your human resources team needs to be on board with a remote working policy that makes sense for remote workers as well as your company. Here’s what you’ll need to think about to build a culture that includes remote working:

Develop a policy for working from home. This should be a written policy to which any employee can refer. For example, you should have a policy for working from home on non-sick days for employees that request it. The key is to put something in writing, even if you still wish to maintain a flexible arrangement with most employees.

Create a basic flow for meetings with remote workers. If you have remote workers that never come in to the office, you’ll need to check in with them every so often. You may want to put in the structure—backed up by regular reminders with your project management software of choice—to make sure these employees never feel out of the loop.

Set goals for each remote meeting. Remote working won’t always be done via meetings, but you’ll accomplish a lot more with remote work if you can keep meetings concise. Take the “controlled burn” approach from NASA: each meeting should have a precise aim and a limited duration. And after the controlled burn, you should be able to let workers manage much of their own work for a while.

Step Two: Integrate the Technology for Better Remote Work

Many employers complain that remote work doesn’t have the same in-person connection of the office. That’s true. But with the right technology in place, you can simulate that feeling as much as possible.

The question isn’t whether the technology is here. It’s about what you should expect from your remote working technology. Here are a few features to consider as you weigh the options:

Easy logging in. The first step in the structure is to incorporate someone’s home computer with their work computer, especially for those who work part-time in a physical office. Can they log in with a simple browser entry and get to work as if they were at the office?

Workflow integration. If you already use a service like Slack, you’ll want to make sure that the technology you’re working with seamlessly integrates. Otherwise, you face the potential of back-and-forth emails as you try to figure out where every remote worker’s progress is regarding their latest project.

Step Three: Create Teamwork Even in the Absence of a Physical Team

It’s tempting to view a remote working operation as exclusively digital. But no matter how we work together, we’re all still flesh and blood. We want to feel like a part of something. When that’s accomplished, telecommuters can report lower stress levels.

But the benefits of telecommuting don’t outweigh the potential downsides if you don’t create a sense of teamwork or basic productivity. That means you’ll have to go beyond building a common culture and focus on what it takes to make people feel like a team.

The first step is creating a culture of reaching out. One study demonstrated that employees who had a chance to socialize for even as little as 15 minutes tended to have higher productivity than those who didn’t. In a remote work situation, that can be as simple as a phone call or a quick face-to-face chat.

The second step is to incorporate your team into major decisions. There’s not going to be much of a “team” if people don’t feel like they get a say. That means including them as you write your remote working policy, for example, or holding meetings about the best way to handle some projects going forward.

The third step is to create some things that employees can have in common and share with each other. That doesn’t have to be an employee newsletter. It can be something as simple as an email you share with a distributed team or a common set of guidelines to which they can all refer.

Changing Technology Means Changing Habits

So while updated technology is critical, you can't introduce new technology without also helping employees change their current work habits. Pave the way for remote work by building a common culture and creating a policy for remote meetings and communication, integrating technologies commonly used, and creating teamwork in the absence of a physical team.

  from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/How to Effortlessly Connect a Team of Remote Workers/ via IFTTT

[aydenadler]

Important Tax Deadlines to Keep in Mind for 2020

It’s a new year, which means a lot of exciting things for your business. New chances. New resolutions. New goals. Opportunities to make this a defining year for your company.

But before you get ahead of yourself, it’s probably best that you remember that a new year means new tax deadlines, too.

Your Quarterly Estimated Taxes

For some people, the yearly tax return is the end-all, be-all of taxes. But for freelancers, the self employed, and other businesspeople, they’re used to the idea of filing quarterly estimated taxes. 2020 is going to be no different.

Paying your income tax by the quarter will start with finishing the previous tax season with the deadline for filing estimated taxes by January 15, 2020. Here are some of the other important dates you’re going to have to keep in mind for estimated taxes this year:

April 15th (same as the deadline for tax returns)—first quarter estimated taxes

June 15th—second quarter estimated taxes

September 15th—third quarter estimated taxes

January 15th, 2021���fourth quarter estimated taxes

January 31, 2020: Sending Out W-2s

When you’re a business who has to think about the taxes of its employees—not only its own taxes—it comes with specific responsibilities and deadlines. One of the most important: the end of January, when you’ll have to send out W-2s for any employees. Keep in mind that 1099 workers don’t fall under this category.

February 28, 2020: 1099 Reports

If you hired an individual contractor for your business activity in 2019 and paid them over the minimum amount, you’ll have to send in your 1099 reports—along with copies to the appropriate parties. This paperwork notifies the IRS about transactions, making sure that the people who collect income via 1099 are honest about their own income and that they pay all proper taxes.

You don’t have to make a tax payment at this time; this is simply a reporting filing that lets the IRS know if a transaction has taken place. For more information, see the IRS’s details on the 1099-MISC and 1099-NEC.

March 16, 2020: Specific Company Tax Dates

Partnerships and S Corporations, pay attention: this is the deadline for your tax returns. Partnerships using Form 1065 and S Corporations using Form 1102-S both have to use this same deadline, but there is a six month tax extension application available if you run too close to the deadline and aren’t sure you’ll be able to update it with completely accurate information without that extension.

April 15, 2020: Deadline for Filing Your Tax Return

Everyone knows April 15—unless that day falls on the weekend or a holiday—is going to be one of the most important days of the year. This is the ultimate deadline for your tax return, unless you filed an extension. And it’s also important to remember that this is the deadline for corporations to file their Form 1120.

In other words, you’re going to want most of your tax return finished well ahead of this deadline. In fact, it’s usually better that it’s finished weeks ahead, depending on the other deadlines and the paperwork you might be waiting on.

