What are your New Year’s Resolutions? At IAC-EZ we resolve to:
- Create an exciting, productive atmosphere for employees and contractors.
- Resolve most bugs within 24 hours (and on the bugs we can’t resolve within 24 hours, develop a plan within 24 hours that will allow us to resolve them as soon as possible).
- Find new and creative ways give back.
- Continue to run a profitable business that cares about its customers.
- Develop a meaningful community that helps each other.
- Create an exciting atmosphere where clients come to trust us as their bookkeeping go-to specialists and even their trusted business partners.
- Transform bookkeeping into a pleasure (yes, that one’s a tall order but we’re up for the challenge).
- Find new ways to help our clients become more successful.
- Most importantly, MAKE BOOKKEEPING EZ!
Have a safe, happy, and healthy New Year’s celebration, and a prosperous 2009!
The end of the year is wrapping up. We’ve had Christmas, and the New Year celebrations are just around the corner. But, if you’re like most business owners, this is a time when you’re scrambling to meet quotas, earn that last minute income, and generate just one more sale.
It’s as if we could all use more time in our day!
Well, at IAC-EZ, we are listening to our customers! Your wish is our command! We broke out our rocket packs and anti-gravity machines are doing what we can to slow the earth down so that you have just a little more time to do what you need to do.
The timekeepers at the naval observatory have kindly worked with us to add time to the last day in December. Admittedly, it’s just one second – a ‘leap second’, they’re calling it – but every little bit counts. What are YOU going to do with your extra time?
Okay, so you’re not going to get much done in that extra second, and maybe we didn’t have quite as much influence on creating that second for you as we’d like to pretend we had, but there are other ways that IAC-EZ is giving you more time.
- By creating a system that talks to itself, you don’t have to add a debit here and a matching credit there and then balance it all… that’s done for you! Just enter one line item and it goes to the right places automatically. That can save you a couple of seconds to a couple of minutes with every entry!
- Your calculations are done for you so no more calculator punching and rechecking. The numbers are there, and they’re right. That can save you a couple of moments, as well.
- Your taxes are calculated, your contact information is consolidated, your previous data is stored in one place, and there’s no filing. I can’t tell you how much time that saves you but I know that it saves most entrepreneurs HOURS.
- Oh, and we sync with FreshBooks, so if you track your time and invoice your clients in FreshBooks, their payments appear in IAC-EZ and will balance with your account in FreshBooks. That can save you plenty of time in consolidation between systems.
- And, because IAC-EZ is FREE for now (and only $19.95/month when we finish up our beta period), instead of hundreds of dollars like it would cost to hire a bookkeeper, you save time by using your sales revenue on other expenses and not on this administrative cost. That can be hours of your time as well.
Okay, so we didn’t create the leap second. Actually, we’ve done much more. Instead of providing you with one leap second this year, we’ve helped you win back hours of time each month. We’re like leap-time fairies leaving you hours under your pillow each night.
-Becca
Happy holidays! It’s that time of the year when (most of us) shut down our businesses for two days (okay, let’s be realistic, a day and a half!!!) and we break out the stockings and the tree and the turkey. And for just a few hours we forget about the recession and the challenges that we might be facing in our company and we simply revel in the faces of our kids when they tear open the wrapping paper to reveal a really cool toy!
But, as an entrepreneur who talks to entrepreneurs, let’s be realistic for a moment and admit that even in our downtime, there’s one small part of our brains that are focused on work – thinking through problems, brainstorming ideas, etc. And so, even on days like this, I think about IAC-EZ. And, in keeping with the season, I wonder how Santa would use IAC-EZ.
Interestingly, Santa doesn’t have a lot of income. In fact, I’m not sure how he makes money at all (except, perhaps he gets a small percentage from all those shopping mall appearances?) I don’t know.
But expenses. Oh, Santa has expenses! There aren’t actually a lot of items, but each expense is massive:
Reindeer food: 8 tiny reindeer who need to be housed and fed and exercised for 365 days of the year. And likely, a couple days before Christmas, they all need to carbo-load on pasta to have the energy to fly around the world in one night.
Sleigh upkeep: One sleigh may not seem like a lot. But this sleigh needs to carry toys for good little girls and boys (and presumably coal, although I’m doubtful about that one). So it needs to be big, but it also has to land like a feather. And it needs to be able to fly quickly because there are billions of children that need gifts – in just one night. I’m sure that there are probably only one or two truly qualified sleigh mechanics in the world who can create and maintain a sleigh of those parameters. Those mechanics aren’t going to be cheap.
Elf wages: What do you pay an elf? I have no idea. But Santa doesn’t run a sweatshop so we can be sure he’s not cheap about it. And they do make high quality products (except that one time, when I was a girl, my Barbie’s head fell off ON CHRISTMAS DAY!!!). Probably skill upgrades need to be paid for by Santa, as well.
Raw materials: Toys don’t grow on trees. They’re hand-crafted with loving care by elves. (Or at least that’s what I’m told). And that requires tons of material shipped with care to the North Pole. (Hmmm, now that sounds excessively difficult and costly).
Bottom line? Zero income. Billions of dollars each year in expenses. That might seem like an unwise business strategy but on April 15th, you can bet that Santa pays no taxes!
People enter business because they want to do something they love, build something that is their own, and perhaps put away a nest egg for the future. But business is hard work. And while that may not be a problem for most business owners, it can keep them from fully enjoying their businesses or making as much revenue as they potentially can.
In this blog, I want to talk about ways that you can make your freelance business or small business easier.
Idea 1: Focus the majority of your time on selling and empowering only. I know that as a business owner you’ve got lots of other things on your to-do list. But guess what: a lot of it is non-critical to generating revenue. Yes, you need to do that other work to keep the lights on, but the majority of your time should be spent on sales-generating activities. That might include actually selling, or it might include empowering your sales staff to sell. Either way, the other stuff should be delegated. When you think about it, an outsource company that takes care of it for you is actually cheaper than you spending your revenue-generating time on non-revenue-generating activities. I not only founded IAC-EZ, but I also own IAC Professionals, an outsource service provider of administrative and accounting work.
If you write out your list of work to do in the day, look at anything during your business hours that are NOT revenue-generating work. Get rid of it.
Idea 2: Hire people who are better than you. You’ve probably heard this before but I don’t mind saying it again. Find talented people and bring them on board. In some cases, depending on your business, that might mean part-time, or it might mean that you pay them a contingency fee rather than a wage. Get creative (but keep it legal, of course) and duplicate your efforts with other great people.
Idea 3: IAC-EZ it! While you should spend the majority of your day on revenue-generation, at the end of the day you need to count your money and figure out what to do with it all. (Oh, and do other bookkeeping stuff, too). That’s where IAC-EZ makes things easier. No rushing documents off to the bookkeeper; no late night calculations to figure out why your books aren’t balancing. A few simple inputs and IAC-EZ does the work.
Idea 4: Create systems, processes, and procedures. This is one area that you simply can?t do enough of. The goal here is to automate work or make it as much of a “no-brainer” as possible so that you can’t help but to succeed. Create checklists for everything that you do and simply pull out the checklist every time you’re about to do that activity. Create templates for every document you have to fill out. Use simple computer tools like Word’s “auto text” feature to input commonly written material. Avoid drowning in the paper clutter by using web-based office tools like those available at Google Docs or Zoho.
Have a great Holiday – and please – try to make your life a bit easier in 2009!
-Heather Villa, CMA, MBA, MSM
