End of The Month & Year Round Up!

Photo by Brett Sayles: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photography-of-a-person-riding-horse-1069710/

I can’t believe this is the last week of 2023 and next week we enter into a new year. 

Are you ready?

Did the year turn out better than you thought? Did you crush the goals you set for yourself?

I am excited about all the new possibilities the new year will bring. As the year draws to a close and we begin planning for 2024 it is important to:

STOP

SLOW - DOWN

AND

REFLECT

Many times we can run through the whole year as if we are in a race and end up at the end of the year feeling unfulfilled. I know this has happened to me on occasion. I need to review the post I wrote called, What Is On Your Mind to see how I can improve my mindset so I can’t stop feeling so hurried but I digress. :)

My challenge to you is to press pause a few times during the holiday season to journal and reflect on the wins, challenges, and learns so that you can make next year a better year than 2023. After you have reflected on the activities of the past then think about starting to plan for 2024 for your business and personal goals using this process:

First create S.M.A.R.T. goals, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Next, try this process to measure your progress:

7 - measure your goal in one week to see how you are doing.

30 - measure your goal in one month to see how you did for the month.

90 - measure your goal as a milestone to see if you crushed it. 

I encourage you to try this method to help you to stay focused on your goal attainment. If you are looking for more tips around goals check out the post that I wrote this month. 

The end of the year is fast approaching and we can set ourselves up for success by slowing down to reflect on how the year went, create S.M.A.R.T. goals for 2024, and use the 7, 30 & 90-day approach to measure progress. 

Happy New Year & Thank you for reading~

Keep IT Sunny!

Month of June Roundup!

Small business owners were hit hard by the Covid-19 virus crisis. Unfortunately, many businesses had to close their doors because they could not survive the closure of their business over the past 2 months. As bleak as this sounds I saw this season in our business journey as a time to fine-tune different areas within our business. This month we took a look at how using a bookkeeping system can help you to pull reports so that you know how much you are making in your business. Additionally, we also took a look at tools you can use to automate things in your business. Today, I want to take a look at how you can get paid faster by your customers by getting paid online. Here are 3 tools you can use to get paid faster:

Quickbooks Payments - According to their site, Quickbooks payments allow you to accept debit, credit, and ACH bank transfers from your client. This is an excellent tool and has many features like recurring charging for customers that are billed the same thing each month. The pricing ranges from 1% per transaction for ACH bank transfers to 2.9 % + 25 cents per transaction for online invoicing. This pricing is for existing QuickBooks Online Customers. For new customers, you will need to set up a QuickBooks online account and then sign up for the payment feature. They do have an option to use the payment feature as a stand-alone product with Go Payment or their desktop offering. But if you want to use the online feature then you will need to have a QuickBooks Online subscription.

Freshbooks - Freshbooks is a cloud accounting software that has an invoicing and billing feature that can help you get paid faster online. You can use it with Stripe as the backend merchant servicer that pushes your customer deposits into your bank account. It has the option to accept credit, debit, and ACH payment methods and it also has a recurring billing feature. The pricing to use Freshbooks ranges from $15 to $50 for their most popular plans. Currently, they are offering a six month discount on all their plans and if you just want to try them out you can do that for 30 days and get your money back if you don’t like the service. Stripe charges 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction.

PayPal - PayPal is a well-known site that many of us use for personal money sending transactions. The online invoicing feature for businesses makes it easier to get paid online from your customers. You can send your customer an invoice and they can pay via credit card or their PayPal bank balance. There is also a feature for recurring billing to your customer. There isn’t a monthly fee to use the service and the rates are 2.90% + 30 cents per transaction and you only pay the fee when you get paid by your customer.

There you have it! 3 tools you can use to get paid faster online and a quick recap of the month of June’s Blog posts. And as always…..Keep IT Sunny!