Keep in mind that you might be waiting on a tax refund for some time after this, so when you put together your financial calendar for the year, you won’t necessarily want to assume that you’re going to have your refund coming in by the tax filing due date.

There are also a few other deadlines here that are worth noting:

This is the last day to make a 2019 IRA contribution if you haven’t already funded your account fully in 2019.

Remember that your first quarter estimated tax payment is also due on this date.

This is also the deadline to fund your HAS for the previous tax year of 2019.

October 15, 2020: Extended Individual Tax Returns Due

If you filed an extension on the 2019 tax return, it needs to be mailed out by this due date. Make sure that it’s completed and fully finished well ahead of this date, as there are minimal deadlines immediately preceding this date on the tax calendar, which should give you plenty of time to have everything ready by the due date.

How to Make Sure You Hit Every Tax Deadline

It isn’t long after the end of the year that the need to take action on your upcoming taxes becomes apparent. Not only do you have to think about estimated taxes, but the filing deadline for filing your tax return is coming up faster than you might imagine. Now’s the time to track your expenses and file  the relevant reports for your 1099s, and then the tax return at the appropriate time, and before you know it, April 15th has already come and past.

The question is, how do you make sure you hit every deadline effortlessly? Are there any tax tips that will help?

There are a few options here.

You can utilize tax software that helps make the entire process easier. Turbo Tax, for example, makes it easy for you to file your tax return and enter in any and all relevant information that the IRS will want to gather. It also offers free filing if you mail the taxes in yourself.

You should also think about the tools you use to gather information throughout the year. You don’t want to scramble come March and find out that you did a horrible job of tracking expenses and income. Tools like QuickBooks and Freshbooks will help ensure that you have everything you need when it’s time to sit down with your accountant and get everything done.

It also helps to create a schedule that you can manage throughout the year. Don’t wait until April 1st to start gathering everything. The time to prepare your taxes is now—even if it’s just a small first step like trying out new tax software for the first time. That will help ensure you meet the tax deadlines, beat the tax deadlines, and get everything as accurately as possible.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/Important Tax Deadlines to Keep in Mind for 2020/ via IFTTT

[aydenadler]

How to Build a Modern Digital Office Space That You Will Love

There was a time when a new worker required a desk, a computer, an expensive phone, and four walls. That time is gone. Whether you hire contracted freelancers or host remote workers at your company, today’s digital environment makes it possible to eschew the usual trappings of office life for a far more digital, remote experience. With the right structure in place, you don’t have to give up the collaboration or personal touch of a traditional office. Here are some of the tools that can help you build that office:

Cloud Storage and Office Management

It starts with your digital infrastructure. How will you store the key documents and files that you share with your co-workers and employees? How can you collaborate on these same documents to ensure that work gets done on time? Here are a few suggestions:

Google Drive and Google Docs. Whether comparing notes on content for your blog or building group projects for business presentations, you’ll have just about everything you need for remote word processing and more with free Google accounts. Google Calendar syncs neatly with plenty of apps these days so you can automatically schedule meetings and tasks without having to take on additional steps.

Dropbox. Many business owners today choose to supplement their cloud storage with at least one Dropbox account—just to have a backup. Dropbox’s free account currently offers enough storage for most people to handle the demands of a modern business, but there’s also a Dropbox Business account for more robust team needs.

Microsoft OneDrive. People who use PCs often find that OneDrive fits in neatly with the infrastructure they already have in place. OneDrive’s easy offline access features also make it possible to handle a variety of business needs even when the Internet’s down—though if you have remote workers, this isn’t usually a concern.

Use Zapier to automate your most common processes; for example, you can use new tasks on Trello to automatically create Google Calendar reminders for new project assignments.

Meetings and Online Conferencing

What defines a modern digital office is that it’s not limited to the four walls around your computer. But to keep tabs on a remote team, you’ll have to be able to check I from time to time. That means online meetings and conferencing:

GoToMeeting. GoToMeeting is one of the most popular solutions for handling remote workers, with some 18 million users per month across the globe. They offer easy screen sharing, high-quality video/audio, and great features like commuter mode, voice commands and cloud recording.

join.me. This easy-to-use meeting tool allows for one-click screen sharing, personalized URLs, and the everyday features you rely on such as audio, recording, scheduling and remote control.

Calendly is a nice tool for avoiding the game of email tag that usually happens when you’re trying to match schedules with someone else.

Phone Calls and Voicemail Systems

You no longer need a landline in the modern digital office. But that doesn’t mean a smartphone alone will suffice, either. We recommend that you split up your personal and business calls with a phone system that easily delineates between the two, giving you a separate business phone number.

Grasshopper’s solutions include a separate toll free number for your business, a voicemail system, multiple extensions, call forwarding, and even business texting through your usual phone.

Strategies for Remote Working

A modern digital “office” means you’re not always tethered to one specific location. As long as you have the software and infrastructure in place to handle it, you can simply use an Internet connection to get most of the work done. Zapier has highlighted a wide range of different home offices where many people can get by with a simple Internet connection and a laptop.

But just because it’s easy doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan effectively. Here are some tips for keeping work going while you’re handling business from the home or on the road:

Get off of paper as much as possible. Even if you have a business presence that requires a lot of paperwork, there are still some ways to reduce paper usage, including software that tracks printer usage and arranging for as many paperless statements as possible. It’s also a good idea to digitize essential documents to have electronic backups in the case of emergencies.

Set clear rules and guidelines for remote workers. If you hire a remote worker, make sure that you work with them early on in the process so they understand the expectations of a remote office. How much work will you expect them to do? What are your policies on sick days? Vacations? One rule of thumb is to keep your business running like a traditional business, even if many of your workers now handle their job from a remote location.

