Author: Eva Piperevska

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5 Tips for Working on an Airplane

2017-11-09 | Tutorials and how to's | No Comments

If you have to fly regularly you are probably wondering how you are going to have enough time to manage your schedule to properly run your business. You certainly cannot afford to waste valuable time and you have to find a way to be effective while traveling. But, have you ever tried working while on an airplane? There are so many distractions that make this task next to impossible.

Lucky for you, there are certain things you can do to be productive when working on an Airplane.

Here are 5 tips:

  1. Dress to impress

 

Think about function and comfort in the first place to get the most done. Wear the most comfortable clothes you can, no matter how long the flight is. If you need to come off the plane looking professional, bring clothes to change into. That way you can still maintain the look without suffering during the flight.

  1. Always Ask the Best

 

The best option for ensuring maximum comfort is asking for first class if your client is willing to pay for it. Since this is hardly the case, make the best of what you have by asking for a couple of things in coach.

See if you can get a seat in the middle section of the plane to avoid the most distractions, and request a window seat to ensure you don’t have to get up every time the passenger seating next to you want to use the restroom.

 

  1. Prepare your Trip

 

Make sure you have the right equipment for working in the air:

  • Laptop or tablet: You’ll be much more productive than with a smartphone
  • Noise-cancelling headphones: Use them to block out distractions or to listen to relaxing music while you work.
  • Pillow: Keep your head propped up comfortably to reduce neck strain while you do your work.
  • Portable charger: It is a good idea to always have it around. And, of course, always make sure to keep your laptop battery at full charge before the flight.

 

  1. Prepare for Air Travel

 

Although many flights offer Wi-Fi service, you can never be sure that you’ll have Internet access. Be prepared to work offline and ensure you have everything you need to complete your work. Create an agenda of activities you can do and try using a tool like Snagit to take screenshots of web resources.

  1. Turn Anxiety into a Challenge 

 

No matter how hard you try, there is always a chance that something unexpected will come up and make your working in the air impossible.

If the worst scenario happens, always have a joker in your hand. Bringing a learning resource is a great idea. For example, keep Ebooks on your Laptop.  You can sit back and enjoy some learning that will also positively impact your business.

 

You have to admit that staying effective while traveling is quite a challenge. However, if you have the right techniques and tools, anything is possible.

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By Eva Piperevska

6 Most Important Pieces of Information Every Invoice Should Have

2017-11-09 | Guide, Invoicing, Tutorials and how to's | No Comments

When someone asks how to avoid legal trouble in their invoice, they are usually interested in only one thing: how to ensure they get paid for the work they provide.

If you are one of them, you are probably wondering if there is anything you can include in your invoice to make it more binding and make sure that you will get paid on time, because, after all, there is nothing worse than wasting valuable time chasing payments.  

The simple answer is that, there a few things that you can do to make the invoice more ‘enforceable’:

 

  1. The Correct Billing Contact

 

From the moment you start the project, make sure you request the contact details of the person who is responsible for paying you. Depending on the size of your client’s company they may have an accounting department that handles their billing.  It is much easier to deal with this individual directly, because this way you will be sure that the accounting received your invoice, and it might be easier to follow up on late payments with them directly.

 

  1. A Unique Identification Number in Each Invoice

 

Create some sort of numbering system for organizing and arranging your invoices. This could be a basic numbering framework that begins with 001 or it could be by date. This will enable you to keep your invoices organized for tax purposes. A good numbering system will also make things easier and a lot more professional, should you need to follow up with a client on a late invoice.

 

  1. Matching Invoice Terms and Contract Terms

 

When it comes to invoicing clients, you have to ensure that all the data information matches with the details written in your contract. For instance, if your contract says your terms are net 30, you can’t make a request to be paid upon receipt of your invoice. In case you’re not using a contract that includes payment terms, you’ll want to change that immediately.

