Keeping it simple and automation

I don’t know how I ended up with four business bank accounts, several merchant processors, too many different systems are taking up too much of my time. I’ll be hiring a consultant to help me consolidate my business systems and make it more manageable. Well, I do know how I ended up with so many different accounts. There was a purpose to each one when I opened them. The problem is that I wasn’t looking at the big picture while making all these things happen. Not only do I have multiple bank accounts, but they’re all at different banks. Too many accounts to reconcile either equals too much time spent reconciling or you don’t do it at all.

I’m using Quickbooks for my accounting system, and am determined to stay with it. There are some things I’d like to see it have (such as opening up the online billing features, for example), but there are no other products that please me as much. Peachtree is a very close second. Now I’m looking at ways to make running my business easier by automating things using Quickbooks. I’ve been manually sending invoices by email, for example. I know I can automate it in Quickbooks, it’s just a matter of setting it up.

Drop by the forum and discuss this issue with me.

How Do I Go Into Business?

I get this question again and again, in an unending variety of formats. How do I decide what business to start? Where do I get ideas? How do I find products to sell? Start with the education. No, I don’t mean paying thousands to some quack for a seminar, you can educate yourself pretty well for a buck fifty in late fees at the library. Don’t worry about getting suggestions for what book to read, read all of them. Just go to the library, go to the stacks where the books about real estate are, and where the books about business are, and start reading. I’d recommend reading some accounting books too, knowing how to prepare and read a financial statement is a very valuable skill. Boring reading to be sure, but you need to understand money. Eventually, you’ll be able to evaluate the books you’re reading and know which ones make sense to you and which ones don’t. By then, you should be able to develop a business plan that will work for YOU. I believe that this method is better than trying to have someone else direct you, because you can’t live their lives. Having a mentor is great too, but you need to become educated enough to stand on your own two feet. Even with a mentor, you will need to be confident enough to be able to evaluate the mentor’s advice.