Find co-working spaces when you can. If you work in a digital office from home, you might find it beneficial to find co-working spaces when you can, such as working out of coffee shops with free WiFi or seeking out a co-working space in your area.

Use an “upside-down pyramid” schedule. In other words, start with the foundation of your work as soon as you can. Begin with the most important task of your day. If you work out of a mostly digital office, it’s possible for your work day to run into all sorts of non-office issues that can derail your productivity. That freedom can be a great thing. But it also means you’re responsible for getting things done without the traditional 9-5 structure. Get the most important work out of the way first to ensure that even if your day gets disrupted by mid-afternoon, you can still recover the next day.

Building a Flexible Digital Office

There is enough technology out there that you can handle most work with a laptop and an Internet connection. But if you want to maintain the standards and function of a larger office, it helps to supplement these basic tools with the infrastructure to maintain the appearance of a full corporate presence—without all the expense.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/How to Build a Modern Digital Office Space That You Will Love/ via IFTTT

[aydenadler]

No More Lost Leads: How to Capture and Keep Potential Leads

How many leads did you lose last month?

Trick question. It’s hard to tell the opportunity cost when those leads never went your way to begin with.

But there is a type of lead that companies too often ignore: the potential leads that for some never became full-blown leads for your company. This can happen for a few reasons:

Leads might jump into an order form and fill up a “shopping cart” only to abandon the cart and close out the window.

Some leads may come to the cusp of signing up for a newsletter, only to decide at the last minute that they’d rather keep surfing the web.

Other leads might bookmark your lead page for later—only to never return.

In each case, you’re capturing potential leads, but for some reason or another you’re not keeping them as genuine leads for your business. Here’s a guide for rectifying that situation:

Evaluating Your Current Lead Strategy

The first step is to better understand what your current lead strategy is—and how well it might be working out for you. Here are a few tools to help in that process:

Use a tool like Website Grader to get a sense of how you’re currently doing with potential leads. This will yield you insights like your page size, page speed, and mobile responsiveness to ensure that you’re not turning away leads before they ever happen.

Supplement your Google Analytics with tools like Leadfeeder or Ahrefs. Leadfeeder gives you more insight about who’s visiting your website, which helps you craft a strategy for capturing these leads more specifically. With Ahrefs, you’ll get more insights as to the strategies your competition is using to capture more data-driven leads.

Integrate A/B testing into your lead strategy. If you have multiple ways of capturing leads, it only makes sense that you’ll want to test which ones need optimization and which ones are delivering the kind of performance you need. For example, you might start with multiple versions of a “contact us” page to see which one tends to yield more results. The key to testing effectively is that you’ll identify the “invisible” leads you could have captured with a better lead form, but never knew because you never tested alternative pages.

Optimizing Your Website to Point Your Audience Toward Lead Conversion

Once you have a sense of where your opportunities may be lost, it’s time to create new strategies to capture the leads you’ve been missing. Here are a few to consider:

Create more landing pages.

According to HubSpot, companies with 30+ landing pages tended to generate about 7 times as many leads as companies with only 1 to 5 landing pages. This doesn’t mean that more is necessarily always better, but it does suggest that the companies that are actively creating landing pages and testing them for specific purposes are finding better results. If you only have one landing page that you never test, now’s your wakeup call.

Consider integrating live chat.

Live chat (42%) is beginning to outpace even email (23%) and social media (16%) as the “leading digital content method.” That means that it’s also expressing its potential to drive visitors to transform into leads. As visitors ask questions and explore the live chat feature, they can easily be swayed toward a landing page of the company’s choice—preferably one that’s already been optimized for someone asking those same questions.

Give your leads something to do.

Evaluate your site from the audience’s perspective. Live chat (see above) works because it gives customers something to do. But there are other ways to encourage people to move through your lead funnel, including:

Download incentives. One of the most popular lead capture tools in the world is to create a factsheet worth downloading and encourage people to trade their email address in exchange. Download incentives are popular for a reason: they work.

Create valuable content. Whether that valuable content comes in the form of an insightful blog post or an online tool visitors can use for free, it doesn’t matter. What’s key is that you create something that people will find worthwhile and use that content to drive their attention toward your lead generation funnel.

Add a personal touch.

With personalized calls-to-action converting some 42% more people than the basic CTA, one thing is clear: we like the sound of our own name. That’s one reason that personalized email headlines tend to do better, even if we already know as the recipients that it was an electronic form that enabled that level of personalization.

How to Retarget Leads that Never Became Leads

Sometimes, you’ll just lose out on leads. It happens. You may not have any explanation for it. Heck, even your leads may not be able to explain why they clicked away.

In that case, you can use a strategy of retargeting to influence how many of these leads you retain.

For example, Google Adwords Remarketing allows you to create advertising for very specific cases. You can create advertisements tailored to those who might have browsed your website but never fully made a decision one way or the other.

You can also use Custom Audiences on Facebook to reach out to highly specific customer segments. By implementing a Facebook pixel on your site, you can even create a custom audience of people who have already visited your website. As is the case with Google Adwords Remarketing, you can then construct advertisements specifically tailored to those who didn’t pull the trigger on an order.

Retaining More of the Leads You Worked Hard to Create

Before you go out and spend money on advertising or SEO, you should focus on making your site a better place for the people already visiting it. Retarget your customers, increase the personal touch, and begin testing your lead funnel solutions to ensure that you retain more of your visitors and turn more of them into leads. Then, the next time you spend a dollar on advertising, you’ll be confident that your site has what it takes to generate a worthy ROI.

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How to De-Clutter Your Business Life

Clutter comes in many forms. It’s tempting to look at the pile of papers on your desk and view that as the only clutter weighing you down—but chances are, it’s the least of your problems.

