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End of The Year Home Business Review

MsTiz — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 17:36:05 +0000

The end of the year is practically here. That means that it’s time for me to do my annual review of my home business. I do this every year to make sure that I am on track with my goals. It also helps to keep me on top of my game as far as making sure that I have the best services, equipment and co-workers for my company.

Some of the things I’ll be doing as part of my annual review include:

Reviewing all of my service providers. For example, I will read through web hosting reviews to learn about what the best rated web hosting companies are offering. I won’t necessarily change the web host that I have because I’m happy with the company but I will know if something better is out there.
Reviewing the year’s goals and setting new goals. I always make annual goals for the business. Some of these are financial goals and others are related to my desires for furthering the company. I will review last year’s goals to see if they were met. I will set new goals based on that information.
Reviewing how beneficial it’s been to work with certain people. I hire subcontractors and work with collaborators on various projects. I’ll make a list of these people and make sure that I’m happy enough with the results of the past year to continue to work with these people.
Reviewing how I spend my time. I think it’s important to know how many hours I’m working and what I’m doing during those hours. I’ll review that and see if any modifications are necessary in the new year.

Do you do an annual review of your home-based business?

Technorati Tags: best rated web hosting, web hosting reviews

Should You Let Employees Take Online Classes at Work?

MsTiz — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 22:36:28 +0000

One of the biggest problems that offices have is the misuse of time. Many employees waste time on their computers. This ends up costing the business money. The business is paying the employee to be there while the employee is simply checking Facebook or watching YouTube videos. But what if your employees were doing something more useful with their time?

Some businesses are considering the option of allowing their students to take online classes during the hours that they are supposed to be working. The stipulation, of course, is that the classes must benefit their work in some way. For example, in an office place where Cisco Training is beneficial the employees might be allowed to do their online Cisco Training Courses during their working hours.

This is an interesting twist on the idea of an employer paying you to go to school. A lot of businesses still use the old model of paying for some of your education outright. In this case, the student foots the bill of the class. However he or she is getting paid a normal salary to complete the class during working hours. The employer probably doesn’t lose much money because that time might’ve otherwise been wasted on Facebook. It could be a win-win situation for employers and employees alike.

Technorati Tags: Cisco Training, Cisco Training Courses

What You Need for a Paperless Office

TopIZ — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 20:32:24 +0000

There is a lot of debate as to whether there is any such thing as a paperless office. Perhaps this is an ideal we can never truly achieve, but I do believe it’s something worth striving for. I mean, just because you can’t achieve perfection doesn’t mean you give up trying and settle for crap, right? So why shouldn’t we at least get as close to paperless as we possibly can?

If you are going to try for a paperless office, the first thing you need to do is scan and get rid of existing paperwork. That sends the message that it’s no longer allowed. If you don’t have the scanners or manpower to do this yourself, you might benefit by hiring a document imaging service to do it for you.

Another thing you need is to make sure your machines can handle all of the digitized paperwork. You might want to install a network with a shared hard drive, if you don’t already have one, so that your employees can all access the paperwork at any time. Also if you have a lot of paperwork to digitize, you might also want to conssider looking into some sort of management software to keep track of it all.

Once you get all the existing paperwork scanned, you might want to consider investing in some high quality scanners so that you can keep it up as you get more paperwork in. You will probably also need a PDF writer so that you can create and send documents in PDF instead of on paper.

The beauty of it is, with just a few tools such as these you can save a ton of money on paper, printer ink, and postage — not to mention you can save tons of trees and save landfills from getting quite as much paper trash as they were before.

Technorati Tags: document imaging service, document management software providers, paperless office

Setting Up a Temporary Office After the Fire

Tiz — Sat, 25 Jul 2009 01:42:00 +0000

One of the biggest catastrophes that our company has ever suffered is the fire that burnt down our office building. Thankfully no one was hurt, but most of our computer equipment was destroyed, though thankfully we did have backups.

While the office was going to be rebuilt, we still needed to conduct our business operations to ensure that the business didn’t go belly up. Though the insurance company was going to pay for the destroyed equipment, they were not going to replace the lost income, so it was up to us to find something that would work.

What we ended up doing is contacting several computer rental businesses in the area to get quotes for the equipment that we would need to setup a temporary office. We also secured a couple of laptop rentals for those executive whose laptops were destroyed in the fire. Surprisingly, the cost for the rentals was much lower than we had expected which was good news after all the tragedy.

We will be setting up the temporary office tomorrow in a building that we are renting for a few months until the old office building is rebuilt. It will just be nice to get back to business as usual and leave the fire behind us.

Technorati Tags: computer rental, laptop rentals

Jill: The Talk II

admin — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 22:53:14 +0000

Yesterday, I spoke to my boss about “the status of the coordinator position.” It’s never a good sign when boss starts out by saying “To clarify, there is no position.”

I didn’t get much reassurance out of talking to her about the promotion. The status appears to be the same as it was before: the paperwork (request) has been put in and we’re waiting on the CEO’s approval. Um yeah, I’m sure it’s right up there in his top priorities too.

Oh well. In any case, it felt better just to get it out of me and talk to my boss about it. I feel less frustrated about my job today.

I’m so sleepy and lazy today. I have virtually nothing “hot” to do right now, so it’s just catching up on organizing and updating. Honestly though, I’m mentally checked out for the week. It feels like such a Friday to me.

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How to Speed Up a Home Loan in This Day and Age

TIZ — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 23:19:47 +0000

As I’m getting ready to buy a second home for a rental property, I am absolutely flabbergasted at how freaking long it is taking for a loan approval. Literally, it has been a solid month! I mean, in this day and age, how can Bank Of America take so long?

I thought that with the internet and all the telemarketing consultants that quotes were given in record time. I mean, I could have bailed a long time ago for one of their competitors-doesn’t their inside sales consultant tell them that? I know the mortgage industry is incredibly busy right now with everyone financing, but I would appreciate some kind of answer, even if it’s a “no.”

And to complicate things, the home we’re trying to buy is a HUD home. We already got turned down by one band for a “HUD loan,” and then we just turned to this woman at B of A because she was familiar with one of the proposed buyers and maybe could find a way. But we aren’t approved yet, and we’re supposed to close by March 20! And I anticipate more delays since California is really not supposed to process a loan on a HUD home that’s in Colorado!

Technorati Tags: Bank of America, inside sales consultant, telemarketing consultants