5 Spring Cleaning Tips for Your Business
The air is thick with pollen, which means it must be time for spring cleaning!
It’s not just our homes that can use a refresh. If it feels like it’s time to throw open the windows of your business and let in the fresh breeze, I’ve got a few tips to keep you organized for a thorough spring cleaning.
Clear out the dust bunnies, say farewell to the cobwebs in the corners, and bring some Marie Kondo energy to your company.
1. Check your numbers
It’s me, so you know my first and favorite tip is going to be about bookkeeping! You just filed your first quarter business taxes, so keep the good habits going by checking on your books.
There are a few things that can quickly lead to a messy financial state. Consider tidying up some of these common snags:
● Generate financial statements to assess the state of your business.
● Match transactions in your bookkeeping software.
● Upload receipts for business expenses.
● Review labels, categorizations, and tags for accuracy.
● File necessary tax documents in the right place, and discard old records.
For more details on organizing and storing your tax records, you can watch my YouTube video or read the list of IRS requirements. And if this bookkeeping stuff isn’t your jam, consider outsourcing it to trustworthy numbers nerds, like the team here at Certum Solutions.
2. Tidy up your physical space
It’s so easy to accumulate more stuff that can eat up space on our desks and in our offices that doesn’t help us to be more focused or productive. What’s more, we don’t necessarily notice when it happens!
Take this moment to pause and look around your workspace, whether it’s a home office or your business. Consider what a client walking in for the first time would notice. Are these things that are important for your brand, your productivity or your work? If they aren’t, decide where each object’s home should be, and move it there.
It’s also a good time to check your web conferencing space. Look at what shows up in the background of your virtual calls. Make sure it’s not distracting and that it’s in line with your
personal or professional brand. Be intentional about the impression you leave others with on virtual calls.
While you’re at it, give your workspace a good sanitizing wipe-down. Between the pollen and the lingering cold season, it’s exactly the right time to send dust and germs packing.
3. Declutter your virtual space
If you use a computer for your work, the virtual space you live in can be at least as immersive as your physical space. It’s important to give your technological workspace a spring cleaning so it’s organized for clear, focused work. After all, nothing screams chaos more than a desktop full of screenshots and files.
Consider organizing these part of your virtual space:
● Your desktop, downloads folder, and documents folder: What stays and what’s trash?
● Your inbox: Read or delete unread emails, unsubscribe from or filter junk mail, and set up inbox rules for categorization.
● Your programs and applications: Move the ones you use most frequently to be the most easily accessible, check for updates, and delete what you don’t use or need to make space.
● Your browser’s bookmarks bar: Delete irrelevant or outdated links, create folders for similar links, and add shortcuts you haven’t yet bookmarked.
4. Refresh your web presence
In the same way that we don’t always notice the mess in physical spaces we see every day, our websites and social media platforms can also collect dust. We don’t even notice outdated information on some of the platforms we use most often!
Here are a few of the things I like to check on my website and social to be sure they’re up to date:
● Business descriptions.
● Profile and header photos.
● Hours of operation.
● Address, phone number, email and other contact information.
● Product descriptions and pricing.
● Website categories and dropdowns.
● Calendar and booking information.
Analytics can help you make decisions about the most important parts of your website to give a refresh. For example, if you find that not many people click on the “call to action” at the top of your website, consider rewriting or re-designing it to get more engagement from visitors.
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5. Dedicate a day to cleanup
Spring cleaning for your business represents a mental, emotional, and physical cleanup — and that takes time! In addition to the cleanup areas we’ve already discussed, you might have other time-consuming tasks to address. It’s a good time to address other things that might have been floundering on your to-do list or that are specific to your business:
● Tidying up inventory, both physical items and digital listings.
● Checking on employee performance and well-being.
● Fixing or ordering new equipment.
● Evaluating processes and standard operating procedures..
● Updating your business plan
It’s too easy to put off important tasks that take time and energy but don’t have an immediate deadline. That’s why dedicating a day to spring cleaning can be so refreshing: It’s an intentional break from the daily grind to get things back in order.
Get help with your spring cleaning
While spring cleaning can be a big commitment, there are clear rewards. Ultimately, you save yourself time and frustration down the road by taking care of your business now. Just think: Future You will be so excited that your books are already in order! While I can’t come clean your office for you, I can help in a couple of other ways! QuickBooks Online is a magical key to keeping your business’s finances organized, and Certum Solutions can get your business set up on the right version for you at a discount. We can also help with tracking inventory and selling online with Shopify or Webgility. Our Certum ninjas can help you develop processes that make sense and save time for all of those products. And like I said before, we’d love to help you clean up your books (we really do love this stuff). To learn more, book some time with us.
Happy spring cleaning!