Invoicing Tips For Small Businesses

Whenever your business sells a product or provides a service, you need to provide an invoice. Invoices not only inform the customer how much they need to pay, but also give you and your customers a record of the tax related to that sale.

There is certain information that you should always include whenever invoicing somebody. The name of your company should be somewhere on the invoice, along with the date and a unique reference number for the customer to refer to in case they need to query it. The purchasers name and a description of the purchase must be included, along with the total cost. Don’t forget to state the payment terms for the invoice to avoid ambiguity over when it should be paid.

If you have received invoices from small businesses or tradesmen in the past, you will have noticed that the quality of the appearance of these can vary greatly. Some companies put a great effort into making their invoice stand out from the pile and treat it almost as an additional form of marketing. On the other end of the scale, it is still not uncommon to get a scrawled piece of handwritten paper demanding payment – this is slightly less impressive!

Using our software allows you to create high quality invoices with ease. Try it free for 30 days at the WinWeb website.

Is Working At Home The Right Thing For You?

Home working (also known as telecommuting) is becoming increasingly popular. In recent years there has been a large growth in the number of small businesses operating from home. Large companies, particularly in the IT sector, are also now entering into telecommuting arrangements with individual employees to allow them to work from home.

This growth in the telecommuting sector has been made possible due to technological advances over the past ten years. The number of people working from home is expected to rise even further as businesses strive to become more efficient.

The greatest benefit of working from home is that it can completely eliminate the need for an office. With a wireless internet connection and a laptop, you could comfortably run your business from the kitchen table!

Working from home can give you a lot more flexibility and freedom in terms of the hours you work. You will gain valuable hours during the day that were previously lost to commuting, allowing you to greatly improve your productivity.

Of course, telecommuting is not the right thing for absolutely everybody. Some jobs simply cannot be done from home. You also need the right attitude and must be able to separate your home life from your working life. This requires clear boundaries and a certain amount of self discipline.

WinWeb provides software that makes it easier for small business to work from home. Find out more at www.winweb.com.

Getting The Most From Twitter

If you are one of the many hundreds of thousands of small businesses that decided to sign up to the social networking website Twitter in the past year, the chances are that you probably tweeted once or twice and then gave up. If this is the case, you are missing out on some great opportunities to learn a lot about your market.

Firstly, you should be looking to see if anyone is already talking about your business or products. Try searching for relevant keywords related to your company in the search bar on the side of the page when you log-in to Twitter, or by going to search.twitter.com. This will allow you to find out what people are saying about you or people in your industry.

When tweeting about a particular topic, try to use hashtags (e.g. #winweb) in order to make it easier for people to find what you are talking about. You can make the hashtag up – there are no rules about using them. Hashtags are very useful, especially if you need to get instant feedback or responses from a wide audience.

In order to better manage your Twitter account, you should start using one of the free applications that have been created for that purpose. The best of these is probably TweetDeck (http://www.tweetdeck.com/). It will allow you to carefully monitor Twitter for the subjects that you are interested in and will be an extremely useful learning tool.

If you simply want to have more of a presence on Twitter, consider using WinWeb BusinessServices to give your account a boost!

How Does A Tomato Increase My Productivity?

Sound like a joke? It’s not! It’s the Pomodoro Technique.

I love my job; unfortunately I also love making tea, choosing a song on iTunes, checking facebook and I compulsively check emails and can’t leave an email without replying. For me, focus is essential to make the most of my potential and increase my productivity.

Motivation isn’t a problem for me, time management, however, is. I work well under pressure, love deadlines and need boundaries. That’s enough about me, but if you’re similar I have found a fantastic time management tool.

Time management is the key to keeping focused and the Pomodoro Technique works on the idea that frequent breaks improve mental agility, along with the theory that time creates an incentive to complete a set task.

Following the Pomodoro Technique is simple

- Decide on the task to be done. Be sure to write it down!

- Set your timer to 25 minutes

- Work on the task for 25 minutes, mark completion with an x

- Take a short 5 minute break

- After every 4 pomodoro sessions take a slightly longer break.

