If you’re running a small business and it’s managed to stay afloat throughout the pandemic – congratulations! This has been an extremely difficult year for the vast majority of businesses and many have found themselves collapsing, seeking bail outs, making staff redundant and more.
If you are still pushing on through, you may have a pretty tough company on your hands and may be considering looking into expansion. Now, when you first start out as a small business, chances are, you work independently.
As small business owners, we tend to take on the bulk of hard work on our own two shoulders, only outsourcing occasional tasks where absolutely essential. This is fine when you’re just getting things off he ground.
It keeps costs low and widens profit margins. However, as you begin to experience success, it may be time to start considering accepting a few helping hands and knowing exactly who you should be bringing on board or collaborating with to make a success of your business.
One person can’t do everything, so you will need to accept help eventually. But at the same time, you want to make sure you’re not wasting your money and are making a genuine investment with each and every person you decide to work with.
Here are just a few professionals you may want to consider when it comes to making the biggest success of your business as possible.
Manufacturers
If you’ve been manufacturing your own goods until this point, that’s great. It’s always positive to be able to make your products yourself. But as demand grows, you may find that you are unable to keep up and could find yourself losing out on a lot of potential sales through simply not having the necessary levels of stock available.
This is where you might want to consider outsourcing your manufacturing. When you outsource your manufacturing, you will strike an agreement with a business that can take the raw materials required to create your products and who will put these materials together to create your end product on your behalf.
The techniques, machinery, equipment and staff required to do this will depend on the products you’re producing, but chances are, there’s a large scale manufacturer out there who can create your products en mass, whether necessary processes include sewing, 3D printing, machining, rotational or injection molding, vacuum forming or anything else. When choosing a manufacturer, you may want to put a small batch order in first.
This will allow you to examine the quality of their manufacturing and ensure that you’re happy with products that they will produce for you.
IT Support
The coronavirus and Covid-19 pandemic has seen countless companies go remote or switch to E Commerce this year. So, now, more than ever, you’re going to have to take extra steps to manage your business’ IT and tech as effectively and safely as possible.
It’s absolutely essential that you make sure that any devices or software and applications that you and your employees are using to work are in full working order at all times.
If you or your staff begin to experience problems with the devices you’re using, you will find it difficult to work to a high standard. Whether that’s processing orders, communicating with customers, protecting data or anything else. Having some sort of IT support can help you to keep things up and running and can protect your business from cyber attack as best possible.
Now, you can build an employed and in-house IT team. But nowadays, very few small businesses actually do this.
Instead, it’s likely to be more convenient and cost effective to outsource to an IT support or IT management company or agency.
A Bookkeeper
Of course, when you’re making more sales, chances are you’re processing more transactions, dealing with more invoices, taking on more data, paying more tax and generally finding yourself with a whole lot more financial records to keep a track of.
Finding time to manage these records alongside all of your other responsibilities?
Not only can that be pretty difficult, but you’re also much more likely to make mistakes, lose certain information or make other slip ups. This is where a bookkeeper can come in particularly useful.
A bookkeeper will help to record all of your financial transactions and keep you financially organised. You can find 6 Reasons You Need a Full Charge Bookkeeper here.
An Accountant
Once you have your finances in check and fully recorded, it’s time to start considering using an accountant. Every business has to file a tax return at the end of the financial year, detailing what they’ve made, what they owe in taxes and, ultimately, paying the outstanding taxes.
An accountant can help you to do all of these things accurately.
Not only does this help to ensure that you don’t overpay or underpay tax, but it also ensures that your business won’t face legal repercussions down the line as a result of incorrect filings or payments.
Now, when you choose an accountant, you should focus on two factors, qualifications and experience. Generally speaking, accountants have to be professionally qualified to be legally registered and, thus, in order to officially deal with your accounts.
The qualifications that they need will vary depending on where you are located, but a quick search can determine exactly what qualifications an accountant in your local area will need.
Once you have a few options, it’s time to consider there experience. At the end of the day, the more experience an accountant has, the more likely they are to handle your accounts professionally and well.
These are just a few different professionals from different fields who you may find yourself in need of support from as your business expands. But hopefully, being made aware of them will come in useful. Each can prove invaluable to your company!
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