Anyone who runs a business knows that clutter can be more substantial than that, including:

An email inbox with hundreds of messages that need sorting

A schedule that overwhelms you and forces you to cancel meetings

Taxes that are so complicated that they start to take over your life

A list of voicemails to which you have yet to respond

Just as you’d sweep away the cobwebs in the corner of your basement, your business needs its occasional spring cleaning, too. Here’s why.

Why You Need to Reduce Mental and Physical Clutter

Psychology Today once tallied the mental costs of clutter, pointing to eight distinctive negative effects clutter can have on our lives. From creating feelings of guilt and embarrassment to the constant stressor in the back of your mind that your workday isn’t officially done, clutter can place an enormous mental burden.

The same is true of both physical and mental clutter. A physical mess is another chore we have yet to do, so it becomes a mental challenge. And mental clutter can pile up in physical ways, weighing visibly on our email inbox or piling up in a list of expense receipts you have yet to go through. After a certain point, these tasks lose all meaning and simply become part of an overwhelming stressor weighing on our everyday lives.

Strategies for Reducing Business Clutter

With that in mind, how should you approach the “business” clutter in your life? It’s tempting to go the route of Marie Kondo and the KonMari method. But these systems focus on domestic clutter. What happens when your business life needs cleaning, too?

Here are some suggestions to help you get started:

Identify the clutter. If you have only a vague sense that something in your work is weighing you down, but you don’t know what it is, get clear about what you want to remove from your work life. Write down a list of the thoughts that are more stressful to you at work and ask yourself if you notice any common themes.

Delegate when possible. However frugal you might be, whenever you can delegate a task that’s weighing heavily on you, you should try to see if there’s a way you can do it. Whether that means hiring an accountant to handle your increasingly-overwhelming taxes or simply having someone come in and clean your desk, you don’t have to add to your daily tasks. Outsource it.

Always keep your business and your personal separate. According to Stress.org, the blurring of personal and work lives is the main cause of stress for 20% of those in the workforce. Consider that one of the problems business owners have is looking up a wide range of expenses when they’re not sure which ones were for business and which ones were personal. Try to create systems that handle the sorting for you. Use a unique business checking account and unique business credit cards. Combined with proper bookkeeping software that logs every transaction, you’ll never have to worry about collecting and sorting huge piles of receipts again.

Start small if need be. Sometimes the overwhelming idea of tackling a huge task like our email inbox can prevent us from taking any action at all. Who wants to start a four-hour task when they can spend the next ten minutes doing something more fun? That’s why it’s important to chip away at the clutter even when you know you won’t get to it all in one day. If you can keep the arrow pointing in the right direction, you’ll eventually arrive at a point in which the clutter no longer overwhelms.

Avoid these Key “Business Clutter” Mistakes

After taking steps to reduce your clutter, it’s important not to let it happen again with a few preventative measures:

Build a replacement system. Even if you go through and delete every email in your inbox, failing to replace your old system with a new one just means you’ll get back in the same old habits. This is a great time to investigate apps like Newton that you can use for long-term inbox maintenance. Do similar research with the other areas in your life that you need to improve upon. If you’ve struggled with your invoicing, is it time to invest in a solution like FreshBooks?

Schedule regular time for clutter maintenance. As long as clutter remains a problem for you, it’s important to put aside some time every so often to handle your clutter—even if it means simply emailing someone who can help you. Schedule regular maintenance time to sit down and focus solely on decluttering your business life.

Stop adding to your workload. If you can master the word “No” when you’re overloaded, you’ll do a lot to keep your business running smoothly. For new businesses, turning down additional clients can feel like a major mistake—until you realize that biting off more than you can chew is just as bad a habit as doing too little at work. Stop adding to your workload and give yourself some freedom by saying the occasional “no.”

Separate your business and your personal life with effective systems. For example, using Grasshopper’s business number allows you to filter out business calls from personal calls, operating both seamlessly on the same device.

Building a Better Way of Handling Business Clutter

De-cluttering your business life requires a great deal of introspection. It requires being honest about yourself and the way you approach your business every day. It requires a little work to get started. But it will be well worth the investment of time and effort it takes, because you’ll be better able to handle your daily workload—as well as build stronger systems for managing growth in the future of your business.

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A Step-By-Step Guide to Catching Up On Your Bookkeeping

Tax season is coming—it’s inevitable. Getting your books tax-ready ensures you’re compliant with the IRS recordkeeping requirements, meaning no late fees, no surprises, and a successful tax return that won’t cost you extra time later on (we know you’re busy). 

Bench was started so you wouldn’t have to do your own catch up bookkeeping. But for the do-it-yourselfers, this step-by-step guide will help you get through your bookkeeping backlog in no time. 

Step 1: Collect Receipts & Invoices

Start by collecting all receipts and invoices related to your business expenses. There are many different types, so we’ll outline the most important ones. 

Customer Invoices

Review your customer accounts and double check that you’ve collected all customer invoices for the tax year. Depending on whether you’re using a cash or accrual method, you’ll record these differently. 

Debt Collections

Review your customer accounts for any bad debt expenses. In order to deduct the cost of bad debt from your tax return, you will need to prove to the IRS that you have taken reasonable steps to collect the debt. Bad debts can be claimed by using either the specific charge-off method or the nonaccrual experience method. 

Business Expenses

Collect receipts from all business purchases you have made during the tax year. Use this handy list of small business tax deductions to double check that you’re tracking and claiming every deduction available to your business—because who doesn’t love saving on taxes?

  Vendor Accounts

Review your vendor accounts to ensure that you have paid them all in full. Make sure you have a copy of every bill from each vendor activity and, if you don’t, contact the vendor and ask them to send you a copy. Important to note: Vendor accounts include bills for business activities that are still currently operating in your business’s closing period.

