Every Second Counts
A small to medium-sized business already has an uphill battle ahead. First and foremost, it commonly takes around five years for any small business venture to begin yielding profit; many fail before this time. There are a number of reasons for this. Funding must be secured to open the business in the first place. This funding often turns into debt if it isn’t directly tied to some form of loan.
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Even if there is no direct debt immediately involved in the establishment of a new business, there’s the marketing/exposure angle to consider. The best marketing and exposure seldom turn any venture into an overnight success; cases where this happens are one in a million. There’s a reason things like Facebook come under the designation “unicorn”.
If you’ve got excellent marketing and excellent funding, there’s still the learning curve of operational functionality. From employees to clients, complaints to improvements, upgrades, troubleshooting, acquisitions, and product expansion, there are many aspects to be considered before your business reaches its cruising altitude.
From the other end of the spectrum, at cruising altitude, even for a large business, there are definitely areas of “fat” which diminish the effectivity of operations and can mar profits. Taken altogether, these things recommend measures which shave expenses from operations. From very small businesses just starting out to established operations decades old, such measures are to be recommended.
It can be difficult to determine where areas of consolidation exist, but one surefire way to save money over time is to look at wasted time. Curtailing redundancies, or streamlining antiquated modes of operation, are always worthy means of operational preservation.
Digital Timekeeping
According to ClockSpot.com, the use of online timesheet software has “…helped thousands of companies big and small end manual time tracking for good.” Manual timekeeping involves keeping figures and calculating them in a way which subjects them to human error. It also involves actual time losses.
You can’t add up the hours of your employees in a vacuum of moments. Even if you’re able to streamline your approach, it’s going to take a few hours. Beyond the actual calculation of time, checks will have to be written, or PayPal accounts upgraded. You’ll have to do this multiple times directly, manually, and in a way which consumes time.
If you’re only spending twenty hours a month (five hours a week) doing this, you’re looking at two hundred and forty hours a year. If you don’t have a payroll employee, you’ll be conducting such calculations yourself. What is your time worth? You could be making a big acquisition, or working on a merger. Instead you’re sitting at your desk, drinking coffee, eating treats from sweetservices.com, and punching figures into a calculator twenty hours a month.
If your time is worth $100 an hour as the owner of a business, then by calculating time manually you’re throwing away $24,000 a year. If your business is large and features multiple employees, you could be losing even more money. The bigger the business, the more employees are necessary for payroll.
A Simpler, More Elegant Solution
Modern innovation allows you to simply cut out the process of time calculation entirely. With the click of a mouse you can calculate payroll, and send out checks or send money to PayPal accounts or use direct deposit or whatever your organization has found most convenient.
Online timekeeping is only one of many ways now available for businesses to modernize, and through such measures save substantial assets. Whether your business is a small one or a large one, there are always areas where operations can be streamlined. Payroll is one of the most obvious, and easiest, to rectify.
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