Setting Up Your Success Routine

Habits and routines are KEY in maintaining your data management. Do you constantly forget to brush your teeth in the morning? Probably not, because it is part of your morning routine. Habits can be a bad thing, but, they can also be good when implemented consciously! Intentionally create routines and processes that your future self with thank you later for. Let’s review some suggestions for routines to help you create your processes:

•  Do your bookkeeping data entry every week, or every month. Do not wait longer than a month. You want to know what last month’s reports are showing within two weeks of the month ending.

• Set aside a special day and time to work on your paperwork and bookkeeping. You must make time for it. It must become a habit or ritual. I call it the “Weekly Win Day”. Every Saturday morning, grab your car folder you brought indoors the night before, grab your notebook, grab a coffee or a glass of wine, put on some jazz music, and enter your paperwork. Relax and enjoy it. Relish the feeling of being on top of your paperwork. This is your story, this is your data, this is your business. 

• Set aside a special day and time to work on your paperwork and bookkeeping. You must make time for it. It must become a habit or ritual. I call it the “Weekly Win Day”. This is not repeated because of a typo. It is repeated because it is extremely important! You could choose one Super Saturday morning every month, and put the entire month in, from start to finish, or take a few minutes every morning to enter the paperwork from the day before, and to clear your bank feed. Maybe you choose to set aside a Fabulous Friday morning, and put in the previous week. Maybe you choose a Magic Monday night, (magic, because your paperwork get’s magically done!). Whatever works for you. Though, I do suggest weekly. If it is not you doing the actual bookkeeping, you will still need to set time aside either daily or weekly to manage your paperwork, and correspond with the bookkeeper, forwarding requesting documents that you may have missed. Trust me, you’ll always be missing something.

• Aim to intentionally stick with this weekly routine for Four weeks. Studies show that it takes about three weeks to create a new habit. If you cannot maintain the routine, do not be disappointed with yourself. Acknowledge that the routine you set up does not work for you and change the environment or routine such that it does work for you. Catch up and never give up. The bigger the pile grows, the less you will enjoy doing it. Doing a few minutes a day entering the transactions from the day before may work better for you than having a growing pile staring at you every week.

• Use technology and processes together to make your life easier.  For example, I only ever buy gas at Esso, and I only use my business bank account to fill my business vehicle. Because of that real life rule I’ve created for myself “Only Buy GAS at Esso, and ALL gas paid with card X is the Business Vehicle”, I can set up an auto rule in my bank feed on Quickbooks to put all Esso transactions from that card to “Vehicle Gas” expense, without me even looking at it or touching the app.  Learn the tech, it will make your life easier.  Work with your tech, it will make your life beautiful.

• If you fall behind, catch up and never give up. When catching up, do one month at a time, from start to finish. If you are doing your own bookkeeping, reconcile that one month (confirm all entries in the bookkeeping are on the bank statement and credit card statement) and solve unknowns before moving onto the next month. Entering more than one month at time may cause you to repeat errors that you would have understood and resolved when reconciling the first month, if you had focused on one month at a time. Entering and reconciling one month at a time when doing catch up also helps the pile seem surmountable. If you are not trying to tackle a huge pile, just one month at a time, and it will feel more manageable.

• Write down important due dates, such as GST/HST, payroll taxes, tax installments, etc., on your calendar. Every Monday morning check this calendar to see what government due dates need to be paid that week. If you’re ready, go ahead and pay them on this weekly win day. No one says you have to pay ON the due date. Paying a few days early, on your weekly win day, takes it off your “I have to remember to do this” list. Remembering that you have to do something takes up Brain Bandwidth. You only have so much bandwidth, spend it wisely!

• Looking at what is due once a week and paying it then and there is a great way to be efficient with your brain bandwidth, and also saves you from late penalties. Don’t give CRA more money than you have to! This is why I suggest a Fabulous Friday, Super Saturday or Sunday, or a Magic Monday, so that you can not only take care of the paperwork from the week that just passed, but you can also prepare yourself for the coming week. If you choose to do a Fabulous Friday (which is a great idea because the week has only just finished), the write down a to do note for yourself Monday Morning, and start your work week off on the right foot.