  Step 2: Reconcile Your Bank Records

Reconciling your bank records accomplishes two things: 1) It ensures you don’t miss any business expenses or important records from Step 1, and 2) It helps you catch any mistakes your bank may have made. You can do this by comparing each transaction from your bank statement with the same transaction in your company accounting records. If the transactions don’t match, identify and fix any errors to ensure they balance out.

Step 3: Separate Personal and Business Expenses

Keeping your personal and business expenses in the same account is known as piercing the corporate veil—which may result in you being held personally liable for your business’s debt and actions. The sooner you separate your business and personal expenses, the better. Learn how to open a small business bank account and keep your finances separate.  

  If you’re unsure about whether a purchase qualifies as a deductible business expense, learn how the IRS differentiates personal and business expenses.

Step 4: Create Digital Records

If you haven’t done so already, there are countless benefits to making your business paperless. As you process your paperwork, create digital records of receipts and important documents. Here are a few of our favorite tools to help you go paperless:

Shoeboxed

FileThis

Evernote’s ScanSnap Scanner

Step 5: Submit Forms for Contractors & Employees

If you paid independent contractors and/or employees during the tax year, there’s a good chance you’ll need to file the following forms:

Independent Contractors: Form W-9 & Form 1099-MISC

If you paid an independent contractor more than $600 for work during the year, you’ll need to submit a Form W-9 and a Form 1099-MISC. A W-9 requests a contractor’s taxpayer information. The contractor completes this and returns it to you. You then use the information on the contractor’s W9 to issue a 1099 to the IRS. If you’re new to the process, and unfamiliar with the deadlines, read How (and When) to File a 1099 first. 

Employees: Form W-2

You’re required to file Form W-2 for all employees.

Step 6: Review Your Books With a Professional 

When you’re a small business, doing it yourself is often the least expensive option. But tax professionals can help eliminate errors, help you claim all of the deductions available to your business—which may end up saving you money in the long run—and can also represent you in the event of an audit. Developing a relationship with a financial pro, well before you need their help, will prevent last-minute scrambling and bring you peace of mind that your books are in order.

CTA: If you’re a small business owner who could use a helping hand—the expert bookkeeping team at Bench can get you up-to-date with their Catch Up Bookkeeping Service. 

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Easy Guide to a Painless Tax Season

Do the words “tax season” make you shudder? You’re not alone. Over half of US adults say tax season stresses them out. And when you run your own business, your tax time heebie jeebies are bound to be even more severe. 

Tax season is faster and easier when your bookkeeping is organized. And our partners at Bench will handle all your small business bookkeeping, and even file your taxes for you.

But if you’re filing your own taxes, read on. We’ll cover all the forms you need to file and deadlines you need to meet—plus how to file on time or get an extension. 

The Documents You Need to File Taxes

When you file your tax return, you must be able to prove what you earned and what you spent —for the sake of reporting income, as well as claiming tax deductions. These records don’t get sent in with your return, but you’ll use them to calculate your total income and expenses for the year. And you need to have them on hand in the unlikely event you’re audited. 

Basic Info for Filing Small Business Taxes

Personal and business info: Your address, the address of your business, your full name, and your Social Security Number (SSN).

Last year’s filing: Having your previous return on hand makes it easier to complete this year’s return and keep track of info like depreciable expenses.

A tax ID number: There are a variety of different numbers you may use as a tax ID number—from your SSN to your employer identification number (EIN). Not sure which to use for your business? This article on tax ID numbers offers a handy rundown. 

Records of Small Business Revenue

Invoices you sent to clients: Keeping copies of sent and paid invoices helps you track your revenue, and can support your case if your revenue or income are ever called into question by the IRS.

Records of goods sold: Cash receipts, or transaction lists from an online store or point of sale, can serve as a record of revenue you’ve earned.

Other sales records tracking revenue: It’s smart to hold on to any records of revenue you’ve got. In lieu of organized bookkeeping and regular income statements, you can use them to calculate your revenue for the year.

Records of Expenses

By subtracting your expenses from your revenue, you get your total income for the year. That’s essential for filing. Also, many expenses are deductible—and if you make deduction claims, you’ll need to back them up.

Be sure to hold on to: 

Rent receipts

Office supplies receipts

Employee salaries

Mileage records

Other deductible expense receipts 

Annual Financial Statements

An income statement, balance sheet, and (if you use accrual accounting) cash flow statement for the year will make filing easy. Comprehensive financial statements give you all the info you need to file. If you don’t have financial statements for your business, now may be the time to hire a bookkeeper.

Essential Tax Forms and Deadlines

Once you’ve got your documents in order, get the forms you’ll need to file. The exact forms you’ll use, and the deadlines for filing, depend on your business structure.

Tax Forms and Deadlines for Sole Props

Filing Deadline: April 15, 2019 (the same as your personal taxes)

There’s no need to file a separate return for your business. Report your business income and expenses on Schedule C of your personal tax return. To claim itemized deductions, list them on Schedule A.

The IRS instructions will walk you through the process of tallying your expenses and revenue for the year, and determining your income. 

Tax Forms and Deadlines for LLCs

Filing Deadline: April 15, 2019 (single member)

Filing Deadline: March 15, 2019 (multi member)

If you’re a single member LLC, you’ll file your taxes the same way you would as a sole prop. 

If you’re a multi-member LLC, you elect to file taxes as either a partnership or an S corporation.

Tax Forms and Deadlines for Partnerships

The partnership files Form 1065, and each individual files a Schedule K-1 to report what they’ve made and lost during the year. Partners claim unreimbursed business expenses on Schedule E.

