Deborah Stafford, of Stafford Realty Group, is a realtor who until last year had not been tracking her business finances with a bookkeeping tool. She knew that to truly understand how her business was performing, she needed to put her finances into a tool like QuickBooks. However, as a busy business owner, she did not have the time to set this up, learn a new system, or keep up the ongoing maintenance. Additionally, she was facing tax season, and she needed to get her previous year’s books in order for her accountant.

Cybertary came up with a plan that would simplify her financial tracking.

First, they assisted her with purchasing and installing QuickBooks on her computer, and set up her company’s QuickBooks files. Then, Cybertary entered in all the transactions for the previous year and reconciled all the accounts. This provided her a complete picture of how her company was performing and where her money was being spent.

For ongoing maintenance Cybertary completes her monthly QuickBooks reconciliation by remotely accessing her computer. This way she always has access to the latest and greatest QuickBooks data on her computer.

All this has relieved Deborah of worrying about her bookkeeping. Tax time is so much easier now since all her reports and files are available at the push of a button. And most importantly, Deborah can see how her company is performing financially so she can make smart and timely business decisions.

Deborah had this to say about her experience - "Cybertary has really helped me get my bookkeeping in order. I now have a P&L that I can use to tell me how my business is performing. By giving Cybertary some of my 80%, I am now better able to go after my 20% areas of focus.”

Here is some exciting news for the Cybertary franchise system.  Cybertary has been recognized as one of the winners of the Franchise Business Review's 2010 Franchisee Satisfaction Awards.  The Franchise Business Review interviews franchisees to determine their satisfaction with their franchisors. 

This acknowledgement of course mirrors our feelings about our franchise and we feel blessed to a part of such a phenomenal organization.

To check out the article, click here.

Manage your Day

Now you are tracking your time and you have your lists of priorities the final step is to take control of your day instead of letting it control you.

Take a break from responding to messages: One of the biggest pitfalls is constantly checking voice mail and email. We don’t realize it, but next time you “quickly” check your email, time yourself using one of the time tracking services noted above. You may be surprised how a few clicks can turn into ten minutes. This might not sound like a lot of time, but if you check your email ten times during the day, that’s nearly two hours! Instead, try setting aside a small block of time in the morning and one in the afternoon to check and return messages and utilize your email autoresponder to send automatic replies and manage expectations of those who communicate with you via email.

Change your meeting habits: Although well-managed meetings can be very productive, many meetings can be time wasters. It takes time to gather relevant items, get to the meeting space, wait for the late-comers, and exchange pleasantries, not to mention the time it takes in advance to schedule and plan the meeting and exchange emails to find a time that works for everyone involved. Try a productivity tool like MeetingWizard to arrange and schedule your meetings, making the planning process easier and more efficient.

Write it Down: As business people we are constantly busy and our minds are usually in overdrive. Some of our most clever ideas come at the most inopportune times – when travelling on the subway, rushing to a meeting, or while driving. Utilize Evernote to capture your thoughts, organize, and retrieve them later. Using your computer or phone, Evernote is always there so you can put your thoughts, things you see, things you want, and things you need into one place. This tool can save you time and save your sanity – no more scrambling to remember that inspiration you had but didn’t have a chance to write down. You can even record voice memos!

Simplify your password management: Keeping track of your passwords should be a simple task. However with all the tasks we can now perform online requiring user names and passwords, and with security risks at an all-time high, the number of passwords we need is often times more than our brains can handle. Lastpass, a secure online password manager, automatically fills in saved log-ins and forms with the click of a button. You will never again have to click on the “forgot password” button and wait for the confirmation email!

Tomorrow morning when you’re sitting at your desk with that first cup of coffee in hand, think about the 80:20 rule… 80% of your efforts will generate 20% of your results and 20% of your activities will produce the remaining 80% of your results! Then, start utilizing these time management tools and tips to help better manage your time and get more productive time out of your day.

Last time we discussed some tools that could help you with Time Tracking.  Now we will turn our attention to prioritizing and organizing.

Prioritize and Organize

Once you know and understand how you are currently spending your time – typically an eye-opening experience – you can start to make changes. Being well-organized is a goal for nearly everyone, but in the world of effective time management, it is a must. The only way to be truly organized is to keep a list of your tasks, prioritize them, and keep track of your progress to completion of each.

Lists are wonderful. We make them before we go to the grocery store, we make them to let our kids know what is expected of them, and we should be making them for ourselves. Yes, we all like to think that we can mentally manage the hundreds of things we need to accomplish in a day. In reality, though, keeping that mental list keeps us moving and busy but often without direction which can lead to lots of work with few results.

The best way to tackle your tasks is to understand which things to do first, then work our way down the list. There are several free online tools to organize and prioritize our tasks that can be used by individuals or teams. Services like Checkvist, HiTask, and Task2Gather allow you to brainstorm, and create, organize, and publish lists so everyone knows what to do and when.

If you’re not comfortable managing your life online, then pull out the old DayTimer and start making daily lists. Franklin Covey has lots of great planning tools to keep you on task.

Now that you have some ideas on how to prioritize your life and get organized, look for the final post in this series about Managing Your Day...

Thank you so much to all of our "fans" that voted for us in the Love A Local Business contest sponsored by Intuit.  We are fortunate to have such wonderful clients to work with and are honored and humbled by your compliments. So far we are the lucky winners of their first round prize of a $500 grant and we are in 3rd place in the Sacramento area, according to one of our sources. This grant award will help us continue to do what we strive to do best, and that is to provide our customers with the highest quality of administrative and business support services.

We also plan on attending the event on March 12 where we are eligible to win an additional $1000 and we are still in the running for their grand prize of $25,000 in local advertising funds and $9500 in cash that we can invest into our business! 

If you haven't voted yet, there is still time - please see the instructions below and forward it to your friends. 

**************************************************************************
http://lovealocalbusiness.intuit.com/ ( or click on the logo in the right sidebar of our blog)

Under Step 1 Search for the Local Business You Love, type in:

Company: Cybertary
City/State: Roseville, CA

Then click "Find"

In Step 2 you will see 2 listings for Cybertary.  We are the second Cybertary business listed (#1 is the corporate office, so please make sure you select ours:

CYBERTARY.COM - TINA ANGELL
1420 E ROSEVILLE PARKWAY Suite 140-329
Roseville, CA

Step 3 - please leave a comment about our services if you wish.  We would love to hear from you!

There are several time tracking tools available online, and many of them are FREE. Toggl is a collaborative time tracking tool that can be used via their website, as a browser popup, or embedded into your company intranet. Toggl allows you and your team to track time spent on specific tasks and provides you with comprehensive reports.

Another option, RescueTime offers time tracking solutions for individuals, small businesses and large enterprises and claims that on average, utilizing their service will recover 3 hours and 54 minutes worth of productive time per week, per person. Just imagine having nearly 4 extra hours in every week!
Stay tuned for Part 2 in this series of Time Management Tools...