If you’re looking to grow your business, you might consider expanding your service offerings. Adding additional services is a good way to increase your profitability, diversify your income and expand your market. But there are important things to consider before adding to your income streams. Here are 4 important things to keep in mind when you consider adding to your services. 1. Does the expansion complement your business? The best way to expand your service offerings is to add value that complements the work you’re already doing and is attractive to your current client base. While it takes ..read more

If you’re looking to grow your business, you might consider expanding your service offerings. Adding additional services is a good way to increase your profitability, diversify your income and expand your market. But there are important things to consider before adding to your income streams. Here are 4 important things to keep in mind when you consider adding to your services. 1. Does the expansion complement your business? The best way to expand your service offerings is to add value that complements the work you’re already doing and is attractive to your current client base. While it takes ..read more

In its 2020 Budget Digital Business Plan, the Australian government announced the full implementation of the Modernising Business Registers (MBR) program. The program is designed to both establish the new Australian Business Registry Services (ABRS), and enhance how businesses register and manage their information with the government. Although the ABRS rolls out progressively between 2021 and 2024, one of the immediate changes is that business directors must obtain a director identification number. Here is what you need to know. 1. Director identification number definition The director identif ..read more

With the potential for business life to return to something resembling normal, it’s a good idea to take a look at your budget and see where you may need to shift some of your priorities. Pay attention to how your spending over the past few years affected your business and either helped you achieve, or took you away from, your overall goals.   Considering how your business and your employees functioned in recent years can help you predict upcoming trends–which will enable you to plan for adjustments. Here are some key areas to evaluate in your budget, so you can determine whether you need ..read more

There’s a lot of data supporting the idea that it’s less costly, easier and more efficient to encourage repeat customers than bring in new ones. Among the stats Hubspot lists are that a 5% increase in customer retention is responsible for more than 25% increase in profit; repeat customers are 9 times more likely to convert than first-time visitors; and a 2% increase in customer retention has a similar impact to your bottom line as reducing costs by 10%. That’s a lot of motivation to encourage repeat customers. Here are 4 tips to encourage your customers to keep coming back. 1. Build relationsh ..read more

Receipts are vital to successfully running a business. You need receipts to track your purchases and expenses. Your clients need receipts for their tax purposes and to manage their finances. Paper receipts have been around a long time, so many people are used to them and may even be resistant to moving away from them. Thanks to technology, paper receipts are becoming more a thing of the past. There are environmental reasons for the move. Paper receipts require millions of trees and billions of gallons of water to produce, and they emit carbon dioxide (CO2), so going paperless can be a good thi ..read more

Bookkeepers can be highly beneficial for businesses of any size. They offer expertise and insight into areas that you may not have experience in. They can also take some tasks off your to-do list, freeing up your time and energy to focus on other matters. Here are 4 benefits to hiring bookkeepers to help you manage your business. Expertise A bookkeeper is an expert at managing, sorting and recording your business’s financial transactions. They’ve spent time developing their skills and experience. During that time, they’ve also seen and resolved bookkeeping-related issues that you may come up a ..read more

Traditionally, employers have relied on giving employees raises as a way to retain their staff and reward them for being hard-working and loyal. Raises can get expensive, and there is often an upper limit for what you can offer when it comes to increasing salaries and wages. Keeping your employees happy makes business sense. You want to keep your good employees, and it costs money to find, hire and train new staff. Beyond that, employees that are satisfied and feel valued are more motivated and productive. Here are some ways to keep your employees happy that don’t rely on higher salaries. Offe ..read more

Whether your small business is business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), you likely deal with some level of customer churn, especially given the COVID-19 pandemic. Even customers who love your business and your products may have lapsed for a variety of reasons. Whatever their reasons for leaving, it’s still a great idea to try to win them back. Why? Mainly because winning back a lost customer still has a higher success rate than converting a prospect into a customer. After all, they’ve already bought your product or service once, so you don’t have to convince them of the need ..read more

When you run your own business, it’s tempting to take on every responsibility. There are many reasons for doing so: because you want something done a specific way, because you don’t have the time to explain how to do it, or because you’re not sure someone else can handle the task. Delegating saves you valuable time and energy. Sharing duties with your team also fosters a sense of responsibility, engages them and helps them develop their skills. Here are six tips to help you improve your delegation skills. 1. Know when to delegate If you’re like many people, you hold onto as many tasks as you c ..read more