Partnership filings, and Form 1065, can get pretty complex. For this reason, we recommend working with a tax professional to file your taxes.

Tax Forms and Deadlines for C Corporations

Filing Deadline: March 15, 2019

In addition to your personal tax return, you’ll file one for your corporation using Form 1120. This form is similar to Schedule C of your personal tax return, but more complex—and separate from your personal finances. Most business owners hire an accountant to help with Form 1120. 

Tax forms and deadlines for S Corporations

Filing Deadline: March 15, 2019

You’ll file a Form 1120S for your corporation, and each shareholder will need to report their profits and losses with Schedule K-1. Similarly to a C corporation return, most S corps get help from an accountant to file taxes

Tax Forms and Deadlines for Businesses that Hire Contractors

Filing Deadline: Sent to recipients by January 31, 2019

If you’re paid $600 or more to a contractor, you need to file Form 1099. Once copy of this form goes to the IRS, for the sake of filing your own taxes; another copy goes to the contractor, so they can use it to file their taxes. You need to file a separate Form 1099 for each contractor.

How to File Taxes Online

Gone are the days of paper filings. The most efficient (and popular) way to file taxes with the IRS is online. 

To file your taxes online, you have two options: Free File, or Free File Fillable Forms.

IRS Free File

The IRS has partnered with 13 providers who offer free versions of their accounting software that you can use to file your taxes online. You’re automatically enrolled in Free File once you sign up with one of these providers—you don’t sign up through the IRS website.

Most providers offer a basic software package for free. These typically aren’t able to cover all the needs of a business—such as filing itemized deductions. You’ll need a paid version for that; the packages recommended for sole props range from $54.95 (1040.com) to $94.99 (H&R Block).

IRS Free File Fillable Forms

Essentially, Free File Fillable Forms lets you complete IRS forms online, through the IRS website. These forms will do basic calculations for you, but they don’t check for errors.

Fillable Forms will automatically calculate your tax refund, and you can elect to have it transferred directly to your bank account. You can also pay your taxes online.

If your business is small and relatively simple—like a sole prop—and you’re already experienced with filing taxes for your business, Fillable Forms may be a good choice. 

Otherwise, the process could take a while, and you’ll run the risk of making errors. In that case, you may be better off having someone file your taxes for you.

BenchTax

If you’re short on time and energy this tax season, and don’t want to wade into the depths of filing by yourself, consider BenchTax. With BenchTax, a team of professional bookkeepers will get your books caught up to the current month; then, they’ll work with tax experts to get your taxes filed accurately and on time—taking advantage of as many itemized deductions as possible.

How to Get an Extension

If it looks like you’ll be late filing taxes, file for an extension ASAP. It will save you from IRS late filing penalties, and getting an extension is pretty straightforward.

Filing a tax extension for your sole proprietorship or single-member LLC

If you plan to pay your taxes online, you can get a six month extension through the IRS payment portal.

Otherwise, you can request an extension by filing IRS Form 4868.

Filing a tax extension for your multi-member LLC, partnership, or corporation

You can file for a six month extension using IRS Form 7004. 

File Early, Rest Easy

If you can, file your taxes early—meaning, well before the deadline. This may take some prep, but it has advantages.

First, you’ll get your tax refund earlier. Remember, a tax refund is your money—you just happened to overpay it to the IRS, and they’re holding on to it. Your money isn’t collecting interest while the IRS holds it. The sooner you get it back, the sooner you can put it to work for your business.

Second, you’ll have the info you need to start planning your estimated taxes for the coming year—ticking one more item off your tax to-do list.

To file early, you’ll need tip top books. The more organized your books, the easier it is to get the numbers you need to file your return. The best way to stay organized is to do your bookkeeping throughout the year, rather than handling it all in one mad scramble come January.

Ready to get your books in order? Check out Bench. They’ll do one month of bookkeeping for you, free.

—

Tax time doesn’t have to be stressful. And it won’t be, so long as you have everything you need to approach it in an organized way. Your filing date, and the forms you need, vary according to your business structure—so make sure you know what’s what before the deadline comes.

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How to Take Care of Bookkeeping Efficiently

Spreadsheet fatigue, checking account strain, chronic bouts of “Now, where did I put that receipt?” All symptoms of inefficient bookkeeping.

If small business finances are eating up hours and stressing you out, it’s time for a change. Here’s how to handle bookkeeping in the most efficient way possible — so you spend less time crunching numbers, and more time helping your business thrive.

What is bookkeeping?

Bookkeeping is the day-to-day process of tracking money as it enters and leaves your business. 

That means you do two things:

Record and categorize transactions

Create financial reports that tell you the state of your business

When you’re on top of your bookkeeping, you can keep tabs on exactly how much cash you have to work with, plan for the future, and file taxes quickly, accurately, and on time. 

Bookkeeping vs. accounting

Bookkeeping tracks your finances both day-to-day and month-to-month. Accounting looks at the big picture — think yearly. A qualified accountant helps you plan for the future of your business, and make adjustments to help you save money.

To get help from an accountant, you need good bookkeeping records. The more comprehensive, organized, and up-to-date your bookkeeping is, the easier it is for your accountant to help you out. And fewer hours of work for them means less expensive accounting for you.

Bookkeeping options

Ready to kick off your bookkeeping journey? You have three options.

Accounting software helps you do your own bookkeeping, with help from a program.

A traditional bookkeeper will take care of your bookkeeping for you for an hourly rate.

Online bookkeepers like Bench charge a monthly flat rate, handling your bookkeeping for you while giving you intuitive software to track and manage your finances.

We’ll cover all three options below.

How to handle bookkeeping

The three bookkeeping options — software, a traditional bookkeeper, and online bookkeepers — each come with their own strengths and weaknesses. The table below gives you a quick overview. 