 

  1. Specific Details Requested by Your Client

 

It is always better to ask your clients upfront if they have specific requirements for what information must be incorporated on an invoice. For example, some companies might require that your invoice includes your Tax ID Number, others may ask for a detailed rundown of the services you’re billing for. Few of them may indicate that invoices should be sent electronically or via snail mail.  Keep in mind that not having the right information on your invoice might delay the payment.

 

  1. Date and Terms of Payment

 

Every invoice should include the date of issue and articulate the terms of payment. The exact terms you use are up to you and your client, but here are a few suggestions:

  • Pay attention to the language you use for payment terms. Studies have shown that this has a great impact on the likelihood and time to get paid. Something like the following is optimal language: “Thank you – we really appreciate your business! Please send payment within 21 days of receiving this invoice.”
  • Be clear and specific. Clients may not know what the term “Net30” implies, so writing “within 30 days” or even include the specific due date might be easier for everyone to understand.
  • Avoid using “Due upon receipt” whenever possible. You might think this language will help you get paid faster, but not specifying an actual deadline can result in delayed payment since some clients may interpret it as “pay whenever you can.”

 

  1. Billable Services Specifics

 

Each invoice line should indicate the exact services that are being billed. Try to be as clear and thorough as possible. If the client is being charged a flat rate for services, use your judgment to determine the level of details needed to specify what they’ve received. If you are billing by the hour, make sure to specify the hourly rate, the number of hours billed and what they’ve received for that time.

 

Final Advice: Always Discuss Payment Terms Up Front

A proactive approach is always the ideal way to ensure your invoices will be paid on time. Talk about payment terms in early conversations with clients. A simple question like “My other clients pay me within 21 days of completing the project. Will that work for you?” might do the trick. If you notice any red flags in their reaction, trust your gut and move on.  

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By Eva Piperevska

5 Tips How to Find a Friendly Bank for your Business

2017-11-02 | Guide | No Comments

5 Tips How to Find a Friendly Bank for your Business

Finding a bank that is going to handle your small business it’s not a piece of cake and requires a lot of work. When you select a bank for personal checking and savings account, convenience and fees are the two primary factors that influence your decision, but chances are that your business probably has greater needs.

So, whether your needs are simple or complex, choosing a bank that meets your needs is essential. Consider these 5 factors in your search for your small business friendly bank.

 

Factor 1: Business Transactions

First of all, consider the kind of transactions you do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. Do you make daily cash deposits? You should also think about the way you receive your revenue from your clients, and how you pay your bills for your business.

You probably should find a bank that doesn’t limit the amount of cash per billing period, and one that meets your needs in order to save you time.

 

Factor 2: Unexpected Fees

If you considered the kind of transactions you’ll need your bank to handle, it’s time to find out how much it will cost. Get a detailed breakdown of the fees your bank will charge for each service and be on a constant lookout for unforeseen fees and  “free checking” advertising tricks. They may have many limitations or charge for online payment service.

Look for a business checking account that closely fits your needs and banking habits and always know what your bank offer includes in order to lessen the impact of fees.

 

Factor 3: Additional Business Services

Many banks that offer small business checking accounts also offer additional services catered to small business owners. They may provide payroll service, employee benefits administration, send invoices, collect client payments, provide investment advice and even tax preparation assistance.

Consider not just the services you need right now, but those you may need in the next two-to-five years as your business grows.

 

Factor 4: Personal Perks and Service

If you value a personal touch than you probably should choose a small local bank where you can develop a personal relationship with your banker. These banks may be more adjusted to local market conditions. On the other hand, large national banks may offer a lot of convenient ATM and branch locations, more online services and greater perk for using their services.

Whether you choose a community bank or a national bank, the most important things is that their hours of operation are convenient for your business. Inconvenient schedules can cost you time and money and nothing can make up for not being able to get help when you need it.

