Small Business - A Curse?

Being a small business owner is not an easy task. Ask anyone. Until you find systems to be put in place. One of our vendor says in humour, 'if you want to take revenge on anybody, make him start a small business'. Small businesses cannot afford to keep personnel for the different tasks that are needed to be done. For example, accounting, tax filing, HR things, marketing, purchase, etc. Their main focus is production. While focusing just on production has no alternative, you need to produce to sell, you have to take care of other tasks. If you do not take care of other tasks, business will suffer somewhere. Forgetting to make an invoice is like working for free for anybody. If it is job work, it is still okay; but imagine forgetting to make an invoice for a job with material. It may make your two days of work go waste. Making invoicing is just as important as accounting for it. If you make an invoice but forget to account for it, you will again lose that money as you may forget about the work completely. 

Similarly, you also need to file your taxes and pay them on time. Not doing this will attract fines and penalties and interests. It is a different story if you are not able to pay it on time due to financial reasons. But imagine not paying it because you were not able to track it or put all the papers in place. A big fiasco. There are similar tasks which need to be done but due to small business nature, proper persons cannot be recruited. The best thing is to keep a consultant who will be doing all these works. But you cannot depend on consultant for that work. You have to follow up with him so that all the tasks are completed on time. The next best thing is not keep pending work and complete it immediately. Making an invoice as soon as the material leaves your place is a good habit. It does not take much time. If for some reason you cannot make invoice at that time, make a delivery challan - the least you can do. As soon as purchase invoice comes, file it. 

Doing things immediately does not take much time. In case you have focused on some job on that day, put all the coming things in one tray and clear it before you leave office for the day. These habits will take you far and will be beneficial to increase your business.