Yash Mehta — August 4, 2017 — August 4, 2017
Yummymoon / Pixabay
There has never been a better time to start and manage a small business. With unlimited access to utility services, tools, and applications, it is needless to say that you can save a lot of your time and efforts in managing a small or medium sized business. In just a few simple clicks, you can now find solutions to some of the mammoth problems that you encounter while operating your enterprise on the internet. Today, anyone with a laptop and internet connection can start a business of their own and hence faced are challenges such as accessing and organizing such gigantic amount of information in terms of knowledge of the resources and infrastructures involved.
I clearly remember that during the initial stages of my business, I struggled a lot with keeping up with all the details. Be it any kind of business, there comes a time when you run out of storage space on your computer. After much brainstorming, I decided to take my business to the Cloud! That was the day and I have never looked back. Not only does it help me with keeping a track of anything and everything that’s going on; rather it also keeps me on track with the repositories and inventories during all times.
One thing that I have discovered is that taking the right steps in the right direction will certainly bring about positive changes in your business sooner or later. Switching to cloud-based storage has been a lifesaver for me at the time when my system crashed unannounced! This is exactly where these time and money savings hacks will come to your use!
Now that we have understood the importance of being a step ahead of unavoidable constraints such as time and money, let us take a quick glance at 5 Simple Ways to Save Time and Money for Small Businesses.
5 Simple Ways to Save Time and Money for Small Businesses
· Productivity Applications
The use of productivity applications is highly recommended in case you are focusing on making the most of your time and money. The best part about some of these productivity applications is that they are available for absolutely free of cost; hence optimizing your cost-benefit ratio as well. I use Any.do (to keep all your schedules on track), IFTTT (where a series of prebuilt applets take care of the A-Z of my professional and personal lives), TuTuapp (for using some paid applications for free on my device in a secure way), and last but not the least Trello (a customizable digital bulletin board for keeping track of lists, chores, assignments, etc.) are some of the best productivity- enhancing applications that I have been using.
· Online Tools
Fact: Money doesn’t grow on trees!
Also fact: Time stops for no one!
Thankfully, there are several online tools which do justice to these sentences! With online banking picking up much pace these days, how wonderful it will be to have a place where you can input all your money-related metrics, which you can also access during all points of time from anywhere and everywhere. Mint (the online budgeting tool that has started a revolution by linking all accounts and keeping all money-related matters under one roof!), Filevid (a very useful online video downloader which saves a lot of your time and efforts), Buffer (a social-media management tool for linking all social media accounts with business so that all posts and promotions scheduled get posted simultaneously across multiple platforms), and Bloomforth (an inexpensive cloud-based, inventory management tool which is great for scheduling and keeping tracks of all processes and accountabilities) are some of the online utility tools that you can use!
· A Photocopier in your Phone!
If your business includes lots of documents to be scanned and signed, then it is best to get any of the numerous scanner applications for your smartphone. The best thing about these scanner applications is that they don’t just click a picture of your document; rather they also find the edges, remove shadows, and apply several other correction features to ensure that you have got the most appropriate copy of the document in hand! Scanner Pro is one such tool which is coupled with time and money saving features, such as cloud syncing, folder creation, and password protection.
· Create and maintain your OWN website
Surveys show that it takes somewhere between $ 200-400 per year to manage your business on the internet. Believe it or not, a humongous amount of money goes into website creation and maintenance when you take help from professional web designers. These people will do utmost justice to the money you pay, however, there are ways you can minimize this cost by taking matters in your hand! Yes, with just a few simple content management hacks in your kitty, you can build a website on your own. There are hundreds of CMS (Content Management Systems) available on the internet which provides you with the back end administration panel for creating new pages and linking all of your website together. This way you can save both time and money without any dependency!
· Go PAPERLESS!
EVERY department of your business will benefit from going completely paperless. It is a lot easier to store, retrieve, access, process, and interpret information digitally as compared to maintaining files and registers. By going paperless, you also save on ink, paper, printer, and other manual filing systems. It is environmentally acknowledged and also ensures data and information security. Not only does it benefit you; rather it also enables your customers to keep track of and recall bills receipts, and memos during all times.
Conclusion
These small hacks and tricks help us in making great profits in the long run. If you are also looking for ways to optimize the use of money and time with respect to your small or medium sized business, give these simple hacks a try!
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