Take time to tune-up your accounting practices with these tips: 

• Separate personal & business expenses - You may have started your business paying the initial expenses with your own dollars. As soon as possible, if not at the very beginning, establish a separate account for your business. Need to use personal funds for the business? Deposit them in your business account for tracking purposes. Get a business credit card to help track your business expenses as well. 
• Spend time each week reviewing your accounting - Schedule time, usually at the end of each week, to focus on your accounting to include; following up on outstanding invoices, collecting/filing receipts, filling in your accounting spreadsheet, and reviewing your transactions. Remember that ink cartridge you bought when you were shopping with the family? Include the receipt in your files. (Remember: even small expenses add up in a year.) Mid-year take a look at your accounting practices and ensure you are prepared for tax season. This reduces the time and stress when tax season approaches. 
• Forecast expenses at least once every two months - It is important to look at your future expenses to create a plan. Consider that your computers will have to be replaced, or you will need additional supplies to prepare for projected increased sales due to seasons. Consider there are times when costs for materials are cheaper during the year. This is a great time to stock up and save dollars. Reviewing/forecasting your expenses is a great way to remind yourself when you need to save and when you need to invest -- it's strategic planning. 
• Keep your accounting practices simple - Don't complicate your accounting practices. Not comfortable with a computer? Use a ledger book to track income and expenses. Using your business bank account is a great option as long as you make sure that all income and expenses are paid through that one account. This ensures you have accurate records of your financial transactions, helping you keep an eye on your bottom line. Use basic categories for income and expenses. For example: Income- Customer payments; Owner investment. Expenses - Operating expenses; Advertising; and Maintenance. 
• Be consistent!!! - Making time each week to work on your accounting, using consistent methods to pay and categorize expenses and receive customer payments will help you stay ahead of the accounting game and when tax time comes, you will be well prepared. 
• Get Professional Help - You can employ an accountant to help you at tax time, or contract an accountant to help throughout the year. Be selective about who your accountant is and make sure they have experience with small businesses. The best practice in selecting an accountant is to identify 2-3 possible candidates and interview each before selecting one. Consider their experience, but consider how well they communicate. You need to feel comfortable with your accountant. 

Maintaining your accounting practices, ensuring that you account for every dollar coming and leaving the business will help you operate your business more effectively and efficiently which will increase your bottom line. 

One of our clients contacted us with a big problem...lack of productivity of their small business (total of 6 employees). We quickly evaluated the organization: 

• All employees had the knowledge, experience and skills required for their jobs. 
• Producing high quality products was at the center of the business culture. 
• Employees knew the expectations the organization had for productivity and knew they were struggling to meet them. 

So what is the problem????? [Head scratch]  

• Let's observe them on a typical work day....Oh NOOOO!!!! 

Here is what we observed - Employees were meeting 4-6 hours a day (except on Fridays), often with the business owner to discuss "business". No meeting was less than one hour!!!!

Meetings with employees are important to any business if they are focused on the value they provide. We've seen several clients caught up in the "meeting circle". Before you call a meeting, consider: 

1. Is there a decision that must be made that requires input from others? - If yes, then invite only those employees that need to be included in the meeting. 
2. What does the meeting agenda include? - If you find yourself, making up topics to fill the time, or a lot of "updates" listed on your agenda, then consider using email to provide the information. Face-to-face meetings to deliver bad news is the one exception. Don't deliver bad news by email!  (For meetings, other than standing meetings with a defined purpose, create an agenda. Click here for more on creating meeting agenda's)
3. Identify the time required for the meeting and stick to it - Many decision based meetings require 15-20 minutes. Set an agenda and begin and end on time.
4. Reduce meeting times, and frequency wherever possible - NOT EVERY MEETING HAS TO BE A SET LENGTH!!!! Meetings do help productivity only if there is a clear purpose, goal, and objective. Reducing meeting times, and frequency will allow employees to focus on their work. 

Here is our meeting schedule: 

• Every morning - via video conference or in the office a ten minute meeting at the start of the day with all employees to share any help they need from others. Every one is limited to a minute or two. Employees can ask for help from another, such as; "I need the domain address for our Acme client to set-up the email addresses. Will it be available today?" Response: "I will get it this afternoon." (Often we use a group email to accomplish the same goal.)
• Once every two to four weeks, if needed, we hold a one hour Sit Rep (short for situation report). Each employee has 2-5 minutes to provide an update on their work progress that is relevant to others. These meetings often last less than 40 minutes and they are great for acknowledging employee accomplishments. 
• "One-on-One's" - Weekly, or only as needed, a 15-30 minute meeting between the team leader and each team member alone. The goal, only the team member talks, discussing what they need to get their job accomplished that was not covered in the "Every morning" meeting. More often than not, these meetings take place every two-three weeks at the discretion of the team member or team leader if they see a need. 

This format averages 6 meetings a week requiring less than 1.5 hours a week on average. Productivity stays UP!!!!