Although the traditional way of measuring allotted time is using a tomato shaped kitchen timer (as the linguists among you will know “pomodoro” is Italian for “tomato”), as our friends at Apple would say there is, in fact, an App for that.

A quick Google of “Pomodoro App” will give you lots of options; I use the Mac specific Pomodoro app- that has the ability to be integrated with my Twitter feed. A PC friend of mine uses the PC and Mac enabled Focus Booster Application. There are even pomodoro apps for your iPhone! Each of these sits in your desktop as a reminder of how long you have left in your current pomodoro.

As well as keeping me focused and increasing my productivity, using the pomodoro technique also helps me keep an organised record of the tasks I’ve completed and how long it took me; in my eyes this kills the two proverbial birds with one stone!

And on that note, my buzzer has sounded; it must be time for a cuppa…

Which Business is Right for You?

If you are currently working in a 9 to 5 job and are considering starting your own business, it can be extremely daunting to decide what type is the best for you. Unless you already have a specific passion for something in particular it is difficult to identify your perfect business from the thousands of options available.

Even those people who absolutely love a certain subject area must find a way to monetise their passion. For example, someone with an interest in art has dozens (or perhaps hundreds) of potential small business opportunities to choose from, ranging from becoming an artist to actually teaching art.

Because of the amount of indecision and confusion that can often surround choosing a business, this makes you an ideal target for a scammer. Beware of ‘get rich quick’ schemes promising overnight success for people who sign up. If it seems too good to be true, it almost certainly is. A successful business is built on hard work and endeavour.

There are a few techniques that you can use to identify your perfect business. Start by writing down personal goals that you want to achieve in your working life. Are you just looking for a fun career or do you have a certain income level that you want to reach? Do you plan on expanding or selling the business at some point in the future?

Try to brainstorm or write a SWOT Analysis to identify what the most important aspects of running a business are to you. Once you have a general idea of the business area that you want to work in, apply your analysis to that industry and see if it will satisfy you.

For some excellent free videos that may further inspire you, check out the Business Ideas section of the WinWeb TV website.

E-Mail Management Tips for Small Businesses

E-mail is a great business tool and has gradually become absolutely essential for most of us over the last fifteen years. However, it is a huge time sink and can have a negative effect on your productivity. If you are finding that it eats away at your work schedule and distracts you from more important tasks, the following tips may be helpful.

Use the built-in filters that come as standard in most mail management software. Configure it so incoming mail has to be checked to ensure it isn’t spam. The software will then dump anything it considers to be spam into a ‘Junk Mail’ folder – remember to check this folder occasionally because the filter is not infallible and mistakes will sometimes happen.

Just because you receive a new message, it doesn’t mean that you immediately have to read it. Doing this can completely interrupt your flow of work and stop you from getting anything finished. If your mail software announces every time you receive a new message, consider turning this feature off.

The best way of dealing with e-mail, particularly if you regularly receive a high volume that needs answering, is to set aside periods during the day specifically for dealing with them. Try to arrange it so that e-mail does not impede on your most productive work hours.

If you need to be able to receive your e-mail on-the-go and keep a full list of your contacts to hand, sign up for a 30 day trial of WinWeb’s software to find out what you are missing!

Stretch Your Marketing Budget Further With A Website

Advertising is an expensive necessity for small businesses. When faced with financial hardship, the advertising budget is often the first cut that a small business owner will make. The main problem with this method of saving money is that it will really hurt them in the long run because they will be unable to attract new customers.

If you must reduce advertising expenditure, make sure that you work harder to increase your overall marketing activity. If you usually spend money advertising in the Yellow Pages or local newspapers, the best low-cost alternative to this is owning and maintaining a website for your business. This is actually preferable to traditional advertising in many ways because it gives your business a global audience and can help you expand further.

It will also mean that customers will have less trouble trying to reach you and can even contact you outside of working hours. A great website will also ‘pre-sell’ your product or service to customers so that by the time you actually speak to them on the phone or they come into your store, they will have often already made the decision to purchase from you.

