August 28, 2008
Office chores
I’m really awful about keeping up with all of the things I should do as a business owner. I seriously hate office chores. If I could just do my inspections and issue my reports I’d love my job. There’s all this other stuff that needs doing though, and I neglect most of it horribly. That’s why I’m rather proud of the productive day I had yesterday. This morning, for the first time in months, there was no filing piled up on my work table, waiting for me to set it in order & put it away. There are also no checks waiting to be entered into the books and prepared for deposit. How far behind was I? The photo above is a clue. A few of them don’t show, but those are the twenty checks that have been waiting patiently for my attention. Most of them are payments from escrow companies for my inspection services. Five of them are tax refunds. Yep - five tax checks. Remember how stressed I was about filing my taxes so late? I’d been paying my taxes quarterly (fed) or semi-annually (state) as a good little business owner is required to do, but I neglected to file my taxes on time. I hadn’t kept good track of things, so I wasn’t sure if I still owed a bunch on taxes until the refunds started coming in. Turns out I payed more than was due for 2006 and 2007 to both the IRS and the State of Hawaii, so both of them sent me separate checks for each year. Uncle Sam was also kind enough to send my econoimic stimulus check, which I was afraid might be witheld as a penalty for filing late.
I hate fooling with money. It doesn’t matter whether it’s coming in or going out, I hate to fool with it. When I first started my business I rushed to the bank with deposits as soon as checks came in. After a while I realized that was inefficient, so I started logging payments as they came in, but going to the bank once a week. Then maybe once every two weeks. Then I started letting them accumulate and didn’t log them in until I was ready to go to the bank - once every three or four weeks. When I started opening mail yesterday I was more than a little chagrinned to realize that some of the checks were postmarked six weeks ago. Obviously not acceptable! I’m adding a new vow to my list of “things I will improve on.” My checks are all tallied up and my deposit slip is filled out. As soon as I’m through with this post I’m going to head to the bank. I’ve made a committment to my business: in the future all office chores will be cleared away a minimum of once a week. I’m getting better at keeping my life and my business organized. This is just one of many areas where I’ve failed in the past. I’m putting it out here in front of all of you to impress upon myself that this needs to be something that I take seriously and address in a business-like manner. I almost asked you to wish me luck, but that would be ridiculous. Keeping my business running smoothly doesn’t need luck, it needs my committment, so let’s just leave it at that. I’m committed to doing better.
Technorati Tags: banking, business, business chores
Posted by skeet @ 12:02 pm • Just stuff, Business
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August 28th, 2008 at 6:09 pm, Angie Says:
Good for you for making the commitment! Most mail programs (yahoo, etc) have a calendar. You could set up say on a Friday to have a reminder to do your bills that day and all you have to do is put the setting in for it to come up every Friday so that task really only needs to be entered once. Just a thought, I do that all the time!