Back offices are where a lot of the work that it takes for a business to operate happens. And, while consumers only see the front office, the back office is often where the overhead starts adding up and time is spent.
Administrative tasks can be very time-consuming, and if you need to start saving time in the back office to help your business grow, these tips can help.
1. Automate Your Taxes
A lot of time is spent on taxes, and owners are doing their own business taxes, it can take up to five hours per week, or twenty hours a month, to keep taxes up-to-date. You also have to be concerned about keeping up with tax changes.
There’s a lot that can be automated with taxes.
You’ll find several automation options, including Avalara, QuickBooks and other options to help you start automating your taxes.
Saving up to 20 hours a month is huge.
A lot of solutions will connect into your current infrastructure, allowing you to quickly take care of your tax needs.
2. Outsource Non-Essential Tasks
Remote workers and outsourcing companies have helped small and large businesses manage non-essential tasks. There are plenty of tasks that these outsourcing companies can handle, and this includes:
- Customer service
- Data entry
If you can outsource your most time-consuming tasks, you’ll be able to spend more time on tasks that can lead to business growth. You’ll want to vet the potential outsourcing company first, but once you find a reliable company, you‘ll find yourself outsourcing more tasks to them than you first thought.
3. Stop Doing Your Own Payroll
Still doing your own payroll? There’s an easier solution: hire an online payroll service. Why? Your time and resources are better spent elsewhere. Just how much time are you wasting? Well, the time it takes to add up a timecard is seven minutes per card.
And manual timekeeping takes up five hours per pay period.
If a business is larger, the time it takes to do timekeeping alone can increase drastically. Smaller businesses will find that their resources are better spent elsewhere. Online payroll services free up time, save money and ensure payroll accuracy.
4. Start Tidying Up Your Expenditures
Automated and one-click payment options make spending time on bills a waste of time. You can opt to tidy up all of your expenditures. This means setting up automatic payments for your:
- Telephone
- Water
- Electric
- Internet service
You can also start saving time and money by paying off bills annually. For example, pay off your insurance premiums for the entire year. When you do this, it allows you to be able to save money on your premiums and not waste time on keeping up with bills.
When marketing, on social media especially, you’ll want to look into scheduling out your marketing. While some posts may be difficult to schedule, others will be able to be scheduled well in advance, reducing the amount of time you spend on social media drastically.
Analyze your most time-consuming tasks, refine how you approach them and start freeing up time for your business.
