The biggest mistake I see businesses make is to assume accounting software has nothing to do with the rest of your business. Your accounting software shows the result of every decision you make.

Income tax, sales tax, bankers, auditors, investors. Those are all reasons I’ve been given as a reason to get a business’ bookkeeping cleaned up and up-to-date. I’m not disputing the necessity of meeting these obligations. What I do take issue with is making those reason the only time you even add up your numbers. You didn’t start your business just to satisfy tax authorities, bankers, or investors. Did you?

I meet many business owners whose businesses are growing but are stuck because there’s not enough time in their schedule to work with clients and take care of the administrative side of things. There are a couple ways to get beyond this challenge.

One way to serve more clients is to outsource. What do you outsource? Your weaknesses. You know, those tasks you dread doing. Phone calls, cleaning, marketing, accounting, copywriting, etc. Outsourcing tasks to an expert not only frees up your time to work with more clients, that expert will get the job done faster and better than you because they are the expert. How to find those experts? Ask at networking events. Ask in your online groups. Look at Upwork.com. Post something on Craig’s List. Look at Fiverr.com.

Another way to free up time in your schedule is to streamline your business processes with technology. In the not too distant past, technology was something only affordable to big corporations with big budgets. Those days are gone. A great example of technology you can put to use right now is scheduling and booking software. How many sales have you lost because you didn’t follow up fast enough (or not at all) with a client to get an appointment scheduled? Online scheduling software such as TimeTrade, Acuity, and Booking Bug allow you to set appointment times for your clients to choose. Some of this software even allows your client to pay when they book the appointment. This type of software costs between $10 and $30 per month. If you make even one sale of at least $30 during the month, the software will pay for itself. Think of it. No more phone tag. No more lost opportunity. And since you are spending less time on the phone, you have more time to work with clients and grow your business. And that’s what you want, right? If you’d like some help putting technology to work for your business, please get in touch.

A historic storm on the east coast brought this question back to me. Think about it. If everything in your office was lost to fire or flood, how would you continue your business? By everything, I mean all computers, files, and papers.

How would you pay your employees or vendors?

How would you know which customers you owed orders to? Or how would you communicate to your customers that you are still in business at all? How would you get replacement inventory?

How would your employees know whether they still had a job?

If your business is using cloud technology, these questions are easy to answer if you take the time to do some preparation. Paperless timesheets and online payroll processing make paying employees on time a breeze. Backing up your data to the cloud means you can buy a new laptop, download your files, and continue your business.

Whether using your online banking on the “pay now” button on vendor invoices, paying vendors on time is a breeze. If you have a higher volume of transactions, there are a number of other options to pay vendors electronically.

Using cloud-based accounting, project management, and CRM solutions will ensure you and your team can work from anywhere. Cloud-based email such as Office 365 or Gmail means you stay in touch with employees and customers.

They key to seamlessly keeping your business operating during a disaster is planning. Now is the time to get the right tools in place and prepare a disaster recovery plan that is communicated to your employees. Don’t let a disaster be the end of your business.