 

Factor 5: Borrowing Needs

Sooner or later, your business may need access to financing, whether a small business credit card or a loan to fund expansion.  Ask potential banks about their loan options for small businesses, like whether they have landing authority and how large a loan can they approve. Compare their published interest rates with those of their competitors.

Take into consideration that smaller banks are generally considered to offer more flexible lending options for small businesses, but larger banks may be more willing to issue corporate credit cards.

 

Once you find a bank, view it as a long-term relationship. Meet with your bank at least once a year to offer an update on your business’ finances. They may see your growing business as an opportunity to provide more useful services. A friendly bank is proven to be a significant partner to your small business, helping you borrow capital and plan for the future, so put some effort into finding the right bank and nurturing your relationship.

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By Eva Piperevska

The 6 Best Free Design Tools to Create Social Media Graphics

2017-10-31 | Guide | No Comments

The 6 Best Free Design Tools to Create Social Media Graphics

In the past, it was more than enough to share an image on social media every now and then. Now, if you’re not using images, you’re already behind.  The images you create should immediately catch your follower’s eyes and contain something that will influence them to click and share and continue looking for the next great thing you post. You also don’t want to spend a lot of time or money creating these images, because social media posts have a very short lifecycle.

The great news is there are a lot of tools out there to create engaging images that stand out on social media, and many of the best are free.

 

 

Canva is one of the best free tools for powerful template-based graphics creation. It offers a wide range of templates, image and illustration assets, dozens of fonts and text styles. The best thing about Canva is that it doesn’t matter if you’ve never designed an image in your life. It uses a simple drag and drop interface that allows beginners to start quickly and with just a minimal effort to create high-quality images that are great for sharing on social media or blog, design attractive graphics, presentations, and posters.

 

 

This free tool lets you choose from several professional templates sorted by industry category, design type, and size and then customize that template with easy to use filters. You can also replace template images with one from Adobe’s royalty-free library, or one of your own uploads. Unlike many tools, Spark makes it easy for you to change the design layout or even the entire template. Beyond their “post” graphic design type, Spark also provides two other project types: pages and videos.  

 

 

Created by the social media scheduling tool, Buffer, Pablo is the best tool for quickly creating great social media images.  The workflow is very simple: Choose a template or just an image for your blank template provided by sites like Unsplash and Pixabay. From there, choose from one of three sizes, each fitted specifically for Pinterest, Instagram, or Facebook/Twitter. Image customization is limited—choose from a few preset filters, designed to provide the right level of contrast between your image and your text.

 

 

Desynger is a mobile app that lets you design polished social media images. Start with a template for the social media network of your choosing, or start from scratch. From there, build your design with Desygner’s library of royalty-free images and design elements such as shapes and icons. Even in its mobile app, Desygner doesn’t skimp on features. Multiple menus allow you to hyper-customize image and text settings, while never becoming cumbersome to use on a small screen. Desynger’s web app works almost identically, with sidebar menus to help you select the design assets and effects you need.

 

 

Snappa is ideal for text-heavy social media images. It includes a thorough template library, although it puts more emphasis than other apps on getting the background image just right. From there, Snappa offers an effects sidebar that helps you create the perfect image effects for your post–whether that means darkening or coloring the background image to make white text pop or brightening the image to highlight dark text.  Snappa is similarly thorough when it comes to text. Easily edit your text from the sidebar, adjusting font, size, alignment, line spacing, and opacity.

 

 

Best for more advanced social media graphic design. It includes many of the classic graphic design functions of tools like Photoshop, Sketch, and GIMP—such as layers, drawing tools, grouping, shapes, text, effects with a much more simplified, easy-to-learn interface. While Gravit Designer is ideal for building your own designs from scratch, it does come with a small library of templates, illustrations, and icons that are pre-sized for uses like blog posts and social media images.

These graphic design apps are great whether you want to draw extra attention to a blog post you’re sharing or you want to design a full-blown branded Facebook ad campaign.