Keeping your website updated with regular special offers and promotions will ensure that visitors have an incentive to keep returning. An inactive website is useless as a marketing tool, so make sure you are always updating it in some way.

If you still do not have a website for your small business, take a look at the Web Builder offered by WinWeb on our website.

Choosing A Virtual Assistant

If you are struggling with the workload involved in the day-to-day running of your business it will eventually have a negative effect on your performance. Many small business owners find that they are getting bogged down with time consuming administrative tasks and are no longer actually achieving anything worthwhile. It is at this point they usually make the decision to hire additional staff.

However, for the majority of small businesses it would often be more sensible and cost effective for them to outsource these tasks rather than deal with the hassle of hiring a permanent employee. Virtual Assistants can fill this role for you on either a short or long-term basis.

The list of tasks that VAs can be utilised to complete is rather long. Depending on your needs, a Virtual Assistant could do anything from answering telephone calls to bookkeeping, Whatever you need done, there is likely to be someone out there who specialises in doing it.

When searching for a potential VA for your business there are a few things to consider. Make sure that they have good references for work that they have completed in the past. If you can see samples or a portfolio of their previous work it helps you to see if they suit your business needs. Check that you can afford the rates that they will charge you and agree on a time-scale in which the work will be completed to avoid being hit by unexpected fees later.

Alternatively, you could choose to outsource to our WinWeb BusinessServices team who will be happy to take over any of the jobs you hate!

Turn Around The Fortune of Your Small Business

Recessions are often said to be the time when entrepreneurs are able to truly shine. The turbulent economy will frequently offer opportunities that would otherwise be out of reach for most people. However, many small businesses are having a hard time during the current economic downturn.

The first thing you should do if your business is struggling is to refer back to your business plan. Examine whether you have strayed from the original premise of your business idea and evaluate whether this diversion has been successful or not. The reverse of this is also true – if you have rigidly stuck to your business plan all along then it is probably time to start making some revisions.

The main priority for your small business during a recession should always be your customers, so it is vital that you have the highest possible level of customer satisfaction. Speak to them whenever possible and find out if there is anything you are doing wrong. They may also have suggestions for additional products or services that you could offer.

You should look for ways to save money wherever possible. Make sure that you are extra vigilant with company finances at this time because you should be paying your bills as quickly as possible and taking advantage of early payment discounts. Consider lowering your prices slightly because although your business is hurting, so are your customers’ and they may need an extra incentive to keep spending.

Although it may seem strange, one option for you is to start another business. Diversification can be extremely successful for many entrepreneurs. If the market for your current product or service slowed during the recession then consider focussing on one that is emerging. Hopefully you will find that the recession is the best thing that ever happened to you!

Is Twitter the ‘Marmite’ of Social Media?

Twitter appears to be creating a social media storm, but it divides opinion massively; you either love it, or you hate it.

Last week The Telegraph reported that the Social Media platform, Twitter, is growing at an incredible pace; with Twitter users sending 50 millions tweets per day, which averages approximately 600 every second.

In 2009 Twitter had 18 million users, and projected an increase to 26 million users in 2010. Interestingly though, research conducted by Neilson which divided Twitter users in to ‘heavy users’- including those who spent over an hour a month on Twitter- ‘medium users’- those spending between 5 and 60 minutes on the site- and ‘light users’- users who spend up to 5 minutes per month on Twitter- suggests that of this number, only 7% of Twitter users account for 79% of time spent on Twitter.

Neilson’s research concluded that 79% of activities occurring on Twitter could be accounted for by those in the heavy use category, equating to just 7% of Twitter users. Interestingly it has been previously discovered that up to 60% of Twitter users abandon their accounts within a month of signing up.

I was, in fact, one of those 60%. I created a Twitter account, followed a couple of people I knew and could see no point in it at all. My personal Twitter revolution only came once I became a ‘SmartPhone addict’; and since then I have made many useful connections, both personally and professionally.

Which category do you fall in to? It seems not many are sitting on the fence on this one; Twitter appears to be the Marmite of Social Media- you either love it or you hate it- which camp are you in?

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