How to Organize Your Business (and Save Time and Money)

It’s tax season and as a newbie business owner – one year in, I’ve been thinking a bit about what I did right and wrong over the past year to keep my business organized and how I can be more efficient in the future. I’m a naturally organized person, so I don’t think I did too bad this year, but, always looking to improve, there are some definite ways I can be better.

First, a few disclosures: 1) I am frugal in my fledgling business so while yes, there are certainly some paid services that will organize some of this stuff for you, where practical, I opted to put my natural abilities to use. 2) Where I have used paid tools, specifically Convertkit below, I have included my affiliate link. As always, I only choose to partner with companies I have personally used and found majorly helpful. That being said, if you make a purchase from one of my affiliate links, I may receive a small commission.

For me, being organized prevents build-up. By this I mean, in areas of my life where I haven’t been organized, someone will inevitably request a document or account number or I need to produce a password etc. and I won’t be able to find it right away. I’ll get frustrated that I’ve lost whatever it is, then frustrated that I’ve spent too much time searching. I’ll most likely put off the search for a later time, taking even more time to remind myself to look later by entering the reminder in my phone. I’ll probably even snooze the reminder several times until my procrastination can no longer continue. Everything is built up and threatening to topple so I finally, begrudgingly just get it done. Sound familiar? To me, being able to easily locate things, particularly in business, is important. Time is money and I hate wasting either. So, if you’re like me, take a look at the structure I’ve created for myself and see if it works for you. And if you have a different system that works for you, I’d genuinely love to hear about it.

I have divided my business library into six major groups: Business, Swipe File, Branding, Media, Client Files and Planning. Each is explained below:

Business

This is where I keep all official legal and financial documents for my business. I have labeled the kinds of files I use for each document, beside each one.

• Invoice templates  – Word document; could also be done in Canva
• Invoice tracking sheet – spreadsheet
• EIN confirmation – PDF confirmation from IRS
• Receipt/expense/mileage tracking – This is one I need to get better at. For now, I keep my receipts in an envelope with written notes on each one if needed. I put all of my meetings in my phone calendar so come tax season, I end up simply checking the meetings in my phone and calculating any mileage that way – not the most efficient.
• Affiliate tracking – spreadsheet
• Mailbox receipt – hard copy provided by UPS upon purchase; should scan and go paperless
• Legal structure papers (LLC) – hard copy
• Permits – n/a
• Contracts – Word documents (for me) and PDFs (sent to clients)
• Site map – Google Drawings

A couple of notes: 1) Spreadsheets can be done in Excel or, if you don’t have Microsoft Office, for free on Google Sheets. 2) Google Documents are free and work very similarly to Microsoft Office products including Word, Excel, PowerPoint and more. You’ll just want to research what privacy protections Google Drive provides. I have never had a problem using Google Documents.

Swipe File

A swipe file is made up of short snippets of frequently requested text (like owner bios or product descriptions) that can be ‘swiped’ quickly to accommodate press inquiries or answer questions. For the bios and the product descriptions it is a prudent idea to have both a short version (tweetable around 140-280 characters) and one more in-depth (a short paragraph).

• Company bio
• Personal bios – owner and key staff/partners
• Links: website, social, products
• Product descriptions
• Ad copy: Headlines, tag lines, body copy

Branding

A branding sheet provides all of your brand’s visual guidelines like color, font, etc.

• Colors – show samples of each color labeled with their hex number
• Fonts: Headings, subheadings, body – name the font and show examples
• Patterns or motifs
• Logos
• Buttons – any custom buttons like subscribe, email us, etc.

I like to keep a single branding sheet with everything on one page in Canva (which could also be done in a Google or Word document). I also keep all of the individual image files in a branding folder on my computer (could be stored in Dropbox).

Media

This file includes all things image or video and can be stored locally or in a cloud application like Dropbox.

• Head shots – of owner and key staff – these should be professionally done
• Product photography – also should be shot professionally
• Logos
• Ad images
• Social media profile images & cover photos
• Website images/videos

Planning

Planning is an area I plan to do better in in 2018. Last year, I put off planning until too late. This year, I’m planning on a September/October future planning session.

• Quarterly content plan – I only plan in-detail one quarter ahead. Things change too quickly in this industry to do more than that.
• Strategy guide – which kinds of content I’ll use on which platforms
• Year-at-a-glance calendar – A big picture look at the year ahead including events, recurring content/campaigns/awards, domain/host expirations, etc..
• Content dump – spreadsheet with any content ideas organized by category
• Funnels – sales/marketing/email sequences
• Metric tracking – spreadsheet
• Content templates
• List of completed blog posts by subject (to avoid duplicates)

Client/Customer

Every good businessperson needs to store information about their customers. Because this info is often sensitive and private, it is important to choose your method of storage carefully. This is where, for many businesses dealing with a high volume of customers, I might recommend a CRM or customer relationship manager. Essentially it is secure software that allows businesses to keep track of segmented customer information.

If like me, you’re not “there” yet in your business, at the very least you should keep the following organized:

• Email client (like Constant Contact or I recommend Convertkit which I use personally)
• Client marketing collateral (like photos, branding sheets etc.)

The most important thing to remember after doing all of this work to organize your info is to make sure you back everything up. And I mean everything. Whether or not you’ve stored it on a cloud or locally on your computer, make a copy either with a backup service or an external hard drive. Trust me, backing up is one of those things no one ever talks about until you’re bawling your eyes out that your computer has crashed and everything is gone. Then everyone will look at you like it’s the most obvious thing in the world and say, “But of course, you backed everything up… right?” Right.