Solution

Dollar cost

Time cost

Pros and cons

Accounting software

$9 - $70 per month

High

Pros:

Low dollar cost

Good way to learn bookkeeping hands-on

Cons:

High time cost

Learning curve

Potential errors

No personal support

Traditional bookkeeper

$20 - $40 per hour, usually with a minimum monthly cost

Medium

Pros:

Fairly low time cost

Face-to-face interaction

Protection from errors

Good with paper records

Cons:

May need you to deliver bank statements, etc. by hand

No software interface

Variable monthly rates

May be hard to contact during busy season

Online bookkeepers

From $119/mo.

Low

Pros:

Automatically imports bank and credit statements

Intuitive online interface

Monthly financial reports

Protection from errors

Bench offers tax filing

Cons:

Doesn’t work well with paper recordkeeping

May feel unfamiliar if you’re not used to using online services

Accounting Software

With accounting software, you enter your business transactions and categorize them yourself. The software separates them into different sections, and can automatically generate financial reports for you.

While accounting software streamlines DIY bookkeeping, it doesn’t handle it for you — meaning you’ll still need to spend time every month entering and categorizing transactions. And, if you make any mistakes, they’ll result in inaccurate books.

Dollar Cost

Xero, one of the most popular software options, ranges from $9 to $70, depending on the complexity of your books and which features you opt for.

Time Cost

The amount of time you spend bookkeeping will depend on how many transactions you need to enter each month, and how complex your business is. For a simple solo business, you should expect to spend at least several hours every month. 

Pros 

Low dollar cost. With simple bookkeeping starting at $9 per month, software is a cheap option. 

Good way to learn bookkeeping hands on. If you’re unfamiliar with most bookkeeping processes, accounting software can act as a learning platform. 

Cons

High time cost. Compared to having your bookkeeping done for you, accounting software can eat up a lot of hours every month.

Learning curve. Accounting software is designed to be adaptable. That means lots of options—and lots of functions to learn—even though only a few of those options may be relevant for your business. 

Potential errors. The software is a robot—it does what you tell it to. If you categorize a transaction incorrectly, or forget to enter one, the software won’t bat an eye. Meaning you’re on the hook for any errors in your bookkeeping—whether that means failing to accurately track expenses, or filing an incorrect tax return.

No personal support. Since there’s no individual or team working for you, if you need help, you’ll need to rely on help files, user forums, or—at best—a help hotline.

Who It’s Best For 

Accounting software is a good choice if you’re just getting your business off the ground, and you need basic bookkeeping functions to help you stay on track until you can hire a professional. 

Traditional Bookkeepers

A traditional bookkeeper is a local professional who does your bookkeeping for you. They may work independently as a freelancer, in partnership with other bookkeepers or accountants, or as part of a large national firm.

One benefit of hiring a local, traditional bookkeeper is that you can meet them in person. So, if your business relies on a lot of paper financial documents, that makes it easier to share them with your bookkeeper.

Dollar Cost

Most bookkeepers charge between $20 and $50 per hour, often with a set monthly minimum. The amount of time they need to spend on your books each month will depend on the complexity of your business.

Time Cost

With any bookkeeper, you should be prepared to spend a couple of hours each month—in case they need more information before categorizing transactions, or you need to deliver hard copies of transaction records.

Pros

Fairly low time cost. At a couple of hours each month, hiring a bookkeeper takes up much less of your time than doing your own bookkeeping.

Face-to-face interaction. You get a chance to meet with your bookkeeper in person and discuss your bookkeeping one-on-one.

Protection from errors. A bookkeeper experienced in your industry should have no problem delivering error-free books—meaning you don’t need to worry about inaccurate or late bookkeeping.

Good with paper records. Since you can work with them one-on-one, it’s easy to deliver paper records to your bookkeeper.

Cons

May need you to deliver bank statements, etc. by hand. If your bookkeeper doesn’t have access to your bank and credit card accounts, you’ll need to give them copies of your statements—none of your transactions are automatically imported.

No software interface. Every bookkeeper works differently, but most traditional bookkeepers can’t offer intuitive online dashboards like the ones provided by Bench.

Variable monthly rates. Since traditional bookkeepers charge hourly, the cost of bookkeeping can fluctuate month to month.

May be hard to contact during busy season. Especially for freelance bookkeepers, tax time is the busiest part of the year. If your bookkeeper is juggling lots of clients, expect a lag time when it comes to communication. 

Who It’s Best For 

Small businesses ready to have their bookkeeping handled professionally. Traditional bookkeepers are especially suited to businesses with lots of paper records.

Online Bookkeepers

For this example, we’ll be using Bench, the largest bookkeeping service in North America.

Bench gives you a team of bookkeepers who do all your bookkeeping for you. They automatically import transactions, categorize them, and prepare monthly financial statements for you. You can track your finances and communicate with your team through the Bench app.

Dollar cost

Bench starts at $119 per month (Starter), ranging up to $299 (Corporate.)

Time cost

Your team categorizes your transactions for you. But, if an unusual transaction shows up, they may ask you to categorize it in the Bench app. You should expect to spend less than one hour per month categorizing stray transactions. The longer you’re a client, and the more familiar your team becomes with your books, the less likely they’ll need to ask your opinion.

Pros 

Automatically imports bank and credit statements. Bench links up with your business accounts—meaning your team automatically tracks all your transactions for you.

Intuitive online interface. Bench’s app lets you view monthly financial reports, visual summaries, and cash flow data. You can also use it to message your team at any time.

Monthly financial reports. Monthly financial reports, plus the Year End Financial Report, give you all the info you need to track your business performance and accurately file taxes.