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By Eva Piperevska

5 tips to grow your travel business with online marketing

2017-10-26 | ALL, Guide, Tutorials and how to's | No Comments

5 tips to grow your travel business with online marketing

The internet over the past few years has become an important marketing channel that funnels most of the bookings and sales in this industry. It affects how travel agencies reach their customers, how they promote their tours, and even how they do their bookings.

With that stated – online marketing can be a single marketing tool for tour providers and travel agencies to get started or grow their business.

But in order to grow a successful business, they will need to understand how online marketing works, where can they find their customers and how to optimise to get the most out of it.

Here are several tips you can take into consideration if you plan to promote your travel business using online marketing tools:

Tell a story (Blog)

When you want to promote a travel destination you must be good at digital storytelling. Telling a story in your social media campaigns with quality content is inevitable. To do that use pictures, videos and real-life stories in the description of your travel destination to catch reader’s attention. Know your audience and be creative. Share them on social networks.

Engage Customers through Social Media

Social media is the part of the online marketing that can bring the most value for tour operators and travel agencies. Tough it’s important to know how to use each network and on which of them you can find your targeted audience.

Also, you need to share and post daily, become likable, but don’t go all promotional all the time. Instead, have fun. Publish beautiful pictures, create conversations, answer questions. Join the industry groups on LinkedIn and Facebook to find partnerships and share experiences.

Integrate Direct Booking on your Website

Direct booking from your website can shorten your customers time and increase your conversion rate. Having a multi-function Book Now button on your website allows more control over your small tour business. Once you start driving traffic to one place you can easily have control on the booking process and have a view on the customer experiences in one place.

Use the information from Popular Travel Marketplaces

Tripadvisor, Trustpilot, or Touristlink, promote tours through customer reviews. That is the best option for free promotion with organic traffic. Those reviews are seen from people all over the world. And people trust them. So use this channel to increase the traffic to your website and along with that your bookings.

Be Mobile

Did you know that 87% of internet users have a smartphone? Is your website mobile friendly? A lot of customers today read posts, emails, and website content through their mobile devices. So when you start publishing your content online –   check how it appears on your smartphone or tablet screen. You also need to know if your page has fast load time, big pictures, easy navigation, search and selection, and clear call to actions. There are a lot of tools you can use to make your website more friendly – from Mobile Friendly test to free WordPress plugins perfect for mobile optimization.

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By Eva Piperevska

3 Science proven Ways to Take Breaks at Work

2017-10-24 | ALL, Guide | No Comments

3 Science proven Ways to Take Breaks at Work

Have you been at least once in a situation where you have eaten your lunch break at your desk?

We all get so focused in our work lives that often forget that we are humans and we need to do normal activities in order to take care of our bodies, live healthily and spend time for ourselves.

So my question in this post is – do you take proper breaks at work? How long does your usually break take?

Here are 3 proven by science ways to take breaks and feel more relaxed at work:

Distract and Recharge

Studies have shown that intense focus on work makes us less focused in the long run. According to the University of Illinois psychology professor Alejandro Lleras – our brains naturally stop registering sights, sounds, and feelings if they remain consistent for a period of time with how they react to thoughts that remain consistent for long periods of time. “If sustained attention to a sensation makes that sensation vanish from our awareness, sustained attention to a thought should also lead to that thought’s disappearance from our mind,” Lleras explains.

So instead of constantly thinking about a single problem’s solution, you can create distractions that will take away your attention from the task, so after you can come back with a fresh mind.

Regarding that try out this method by watching cute puppy videos, play Scrabble, talk to a friend – but don’t take too long – after all you are still at work!

Relax your Eyes

Most of us spend around 6-9 hours a day on a digital device so it is not surprising that our eyes take the burden of much of our tech-fueled lives. Fortunately, there is a simple exercise that will help you take a vision break and reduce your eye fatigue called: 20-20-20. Every 20 minutes look away from your computer screen and focus on an item at least 20 feet away for at least 20 seconds.  Easy as 1-2-3.

