5 Tips for Better Task Management for Small Business Owners
Contributed by guest author, Stephanie Haywood
As a small business owner, you know how tough it can be to manage multiple responsibilities simultaneously. As your business grows, task management becomes even more important since you have even more responsibilities. Fortunately, when you learn certain time management tips for your small business, you can have better control over your business, and you can even use these same tips at home. EasyTimeClock.com explains how.
1. Use Apps to Your Advantage
Make administrative tasks easier with an app like EasyTimeClock.com, which helps you track and monitor your staff’s time and can even integrate with your payroll processing system, whether it’s QuickBooks, ADP or any other popular payroll platform.
Additionally, QuickBooks’ home accounting can help you keep track of your expenses and remain within budget at home. This program also has features for managing your babysitter, gardener, housekeeper, or anyone you have working for you.
You may even use programs like PayPal, Venmo, or Stripe to pay contractors or your business staff promptly and effortlessly.
2. Accept Help or Hire Help
You may feel like a superhero tackling every task that comes your way for your business and home. You might even feel obligated to take on these tasks solo. However, you’ll quickly become overworked and exhausted from stretching yourself too thin, which will eventually take a toll on all aspects of your life.
For your business, delegate time-consuming tasks to an employee, hire an office manager, or tap into online services. You may even want to give a project or two to an employee, preferably one that doesn’t require your expertise.
Let’s say, for example, that you want to create an LLC for your company. This process can easily cost you a great deal of time. However, you could use a formation service to handle this aspect of your business. Or maybe you’ve been mentoring an employee in hopes of grooming them for a new role. By offloading a few of your responsibilities to them, you’ll get a clear understanding of what they can handle.
At home, you can do the same. If your children are old enough, ask them to help out with chores. If it’s within your budget, hire a nanny, gardener, or housekeeper to help keep different aspects of your home in order.
3. Learn to Schedule
One of the most important tips for managing a business or a household is learning to schedule. While writing a schedule or to-do list takes time, it’s worth it. These extra few minutes can help you stay on task and complete everything you need to complete without missing anything and while developing a specific time frame.
4. Plan Ahead
Although you never know for certain what tomorrow brings, you should plan ahead as much as you can. Create your to-do list the day before. That way, as soon as you begin your day, you’ll know every task you need to complete and can get an early start on the list as soon as you get to work.
5. Prioritize
Task managing well requires you to prioritize. You should focus on getting the most important tasks completed early and removing the duties from your schedule that aren’t important. When you remove nonessential tasks, you have more time to focus on the most important tasks without having to rush.
This concept could also incorporate delegating the less important tasks to others and keeping the most important jobs for yourself.
Task management, when done right, helps you accomplish every task you need to without missing a beat. Your business and household will run more smoothly, and learning better task management skills can help you avoid burnout and increase your profit and efficiency in the long run as well.