"I see your posts about websites and small business methods show up on a private investigators listserv. Why is that?" 

Well, some of our clients are private investigators. For private investigation companies, having a website is a must, just like other companies. Second, private investigative firms are primarily small businesses. Let's consider: 

Websites

• Most of your client's will look up your business using a smartphone. They are looking for your phone number, useful information, and wanting to learn if you can help them. So having a website that looks great on a smartphone is critical. 
• Remember phone books? Chances are several of your younger clients will not have seen a phone book. They use the Internet or word of mouth. Guess what? When using word of mouth they'll generally ask for the company name and then, you know....Google You!
• Private investigators that are working on company contracts know that one day those contracts may end. Keeping their company name in the public view, looking to add new revenue streams is a must. Again, remember the phone book? 
• Tentative clients often start their contact with a private investigative firm through an online form. They ask simple questions, maybe share a little about their investigative needs. Shrewd business people follow-up on those inquiries. 

Small Business Aspects

• Operating a private investigative firm is a business. Let's repeat that! It's a business. Marketing, advertising, and efficiently maintaining the 'back office' functions are a must for success. 
  
• Same rules for managing employees apply to managing private investigators. 
  
• Our private investigative clients are great at investigating! For the business aspects, not always the best so they hire us. 
  
• Private investigations takes a lot of time. We've observed there are no normal business or work hours for a private investigator. Managing the business aspects requires the ability to access business information from anywhere, at anytime. Having the right technology in place helps our clients do just that!
  

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Some of the factors that are critical to the success of our private investigative clients is that their web pages are maintained regularly - a simple diet of updates, minor changes that let people know they are alive and well. Most importantly, our private investigative clients are small business owners. They have to consider the business aspects of their firms, as much as they work their investigations. 

We talked with a few small business owners that are successful. Here are some common terms we heard them use in one form or another: 

• Determination - You must be determined, invest time and money in your venture. There will be many decision points when giving up seems the best option, sticking with it and moving forward is the key. 
• Time & Patience - Few businesses become instant successes overnight, or within a few days. Several business owners say they did not make any profit their first year, so plan ahead. 
• Failures & Minor Successes - Each time a new service or product is launched, there is anticipation to see how well it will be received. Business owners have found that some work well while others not so well. It is important to cut loses as soon as reasonable on a new product or service. When there is success, small business owners agree that you must be patient and wait to see the full run of the product or service before making any major changes in business offerings. 

From our observations we identified some common traits among these successful small business owners: 

1. Looking ahead - All have a future focus on what they expect their business to become. They evaluate, plan, re-focus, and plan again looking 2-3 years ahead. 
2. "Win some lose some attitude" - When they failed they re-focused their business and moved on. Failure does not deter them. They examined their wins and identified strengths they could capitalize on. 
3. Outsource - All that we talked to have identified the limits of their time and abilities to manage and run their business. We found that within the first year, all began to outsource various business functions, whether it was accounting, technology services, web page maintenance, advertising, or production. 
4. Listening - (Our initial observation was they had the ability to be humble and accept criticism.) The most important trait seems to be their ability to listen to their customers, consider options or modifications to their products and services. Not all suggestions can be accommodated, but they listened and strategically made changes when it made the most sense.
5. Never on their own - None of the small business owners were successful based on their work alone. Some enlisted the aid friends and family when demands were high, others looked for opportunities to off load some responsibilities whether through outsourcing or partnering with other small businesses.  

We cannot tell you if these traits alone will make you successful. It appears that to be successful you must have an attitude to accept failures, be determined, and expect to invest time and patient in your venture. 

Strategic planning for business is a method that has been used for decades. Large corporations invest a lot of time and a lot of money in developing their strategic plans. For the small business owner, the good news is it doesn't take money, it only takes a little time.

Strategic planning is simply thinking ahead of where you want your business to be in several months and a few years. With this plan in mind, you can make decisions today that will help you reach those short and long term plans, or goals. 

Simple Strategic Planning Method - "PB&J Method"
Strategic planning is not complicated. We recommend that you keep it simple. Think what you want to accomplish, then identify when you want to accomplish it. Once you have an approximate date, then work backwards thinking through the steps you need to complete to reach your accomplishment, or goal. Let's look at a simple, silly example: 

Goal: Have a peanut butter sandwich on Friday for lunch (assuming it's Monday)
Plan Steps: 

1. Inventory existing supplies to determine what is needed - Due on Tuesday
2. Acquire the necessary supplies - Due no later than Thursday
3. Assemble tools, and materials to assemble sandwich no later than 8am on Friday for lunch at noon. 

Strategic planning for small business owners is really that simple -- Think ahead, then work backwards identifying the steps that need to be accomplished toward reaching your goals and set a deadline or schedule for accomplishing those goals. Using the deadlines you can stay on track to reaching your goals. 

Use the same simple method in two primary areas; Long and Short term plan development.

Now that we know the method, let's look at strategic planning which consists of short and long term planning.