Working at home means that you think of your home office in an wholly changed way. It now has to serve as a workplace. What can you do to ensure it remains organized? Here are a number of home office solutions which can assist in getting and keeping you on the right track.
When I became a business owner rather than an employee, I found that my efforts were focused more around projects as opposed to job tasks. If you have clients that you work with, this is usually particularly true. So that I can get myself on track, I separated my documents out by projects. Finding what I required when I wanted it grew to become much simpler by using this uncomplicated home office organization technique. Every project or client has a separate folder. I do the identical thing with my computer folders. Given that a lot of my work is computer centered, I make subfolders beneath the main project folder to track the tasks associated with the project. So that a trip to my file drawer is not required, I save the existing projects I am working on in a desktop filer on top of my desk. This makes them easy to get to and add to as required. Completed projects get placed alphabetically in my file drawers.
Given that I now manage my own home based business, I do not have a boss handing me a listing of tasks or projects that I have to do in a week. To keep myself on track with my goals, I create daily and weekly tasks which move my projects onward. This continues to be the principal help in my home office organization arsenal. As soon as you work at home for yourself, there are lures such as having the ability to simply go read or watch TV readily obtainable. My task list keeps me on task. As soon as you are your own boss, you need to have the self-control to keep yourself focused. My task listing is the most valuable technique I know of to keep myself disciplined. The trick is holding yourself to the promise to achieve everything you set out to do. The whiteboard on the wall in my workspace has my weekly plans and the planner on my desk has my daily tasks. This is sufficient to keep me on task. I take time at the beginning of every week to determine what my weekly goals are and then I break down those targets into daily tasks.
Once you run your own business, you must keep track of your income and expenses for tax reasons. I use a spreadsheet to note down my earnings and expenses for every month. I do my best to make certain that it is updated month-to-month so that I realize where and the amount of revenue I have coming in and what is going out in expenses. I have found it a lot easier to generate categories for my expenses rather than putting each receipt on the spreadsheet. This helps me to understand the amount of of my money I am expending in areas such as advertising and office supplies so I can cut back if it looks like one section is getting out of control. Keep in mind that when you are self-employed, it is your job to ensure your taxes are paid on time. I do quarterly estimated tax payments so my spreadsheet with my per month earnings and expenses makes it easier to work out how much I owe when the quarter is over. One more home office solution which I use is having a file for business receipts and an additional one for business income. I have discovered that this makes it much less difficult to track what my business earnings and costs are. As soon as the year is done, all I have to do is file that paperwork with my tax papers. To make sure I notice everything, these documents are also every time reconciled with my monthly bank statements.
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