Regular Tasks Small-Business Owners Should Consider Outsourcing

If you’re like many entrepreneurs across the globe, one of your New Year’s resolutions this year was to have more balance in your life. Let’s face it though – small-business owners are typically flat out trying to handle a huge number of tasks themselves, often with no help or only a few select team members on hand to delegate things to.

It’s important to remember that, with the advances in technology we’ve seen over the last decade, it’s easier and more cost-effective than ever to outsource and automate a variety of common business functions. Doing this will not only help to make you more productive at work, but also enable you to focus on the tasks where you can really bring in revenue, cut costs, or wow customers and ensure you get plenty of repeat business and ravings fans.

If you want to have more free hours this year to spend working on your business, rather than in it, it’s time to check out some of the many contractor services and apps which can complete tasks for you at a free or affordable cost. Read on for some common areas of business that you should look at taking off your to-do list soon.

Bookkeeping and Other Finance Tasks
One particular part of business that is worthwhile outsourcing is bookkeeping and other related financial tasks. With bookkeeping being one of the most time-consuming, regular jobs that entrepreneurs need to stay on top of, it’s worth considering hiring a specialist in the area to take care of this for you.

They can:

• Send and pay invoices for you
• Get your documents in order for each tax period
• Complete and submit returns
• Run reports
• Track cashflow
• And much more

If you don’t feel comfortable hiring an external person or firm to completely handle your bookkeeping, then at least consider downloading some of the many apps which are available which can make keeping an eye on your business accounts, and creating reports, collating expenses and the like quicker and easier than ever. Check out, for example, applications such as Mint and Expensify.

Payroll is another specific function that you should consider outsourcing. There are many top PEO payroll services  that charge affordable prices to manage and run numerous aspects of the human resources functions of a company, including payroll.

Hire one of these firms and they can take care of the processing of your payroll for you each period so that you know that your team get paid on time, every time. By outsourcing payroll tasks, you won’t have to stay on top of the many different rules, regulations, and tax laws involved, or worry about potential tax audits or other issues if you get something wrong.

In addition, hiring firms to handle your payroll can also help you provide your workers with better benefits so that you not only engage and retain your employees more, but also have less staff turnover. Furthermore, by outsourcing the work to a professional employment organization in this way, you can enjoy significant cost benefits because you get to pool services with other companies.

Marketing Tasks
Marketing is one of the most important elements of business success, because it drives potential and current customers to your doors; increases your brand presence, revenue and profits (when done right); and can even help you to get the interest of top job candidates, plus investors and journalists. However, for most entrepreneurs, there never seems to be enough time to concentrate on both learning the best marketing practices, and in carrying them out. As a result, it certainly pays to outsource at least some aspects of this function to others.

You might like to start small by utilizing some of the great apps available these days, which help to simplify and automated social media posting. Apps such as Hootsuite mean that you can plan your posts well in advance and have them all scheduled to be posted (across various social media sites) on the days and times that you choose, while Notifier makes it easier to build relationships with key industry people and to build your followers.

Another handy tool is digital dictation software product. If you’re a slow typist, this tool can record your ideas, posts, notes and more and then track, prioritize and share your voice files, as well as send them off for transcription.

If you want to save yourself more time, think about outsourcing content-creation work to professional writers. You will find plenty of writers around the world who specialize in corporate content, and who can create marketing-savvy work in formats such as social media posts, newsletters, blogs, e-books, advertisements, promotional flyers, and so on.

Administration Work
Many people continually struggle to stay on top of all the administration work that comes with running a venture. If you’re in this boat, look into some of the many admin tasks you can outsource to a virtual assistant.

You need pay only for a certain number of hours per day, week, or month, as required. And you can get workers to handle a wide variety of repetitive tasks. This includes appointment setting, creating and maintaining databases, preparing presentations, handling everyday emails, calendar management, research, travel arrangements, and more.

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