Besides taking breaks to protect your eyes, there are other simple ways to protect your vision throughout the day:

  • Dim your lights: Your computer screen should be the brightest thing in the room.
  • Reduce glare: Try an anti-glare screen cover, clean your screen regularly, and make sure you’re not too close to a window.
  • Make your workspace more eye-friendly: appropriate ergonomics help diminish weakness in your entire body but your eyes especially.

Let Your Mind Wander

There are a couple of various methods of meditation that show positive results – everything from reducing anxiety and stress to increase the ability to focus. If a zen routine isn’t your style, there is another way.

A report published in Science magazine found that simply taking some time to let your mind wander can help you come up with more ideas, clever thoughts and uncover hidden answers when you’re back at work. The best part is that you might not even need to do anything. When we stop paying attention to anything, our brain’s Default Mode Network takes over which gives our mind a well-deserved rest.

NYU psychology professor Scott Barry Kaufman found that daydreaming is an incredible way to access our unconscious and allow ideas that have been silently incubating to bubble up into our conscious. Meaning that while you believe that you’re doing nothing, you’re actually mining profundities of your mind for more creative solutions to the problems you’re confronting.

 

When done correctly, breaks can actually be the ultimate productivity hack, because they help us relax and allow us to do more in less time. Contrary of the popular believes in our culture of doing, where breaks are considered to be unproductive.

To reduce long working hours and burnout, simply take a break. We know we all deserve it.

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By Eva Piperevska

3 ways to avoid burnout and boost your team’s productivity

2017-10-19 | Guide | No Comments

3 ways to avoid burnout and boost your team’s productivity

The number of tips and tricks to boost your team’s productivity is constantly rising. The problem is that much of these tips focus on short-term performance, and they damage the efficiency in the long run. Instead of focusing on team’s well-being and prosperity, teams are putting too much pressure to complete the ever-growing to-do list which can result in long working hours, stress, and eventually, burnout.

Luckily, there are a number of sustainable solutions that you can implement to achieve team productivity.

Make Work Meaningful

People are satisfied when they work on something that’s important to them and towards something they feel invested in. There is a direct connection between discovering meaning in work and high productivity.

Start by finding out what motivates your team

Create a survey to find out your employees’ satisfaction, asking the question: “What would cause you to take another job with a different company tomorrow?”

Provide regular one-to-one feedback sessions with your team members. These feedback sessions shouldn’t just be a one-way talk on how the team member is performing, but a chance to see how they are enjoying their role, talk about their future goals and plan how they aim to achieve them.  

Implement importance through professional development

Help your team members find meaning in their work by providing them with self-reflection. Ask them questions like: What are you working for? What impact do you want to create in your job?

This can help employees feel that they are trusted and respected, and increase the level of commitment and productivity. Once you’ve identified what impact they would like to make and how you can start by providing them with more investment in their work and create professional development plans so they can achieve that impact.

Ensure Focused Workloads

Prevent your team members from trying to handle too many tasks at once. Studies have shown that switching to a new task while in a middle of another increases the time it takes for both tasks to be finished.

Streamline tasks with project sprints and retrospectives

Sprints can empower all kinds of teams to work in a more focused way. Setting key points with your team is going to ensure that your work is focused and eliminate the chance of bouncing between unrelated tasks. Employees can streamline their tasks over each sprint when moving tasks through to completion. The team can glance back at what has been accomplished during that sprint, in order to improve the work productivity.

Establish healthy working guidelines

In this era of constant Slack notifications, emails on phones, and working across time zones, having a defined working cut-off hours from 9-5 isn’t so easy to implement. Individuals who are unable to detach from work during their downtime experienced more exhaustion compared to the ones who are able to distance themselves from highly demanding work. It is proven that these people can recover from stress more easily, which leads to higher productivity levels.

In order to establish a healthy working environment in which team members should feel free to distance themselves from work in their downtime, you ought to establish some guidelines for when employees are not expected to read and respond to messages, such as 6pm-9am. You can also encourage team members to set up a do-not-disturb period for notifications.

