If you have a home business, or plan to start one, hiring one or more part-time virtual assistants can give you, too, more time to focus on what you want to be doing and what you’re best at.
Blog
Six Reasons to Use Quickbooks Online
1. QuickBooks Online offers affordable pricing.
Most startups have to work within a tight budget in the early days of operation, so choosing an accounting system with affordable monthly fees is a necessity. You’re free to switch or cancel your subscription at any time, and you won’t need to commit to paying a lump sum upfront.
2. QuickBooks Online includes a wide range of features.
QuickBooks’ bookkeeping features include all the basics most startups need, including income and expense tracking and essential reporting, including your monthly financial statements (profit and loss statement, or P&L, balance sheet, and statement of cash flow). For growing businesses that have more advanced finance needs, you can easily add extra capabilities and features like bill pay (accounts payable), invoicing (accounts receivable), inventory tracking, and sales reporting by upgrading to the QuickBooks Online Pro plan.
3. QuickBooks Online integrates with many other finance tools.
QuickBooks Online integrates with over 650 other business tools—including Bill.com, Expensify, Justworks, PayPal, and Gusto—and automatically syncs all your data, so you can understand the full picture of your startup’s financial health and streamline your month-end close process.
4. QuickBooks Online is easy to use.
Many startups and small businesses alike begin with using QuickBooks Online because of its user experience; QBO is one of the easiest accounting software platforms to implement, and provides users with greater functionality than spreadsheets. The QuickBooks Online interface is user-friendly and intuitive, so even founders with limited finance experience can find the information they need to start carrying out basic bookkeeping. It also offers a variety of templates and sample chart of accounts to help get you started. However, as with any accounting software, you’ll benefit from working with a bookkeeping service as soon as possible to avoid common startup bookkeeping mistakes.
5. QuickBooks Online is popular with bookkeepers, accountants, and finance firms.
When you’re choosing a bookkeeper, accountant, or finance firm to work with your startup, it’s important to know if they have experience with your accounting software. If they aren’t familiar with your chosen platform, you are more likely to end up with errors or missed opportunities in your accounting processes.
6. QuickBooks Online stores your records safely on the cloud.
Rather than being limited to a specific computer on which your accounting software is installed, QuickBooks Online provides access to your financial records from anywhere in the world, making it well-suited for startup teams working remotely or globally. Cloud storage is also a more secure way to keep your accounting records: Even if your computer is damaged or malfunctions, your important data is stored remotely and won’t be impacted.
Source: https://www.zeni.ai/blog/benefits-of-quickbooks
Hire a Virtual Assistant (And Take Back Your Life)
This article provides a great synopsis of the who, what, where, when, and WHY of hiring a virtual assistant. Read more about the services that BNG provides by visiting our SERVICES page, and the excerpt below for some other ideas.
by Braveen Kumar
Here are just some of the things you can hire a virtual (remote) assistant to do for you:
- Customer Service: Answering emails and phone calls from customers.
- Social Media Management: Curating content, replying to comments, and other community management tasks.
- Research: Looking for a list of bloggers/influencers to reach out to or curating stats or examples.
- Store Management: Order fulfillment, inventory management, running sales for you.
- Data-entry: Bookkeeping or inputting data from different sources into a spreadsheet.
- Personal Errands: Getting flowers bought and delivered to your mom for Mother’s Day.
Read more HERE.
25 Tasks To Outsource
This article provides a great list of 25 tasks you can outsource…and BNG can do ALL of these for you!
by Chris Ducker
1. Email Management/Filtering
2. Setting up Autoresponders (Aweber, Mailchimp)
3. Booking appointments with clients
4. Following up with clients/customers (sending thank you and other reminder emails)
5. Receptionist duties (answering occasional calls)
6. Calendar Management
7. File Management (organizing files using Dropbox etc)
8. Database building (eg. updating email or contact lists on your CRM)
9. Research on certain topics for blogposts, newsletters or others
10. Personal errands (purchasing gifts for loved ones / family members online)
11. Hotel and Flight Booking
12. Transcription (transcribing voicemail, video or audio, podcasts etc.)
13. Taking down minutes of meetings
14. Creating basic reports (reports on weekly tasks, deliverables, sales)
15. Preparing Slideshows (Powerpoint Presentations)
16. Liaison between you and other team members
17. Recruitment (source for other team members like writers or graphic artists)
18. Set-up Social Media Accounts (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube)
19. Manage and update Social Media Accounts
20. Manage your Blog (WordPress Skills)
21. Publish posts on your Blog (content you provided)
22. Filter and reply to comments on your blog
23. Answering support tickets.
24. Blog commenting (to increase links to your site)
25. Participating in discussion forums or message boards (more promotion!)
Read more HERE.
See our list of services HERE.
Pros & Cons of Using a Remote Bookkeeper
You don’t want to work IN your business. You want to work ON your business. Day to day bookkeeping tasks can be time consuming, but good financial information is critical to many business decisions. You need to keep up with entering expenses and income and reconciling your bank accounts to make sure your financial reports are accurate.
Of course there are pros and cons to hiring a remote bookkeeper.
Click HERE to read more, then give us a call to find out how we can help!
Factors That Make VA Pricing Seem Higher Than an On-Site Administrative Assistant
“Other than the experience and knowledge a VA can bring to your business, hiring a VA gives you the financial flexibility of contracting only during your busy periods. You do not need to pay for their services when your business can’t justify the expense.”
This is what we pitch to our clients. Use us for one project, ongoing assistance, or to help springboard you to hire an employee when you have the time, space, and money. We always say, if we help our clients outgrow us, we’ve done our job!
Read more HERE.
5 Processes Small Businesses Can Outsource
According to Investopedia:
Opportunity cost is the benefit that is missed or given up when an investor, individual or business chooses one alternative over another.
Outsourcing isn’t free. But, think of it as an investment in the health and growth of your business.
What are you sacrificing when you spend hours answering email, posting to social media, or bookeeping? It’s either personal time, time with your family, or business opportunities. We want to help you grow by taking this work off your plate so you can focus on what you love to do!
Here are five ideas from NuWire:
- Hiring
- Payroll
- IT Support
- Accounting
- Administrative Tasks
Read more HERE.
25 Reasons Your Business Should Switch to WordPress
We can help you with your website on just about any platform. But, we prefer to use WordPress CMS to build and host sites for our clients. It’s true, WordPress is free and open source, and we’re happy to consult with you to set up and run your own site. There are a ton of tutorials and resources that are available for beginners and experts alike.
While you CAN create and maintain your own site, maybe you’re not interested in that work or you’re too busy running your business. That’s where we come in. We offer a very affordable set up and hosting service, and can provide dashboard maintenance and even create content and posts that you (or we) can share to your social media profiles. We can also create a membership or e-commerce site for your small business.
Following is an excerpt from Entrepreneur Magazine that lists 25 reasons you should use WordPress for your website by John Rampton:
1. It’s free.
2. Powerful right out of the box.
3. Flexible.
4. Search engine friendly.
5. Safe and secure.
6. Customizable.
7. Easy to use.
8. Lots of support.
9. Hosts multimedia.
10. Mobile friendly.
11. Integration.
12. Easy to manage.
13. More than just a blog.
14. Establishes a community.
15. Saves you money.
16. Numerous ecommerce solutions.
17. You’re not committed to one hosting provider.
18. Keeps your site looking fresh.
19. Can be used as a membership service.
20. Schedule posts.
21. Multi-user capability.
22. Add testimonials.
23. Publish content with one-click.
24. Universal platform.
25. WordPress keeps getting better.
Read more HERE.