Almost everyone thinks of preparing their garden beds or cleaning their houses once spring season arrives. But if you’re a small business owner, you should think about spring cleaning your business as well. So take a deep and fresh look at your business operations this coming spring and work on tidying up the following:
Tidy Up Your Old Documents
Are you still holding on to old paper documents? In this digital era, it is so much easier for businesses to keep their records without having their sensitive information take up physical space. Also, you don’t have to keep paper records of your business’s taxes because all you need are seven years’ worth of scanned paper copies if your business needs to be audited or for your later reference.
You should take sufficient time going through your paper files and determining which ones you should have on hand. Next, scan the sorted documents and save them, and make sure to shred the rest before throwing them out.
If you’re already keeping most of your records digitally, you should still scan your folders in the cloud or your desktop to check out what you’ve saved and then sort them out.
Give Your Books a Deep Clean
The center of your small business’s financial records and transactions in your accounting books. They aid you in forecasting your business’s financial future and making wise decisions regarding your finances. However, you can possibly conduct these tasks properly if you fail to keep your books in tiptop condition.
As the owner, you should allot some time every year to give your books a thorough cleaning, with some mini cleanings, every month or so, in between. To get started, make sure your personal and business expenses are not comingled. Then, review all your accounts and files, sort out receipts, and then digitize what needs to be digitized.
Get Rid of Broken Equipment and Unnecessary Supplies
Still think that you’ll get around to repairing that broken folding gluer machine or is it time to finally invest in a new one? Otherwise, you need to set aside some time right now to unload it. Consider listing broken equipment in community listservs, Freecycle groups, Craigslist, or eBay where many tinkerers look for salvageable components.
Likewise, having unopened or surplus supplies is very common. To avoid waste and maybe get some good deals, consider swapping out your surplus or holding an online or in-person yard sale. Additionally, if you know of a program or school that accepts donations of your surplus inventory, consider donating them instead.
Time to Declutter
Take a long and hard look around your workplace and determine whether everything in there makes sense. Is everything being displayed with a purpose, stored mindfully, or used? If there are stacks of paperwork, old merchandise, or piles of dust bunnies hidden around your workplace, it’s time for cleaning and organizing.
It doesn’t matter whether your customers or clients can see the clutter, you’ll be more productive when working in a neat and tidy space.
Update Your Business Website
Does your website contain off-trend or non-user-friendly design features, out-of-date offerings and staff bios, or non-performing, irrelevant content? If so, spring is an excellent time to update your website. If you are not exactly an expert, consider outsourcing this crucial task. Your time will be well spent on attending to other spring cleaning tasks than tinkering with your website.
Giving your small business a deep spring cleaning could uncover which processes require improvements and help streamline your daily tasks. So if you want to position your small business for success this year, start cleaning right now.
