As a small business owner, you have a lot to do and not a lot of time to do it in. If you're lucky, you have a small team of people to delegate responsibilities to. However, if your company is in its early days, chances are you are working as an army of one. You are the person responsible for making sure every section of your business is moving along and nothing is getting left behind.

You are also overseeing several projects that involve working with third-party vendors, freelancers, contractors, and partners. It’s your responsibility to make sure that deadlines are being met, deliverables are submitted, time is being tracked, people are getting paid, and nothing is falling through the cracks. Whether you handle this on your own, or hire a virtual assistant to help you, you are going to need the right tools to help you get and stay organized.

 

Smartsheet

We begin our list with the very popular project management tool, Smartsheet. This program is ideal for anyone who needs to track the progress of projects that involve deadlines, deliverables, and multiple team members. Smartsheet provides several templates based on the type of project that you need to oversee. They also allow you to set up “dependencies” that connect due dates to each other. For example, if the graphic designer is one day late on delivering the final draft, then any following deliverable that is impacted will be moved back a day as well.

As a business owner, it’s crucial that you oversee the various aspects that make up a major project. However, you do not have the time to check-in with each individual and get a status update. This is where a virtual assistant comes into play. You can leave the day-to-day tasks and management up to them. If something comes up, they will bring you into the conversation to resolve it. If you don’t hear anything, that means you can continue working on your big-picture items.
 

Trello

Next up is a different kind of project management tool called Trello. One of the most attractive things about this program is how robust their free version is. If you are on a budget, this is the tool for you. It is also ideal for someone who is working on projects by themselves. This software lays out all of your tasks in various cards for you to view at a high level. Then, you can click on a card and review the items that need to be completed and any relevant documents that may need to be referenced.

Even if you are the major player on a project, you will still occasionally be reaching out to freelancers and third-party vendors to help you complete certain items. An experienced VA can manage your Trello board and these partnerships at the same time. They can make sure your board is always up-to-date. This way, when you view the progress of the project each morning, you will know exactly how everything is going and where to focus your time that day.
 

Toggl

Our next tool shifts from managing projects to managing the time of the people working on them. Toggl allows anyone working on your projects to log their time after completing a task or portion of work. When a team member logs time, it requires them to leave a comment detailing what they worked on. For example, a web developer might submit that they spent two hours working on the design of the About Us page for a specific client’s website.

The reason you need a tool like this is to make sure everyone is getting paid correctly. If you are performing work on behalf of a client, it’s necessary to understand how many hours are spent on each project. This allows you to accurately bill your clients and justify any questions they may have about your invoice. Again, this task is too important to be managed by someone as busy as yourself. The right virtual assistant will have plenty of experience in tracking time and making sure everyone is paid on-time.

 

Hootsuite

Our next tool covers one of the most important parts of your marketing efforts: social media. Even if your marketing budget is small and strategies have not been fully developed yet, your brand needs a basic social media presence. Consumers are using social media as search engines and expect to find your brand and learn something about it in the process. Hootsuite allows you to schedule all of your posts for the week all at once.

Scheduling a week’s worth of social posts can take about an hour. However, creating the content needed to fill those posts can be much more time-consuming. Impactful social content includes blog posts, customer reviews, educational videos, and eye catching images. It may also require someone to coordinate with various teams to ensure all the information being presented is timely and accurate. As a small business owner, social media should be considered set without having to think about it again. This is only possible when delegating to a specific point person like a virtual assistant to oversee your social strategy.

 

Dropbox

We end our list with Dropbox, the premier tool in storing and sharing key files amongst team members. Dropbox helps decrease the amount of emails you need to send to internal and external team members. When a project begins, you can create a designated folder and share it with all relevant team members. When a new document is created, instead of emailing it to everyone, you can upload it to the folder. This will drastically cut down the number of times someone will have to reach out to you for something.

Ideally, you want your VA to set up a process for each new project. For example, if your organization builds websites, each project may have sub-folders called design, copy, development, code, and contracts. When a team member needs to reference a document, they will know exactly which folder to check. Your VA can make sure the team is using the folders correctly and only notify you when there is a question or issue that needs to be resolved.

 

Conclusion

As a small business owner, organization is both important and difficult. Without the right tools, your company can feel like an out-of-control airplane that you cannot get a handle on. Getting organized requires two key components. First, you must utilize tools like the ones listed here in order to ensure everyone is on the same page. Second, you must be realistic about your ability to manage these tools. If you don’t have the time, you should be delegating these crucial responsibilities to someone who has the experience to get the job done, like a virtual assistant.

 

Let’s Talk

Now that we have shown you how vital and beneficial a virtual assistant can be to your company, let us find the perfect one for you!

Please send us a note at contact@thehragentadmin.com to set up your FREE introductory phone call!

 

#Productivity #Organization #Small Business