Tips for Keeping on Top of Administrative Tasks as a Small Business Owner

Running a business can be very exciting but not without its challenges. While meeting with clients and brainstorming creative and innovative ideas with your teams might be some of the highlights of your day, there is a lot of administrative jobs that go with managing a business of any size. These tasks can be time-consuming and tedious at times, which makes it easy for you to procrastinate and push the more boring parts of business admin to the side at any opportunity you get. However, doing this can result in you falling behind on these tasks and potential disorganization in other areas of your business too. If you are a small business owner who is feeling overwhelmed with the mundane administrative tasks that you’re required to do, here are some tips to help you overcome this.

Get The Most Boring Tasks Out of the Way First

The more you push things back, the more likely you are to run out of time or forget about these tasks altogether. This can leave you feeling panicked and stressed out if these tasks being incomplete has a knock-on effect on the daily operations of your business or could leave you facing financial penalties for filing taxes late, for example. The most mind-numbing jobs are ones that you might tell yourself will get done later this afternoon, tomorrow, or next week – but instead of doing this, try to get the dullest administrative jobs done first if you can. Getting the boring tasks out of the way first means that they are no longer hanging over your head and you have completed them with time to spare when it comes to deadlines.

Ask for Help

As a small business owner, you might not be able to hire a big team of staff to help you as part of an in-house team. You might also find it difficult to delegate important jobs to others that you feel you should be in control of and end up taking on more work than you can manage. If this sounds familiar to you and you’re starting to feel the pressure due to your extensive workload, you should think about asking for help. You might want to consider increasing the responsibilities of your current staff if you can’t hire anyone new but be mindful that a pay increase on their wages should be given if you’re going to ask them to take on more work. However, this might not be a viable option for you as a small business owner. In that case, you might want to look into outsourcing some of these administrative tasks to external services, such as hiring an accountant, or even looking at a virtual receptionist service to help you manage your business diaries, appointments and take client calls if no one else can.

Create a Schedule

Another useful tip to help you keep on top of administration jobs for your business is creating a schedule that you can refer to. If there are certain deadlines you need to adhere to or regular tasks that need doing at the same time each week, working out a schedule that can be used to remind you of this will be incredibly useful. Whether this schedule is saved to your computer or smartphone calendar or written on a physical calendar and hung up on your office walls, having it somewhere that is easy to access and see each day will serve as a daily reminder of what you need to do each day.

Create a Clever Filing System

Keeping all of your important documents filed away properly is key if you want to remain organized or improve this skill. Throwing all of your paperwork into one or two desk draws with little or no labeling system will lead to chaos, and you’re more likely to lose important information this way. If you have developed this bad habit as a business owner, it’s time to break it. Spend one day or weekend organizing your business documents into a smarter filing system, both digitally and physically, so that you can access all of the important information you need when it comes to managing business admin. You should also set aside some time every six months to go through your files and clear out any unnecessary documents or do this more regularly if you can.

Being a business owner can come with a lot of perks, and realizing your entrepreneurial dreams could be one of the most satisfying and exhilarating experiences of your life. However, this does require a lot of hard work, including some of the more tedious tasks associated with business management, and until you can afford to hire a full administrative team, you’ll have to take on most of these responsibilities yourself. To make this process a little easier, use these tips to help you get more organized when it comes to boring but essential administrative tasks for your business.