How to Cut Down on Your Admin and Be More Productive

When asked about their own productivity, even workers themselves admit that they waste a lot of time.

Even as firms around the country try to automate their work and use applications to make their life easier, not everyone has mastered these tools. If you want to be more productive, you need to do more than to buy gadgets and invest in tools.

In order to be more productive at work, you and your team need to follow these four tips.

1. Go Digital

One of the most prominent results of the digital revolution is that most tasks of admin and documentation can be automated. When things move faster in your office, they’re usually easier, and it usually expedites cash flow. Getting rid of paper wherever possible will save you time and energy.

Turn your invoicing into a completely digital task. Set up a strong and reliable payment platform and allow your clients to pay you online. They might be able to send payment from their mobile devices, meaning you could get paid quickly and efficiently, with no hassle at all.

If you have some regular clients who send you the same amount every month, you could help them by automating the process and scheduling their bills. You can choose a set of dates and have your software automatically send out an invoice.

Electronic payments typically happen faster than when your customers are forced to cut a check. This goes for your payroll too.

You’ll find that your employees will be happy if you go totally digital. Instead of sending them to the bank every Friday and making them wait to get their money, they could wake up on Friday morning with money in the bank. They’ll be able to integrate whatever bank software their bank provides with their own management process and make things move quickly.

Digital saves on paper, printing, and postage costs. When you make things digital, you cut down on your carbon footprint and your spending.

2. Fix Your To-Do List

If you want to ensure that every day is a successful work day, you’re probably already writing out a to-do list. While this is a smart way to start, you could be doing it all wrong. IF you’re not targeting when you do the most cognitively intensive tasks versus the ones that are more repetitive, you’re wasting energy.

Every employee at every business has tasks that are creative, others that are administrative, and some that require intense concentration. Depending on the type of worker you are, you may be able to muster intense focus first thing in the morning and prefer to finish off your day with busy work. To make the most of your productivity, make the most of your to-do list.

Some people find that they’re useless until they’ve had a few cups of coffee. That could make morning the time to warm up your engine with those repetitive tasks. Answering emails, making calls, scheduling meetings, and handling whatever admin you have to do should be reserved for the time when you have the lowest energy.

There’s no one answer for anyone and you don’t have to live and die by your to-do list either. You can grab a big task that you’re meaning to do later in the week if you’re on fire when you get in on Monday morning. The most important thing is to manage your energy and encourage your team to do that too.

3. Hire an Outsourced CFO

While you might not think that you even need a CFO, you should reconsider your position. Even though you can handle the numbers for your firm as well as anyone else, having a CFO to lend a hand brings much more value. Your CFO looks at your business from top to bottom to ensure that you’re protected from financial problems.

If you’re worried about the security of your data, especially financial records, a CFO can handle that. Hiring a specialized financial officer will help you to recover from financial or administrative disasters, respond to cases of fraud, and help reduce risk. They can ensure that you’re always staying profitable and that there are no surprises when it comes to your firm’s finances.

While it costs more to outsource a CFO than to hire them outright, it might still be worthwhile. Outsourcing a CFO allows you to get on track financially. You can get a well-qualified and talented CFO to commit to a short-term contract and then put standards into place for their less expensive full-time replacement.

4. Clean up the Clutter

When your office is a disorganized mess, you’ll have trouble staying productive. You could spend hours filing, organizing, or trying to find something important, which is time that could have been better spent. If you start off with a strong system for keeping your office clean and organized, you can maintain a higher standard of productivity.

In a clean and organized office, you and your employees can be more productive. When the line of sight between employees is easier to see, people will be more congenial and collaborative. This can be one of the secret weapons in making your office more productive.

When everyone is more productive and working with agreed systems of organization, admin is much simpler. You won’t have 10 people using their own personal organization system and risk losing important clients due to disorganization.

Learning to Be More Productive Takes Time

While you might implement a lot of these changes and still feel like you’re not making the most of your day, you need to be patient. Just learning how to be more productive during your day takes a lot of effort and energy. You might be exhausted just adhering to these rules, but it’s sure to pay off in the end.

If you’re worried about your budget, check out our guide to ensure you raise productivity and lower overheads at the same time.