Protection from errors. Since your transactions are imported automatically, and a team of professionals categorizes for them, you don’t need to worry about making errors with your bookkeeping.

Bench offers tax filing. Bench has an additional tax filing service—so your monthly bookkeeping, financial reports, and taxes are all handled in one place.

Cons

Doesn’t work well with paper recordkeeping. Bench is an online service, working with digital records. If you have a lot of paper receipts or other records that need to be entered on the books, it isn’t a good fit for your business.

May feel unfamiliar if you’re not used to using online services. If you’re used to doing banking in person, and you’re not super comfortable with online services, Bench may not be a great fit for you.

Who It’s Best For 

Bench is a good choice for any business that’s grown beyond the just-a-hobby phase. It’s especially suited to business owners already familiar with handling banking and other back office tasks online.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/How to Take Care of Bookkeeping Efficiently/ via IFTTT

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Building a Voicemail Funnel System for Filtering Out Junk

You’re an hour into deeply intense work at your business—virtually a work-induced coma of concentration—when suddenly your phone buzzes. You’re tempted to leave it be, but the damage of distraction is already done. Maybe it’s an important client. Maybe it’s a family member. Maybe you’ve won the lottery.

You take it out of your pocket, only to hear:

“You’ve been pre-approved for an all-inclusive Caribbean vacation…”

Another junk call. You click it off, blink, and then wonder: Where was I?

Because the cost of distraction can be as high as 2.1 hours per day, this everyday work situation is far costlier than you might imagine. Your momentum is destroyed and you’re more tempted than ever to check your email or social media accounts. The morning is shot.

Before you let another call that should go to voicemail get through to you, it’s time to consider: why does this happen far too often?

The Problem: You’re Not Letting it Go to Voicemail

In the above scenario, you were tempted to let a call go to voicemail. Yet you felt compelled to take the call anyway. Why?

In most cases, it’s because you haven’t developed a voicemail system in which you can place your full confidence. Entrepreneurs think that we need to be accessible by phone 24/7—that if we don’t pick up, that customer is going to abandon us forever. We don’t trust our voicemail to do the work for us.

This problem is easily solved when you have an effective voicemail system in place—one that you can trust to route calls the right way and make everyone who calls you feel like they’re valued. Once you feel that your customers are taken care of, all that’s left are junk calls. That makes them much easier to ignore.

The Solution: Building a Voicemail Funnel System

To eliminate distractions, you’ll want to assemble a simple voicemail system that accomplishes the following:

Separating business vs. private calls.

The first thing to do at work is to ensure that there’s a line of clear demarcation between personal and private calls. You can still route both to the phone of your choice, but it’s important to use a voicemail system that distinguishes between the two.

The most important feature here is a dedicated business voicemail inbox. This will let you check any pertinent business voicemails at your discretion, which means you won’t feel that you have to pick up every time there’s potentially a business call on the line. When you separate the two, you’ll find it easier to follow up on every business call at once. This lets you “batch” your voicemail time and spend the rest of your time on focused, dedicated work.

Forwarding voicemails to your email inbox as MP3 files.

You can further detach yourself from the voicemail funnel by having each voicemail sent to you as an MP3 file. If you’d rather read each voicemail at once and determine for yourself which ones demand callbacks, you’ll be better able to prioritize each voicemail.

You’ll also want to make sure that customers don’t drop as soon as they find out you’re not going to pick up your phone. That’s why it’s important to incorporate the next feature as well:

Give your customers something to listen to.

Don’t forget that the voicemail experience isn’t all about you. It’s also about what happens when that customer picks up the phone and dials the number you gave them. Will they feel valued? Will they feel that their voicemail actually gets heard? Does the voicemail greeting sound professional enough that they can count on someone regularly checking their voicemail on the other end?

In the age of fast feedback quick results, many of us tend to give up before we even hear the “beep.” But if you have an enticing voicemail greeting, you’ll be able to get more people to leave their message and therefore let you know exactly what it is that you need to prioritize.

Setting Up a Voicemail Funnel System that Eliminates Distractions

If you have a voicemail system in place that can handle each of the variables above, you’re already one step ahead of most distractions. But if you want to be 100% confident that your voicemail system will take care of everything while you work, it won’t hurt to go the extra mile.

Set up incoming call control. If you block the most frequent “junk” callers from your phone, you’ll reduce the amount of incoming call traffic in the first place. Grasshopper, for example, allows you to screen incoming calls automatically, blocking those callers you know have frequently hit you with junk calls in the past.

Handling simultaneous calls. What happens if an important client calls while you’re already on the phone? Your phone system needs to be adaptable enough to handle simultaneous calls without throwing you off balance. Make sure that no important client ever hears a busy signal, but instead goes to a voicemail.

Call forwarding. If you need to get work done but don’t want to lose out on an important call, you can always outsource that call to another member of your team with call forwarding. Make sure that your voicemail system has that function in place and that you alert someone when they might be “on deck” for important incoming calls, especially when you’re doing distraction-free, dedicated work. You should also look into the call transfers that your current phone system has available.

Finally, make sure you always make time to look up your voicemails, read through them, and call back every client who wants a call back. That way you’ll let them know that in the future, leaving a voicemail with you is worth the time and effort—and they’ll be less likely to simply hang up and try again later.

Pulling Your Voicemail System Together in One Place

The more functionality you have with your business phone system, the simpler you’ll keep your voicemail funnel. That’s why it’s important to use a service like Grasshopper, where you can cull together every call and direct the incoming voicemails as you see fit.

from The Grasshopper Blog - Insights for Entrepreneurs https://grasshopper.com/blog/Building a Voicemail Funnel System for Filtering Out Junk/ via IFTTT