The Profit Map – IT and Systems

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Hi this is Judi Otton with GrowthCast and we’re continuing with our series on The Profit Map. We are down to I and we’re going to talk about IT and Systems today. I’m going to give you four things to look at to assess your business’s, health with respect to your IT needs and your systems. First of all, and I’ve said this a lot, you must have a real accounting system. This is not a box of receipts, not a notebook, not even an excel spreadsheet. You must be using a real accounting system if you really want to make your business as healthy and as profitable as it can be. I like Quickbooks, Quickbooks online. If you feel like that’s too much money, there are free ones out there. When you’re using this accounting system also make sure you’re not sharing logins. Everyone that’s using it should have their own login. There are audit trails that allow you to see who’s done what and this is really important. You don’t want people to have access they shouldn’t have and you want to be able to track what’s going on. Second of all, time tracking – if you are doing time tracking, do it in an automated fashion. I had a client once that had 100 people across the country faxing paper time sheets and no, this wasn’t in the 1980s , this was just two years ago faxing paper time sheets to the finance department where he had four people dedicated to just entering this data in. There is just no reason for that anymore. There are plenty of solutions that allow you to track time that will interface with your accounting system and your payroll system if they are different. Third, if you have inventory, make sure that you have a system in place to count it regularly and track what’s coming in and going out. This is really important for you to know what you have available. And fourth I want you to look at the things in your business that are taking too much time. What could be automated? What’s just a pain in the butt? What is leaving you with lots and lots of paper. There are so many tools out there that can do almost anything that you need to do. If you have any questions about this or anything else, feel free to reach out. And next week we’ll be finishing up this series and I will be releasing a playlist with all of these diagnostic tools in one. So keep a look out for that. This is Judi Otton and with GrowthCast here with your Fiscal Fitness Tip of the Week.