5 Big Time-Savers for Service Based Businesses

If you're anything like me, you love running your business, but there's certain aspects that you'll love a lot less. Taxes anyone? ;-) 

In this blog post I'm sharing 5 tools that I help me speed up the things in my business that I don't enjoy as much, so I have more time for the things I actually love and that make me money. 

1. Time-tracking

For keeping track of my time I use an app called Toggl.  I setup Clients > Projects > Tasks to keep track of the work I do for clients. This is particularly helpful if you're charging by the hour. It also produces nice reports if your clients would ever want to see what you've been working on exactly. Toggl offers a basic plan that's always free.

2. Bookkeeping and invoicing

Instead of piecing things together in an Excel sheet, make sure to use bookkeeping and invoicing software. Yes, Excel may be cheaper, but there's more room for error and it will often take much longer to setup and maintain than a good piece of bookkeeping software. A small investment in the right tools will go a long way here! 

As I'm based in The Netherlands I'm using tools that may not work for you (called Acumulus and Moneybird). Here are some that I see being used internationally a lot: QuickBooks, Xero.

3. Templates

Templates can be used for so many things! For example, you're likely using social media to promote your services. Having templates for your social media posts will save you so much time! As a bonus this helps with brand consistency as well. Each time you want to publish something, you'd just need to change out a line of text (eg the title of your new blog post) and you're good to go. I'm using Canva for my templates. 
But also think of contracts for client work. Or documents in which you and the client work together. The outline of those may be the same for each client. So instead of creating a new one each time, create a template that you can use time and time again!

4. Automations

Try to automate as many of the processes in your business as possible! Think of processes that take up a lot of your time, and think of ways to automate them. A big one here for me is my online calendar. I just send people a link to my calendar if they want to book a session with me, instead of the endless back-and-forth via email to find the right time (and across timezones at that!). My favourite here is Acuity Scheduling. Others are Book Like A Boss and Calendly. 
Or think of a welcome sequence you can set to automatically go out to people who sign up for your freebie.

5. Outsource

There will likely always be tasks that are not within your zone of genius, that you simply don't like or that someone else would be able to take care of so much quicker. Consider outsourcing the tasks! Find yourself a good Virtual Assistant to take care of your social media posting, your video editing, your email setup, your copy writing, your bookkeeping etc. Anything that frees you up to do the work you love doing and that makes you money! 

Time for more clients!

Let's make sure we book those newly available spaces in your calendar right back up - this time with what you LOVE doing: working with clients!
I'm working on a course specifically for service based business owners (think Virtual Assistants, Copy Writers, Social Media Managers, Video Editors, Graphic Designers etc.) in which I'll teach you how to generate leads using LinkedIn. It will only be $37 and it will launch in March. Sign up for the wait list now to receive a message when doors open!