• Every month look at your unpaid bills list and your unpaid invoices list. Clear up anything that does not make sense. Look at these lists monthly even if you have outsourced your bookkeeping.

• Create and keep a monthly checklist. Checklists hold more power than you realize. Make sure everything is done on that checklist. Find an example Business Checklist here

• Checklists and Calendars are how you win. Your brain has a limited amount of bandwidth. Spend it wisely. 

• Every month review the Income Statement and compare it to the prior few months. Make sure there is nothing that jumps out as missing or incorrect. Then really take an analytical eye to it, and see if there are higher expenses in certain places than you realized. Are you happy with the profit? Why or why not? 

• You should also plan to put aside a percentage of your monthly profit into a savings account for income tax each month. Unlike employees, no one is deducting income tax from your income for you! As your business profit increases, so will your taxes. Your accountant can suggest a percentage based on your situation. I personally do 20%

• Every month, review the Balance Sheet. Make sure there is nothing that jumps out as missing or incorrect. Then take a look at how much Shareholder Draws or Equity you have pulled out so far. Is this greater or less than the profit of the business so far? Then see how much your GST/HST payable balance has increased from last month. 

• Each month put the GST/HST you have collected for the month into your business savings account and do not touch it. You can also put aside any other liabilities collected, such as payroll deductions from employees for the month, into this bank account. 

• Reward yourself with a fancy beverage of your choice as you bathe in the completion of another month’s worth of information tracking. Feel the control you have over your business.

​I cannot understate how much time and money these intentional and simple things can save! It only takes 10 seconds to put the receipt into a folder in your car instead of tossing it in the back seat and having to search and gather all your paperwork later on. So make this a habit. You may find that entering your expenses every week only takes about 30 minutes for your business once you begin to get quicker at it. If you leave it until it is a large pile, sorting through all the papers will end up taking exponentially longer. Reconciling the bank every month, and clearing the bank feed every week, helps if there is a transaction that is missing a receipt. You will have a much better chance of remembering what that transaction was and was for. Set up and start these processes, routines, habits, and rituals now, and your business will be humming along later instead of careening off the rails.
Make these routines your own, but make them. I call it “Setting Up Your Success Routine”. Studies have shown that it takes about three weeks to create a new habit. Also, keep in mind that changing Systems is Easier Than Changing Behaviors. If your system fails, don’t try and change your behavior; try to change your system. 
Pill boxes marked with the days of the week is a good example of changing a system instead of a behavior. We often have the best intentions, but we often forget until something is worked into our routine. Even routines are systems that may need changing. If you forget to take your medication each day, simply trying to change only your behavior is often a failing challenge. Change the system, change the routine. Maybe you could put your medication bottle next to your coffee maker and take your pill every time you make your morning coffee. You may find that then the question becomes, ‘did I take the medication’? Tweak the routine, buy a pill box marked with the days of the week, and refill it for Sunday to Saturday the moment you take your Saturday pill. 
Use this perspective as you develop your business routines. If they are not working, change them. It is easier to change a routine or process than to try and change just the behavior. If Friday nights do not work for you, try a time that does, such as Monday mornings. 
Work with yourself. There’s the phrase “Don't change your habits, change your habitat.” For example, do you constantly leave your socks on the floor in the living room? Put a hamper in the living room.   Do you constantly leave paperwork on that side desk in the hallways? Put a folder there specifically for the business documents.  Willpower is hard to control. We have more control over our environment, so set up the environment such that these processes are easier to put into practice. Our brain has less bandwidth than we think, and we will forget things that we were confident that we would remember. But we rarely forget to brush our teeth! Similarly, set up habits and routines that need no brain bandwidth to maintain, and you will set yourself, and your business, up for success.