Support the Work-Life Balance of your team members

In order to increase your employee’s productivity, you should make sure that their time at work supports their well-being.

Provide flexible working hours

Support your team well-being by offering adaptable working options. Your employees would like the possibility to work from home from time to time. This practice should be encouraged because it boosts the team productivity. Workers who were allowed to work flexibly achieved more and were much happier in their work.

There are a number of tools that can help you enable effective remote working:  Slack, Uberconference, GitHub, Dropbox, and Harvest or Time Doctor.

Encourage well-being activities at work

Between everyday responsibilities, it is very hard for people to find the time for activities that are useful to their physical and emotional wellbeing. For that matter, some companies are providing the opportunity to support well-being inside the work environment, and there are seeing extraordinary outcomes and productivity.

So regardless of whether you are more inspired by mindfulness sessions or you think that your team would appreciate an additional physical activity, try to get an expert to your office to convey a weekly wellbeing program. You could also offer each team member an individual well-being budget or an extracurricular course of their choice.

 

There are a lot of great ideas on how to improve your team’s productivity. Keep in mind that every team is different, so the best practice is to discuss these issue and come up with a solution that you feel comfortable using and will lead to great results. The best solution, however, is to be strategic, not obsessive with your to-do list.

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By Eva Piperevska

Introducing Invoice Management by Team members

2017-10-10 | From Envoice | No Comments

Introducing Invoice Management between Team members

Invoicing management can often be a one-person job in small businesses. But in most cases its a job done by several people including the CEOs, managers, sales team, and accounting. That way this complex job can be delegated to several people who can finish it efficiently.

We are excited to introduce to your our new feature – Team Collaboration 

By adding this new feature we are opening all Envoice invoicing features not only for one person but to all your colleges who can use it with only one general registration.

That way the whole team can:

  • work together on creating, editing and sending invoices
  • create reports,
  • change payment gateways,
  • receive email notifications and automatic reminders and much more.

 

Team Collaboration is one of the series features we added last month to improve the overall Envoice experience to all of you. Let us know your thoughts and feedback below.

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By Eva Piperevska

7 tools for easy automatic finance management

2017-10-04 | ALL | No Comments

7 tools for easy automatic finance management

Owning a business is a full-time job that requests a lot of energy and time, especially if you are a small business owner. But with every business comes the burden of keeping up with the finances – which is a time-consuming neverending job.

From invoices to expenses to billing and bookkeeping, dealing with IRS or accountants, each small business owner find themselves stuck in this maze trying desperately to automate this process and make their lives easier.

The good this is that technology these days has given small business owners tools which will help them in the finance part of their business and save them time.

Here is a list of 10 financial tools for your small business:

  • Accounting software – Business News Daily’s recommends you look for these features while choosing your Accounting software: basic accounting tasks like as invoicing, expense tracking, and client/vendor contact management; automation of billing and recurring payments, quote and estimate creation, tax preparation, multiple-user access, payroll processing, mobile access, and integration with programs such as point-of-sale software, credit card processing, and Google Apps. Among most popular Accounting software you can choose Xero, Quickbooks or Freshbooks.

 

  • Invoicing software – if you are just starting your business, you offer services to few clients or you are a freelancer, you are in need of only several features like recurring invoices, reports, automatic reminders, create, duplicate, send or download PDF invoices, notifications if an invoice is paid or unpaid and connection with different payment methods. In those cases, you can choose from Invoicly, Envoice, or Wave apps.

 

  • Budgeting Tools – Having a realistic budget — and sticking to it — is one of the most important things when running a small business. The Accounting software can help you create a budget for your business but if you are interested in stand-alone budgeting tool, try out PlanGuru.

 

  • Payroll Management System – if your business has more than 2 employees you need to have a software that can help you with payroll management as it can be time-consuming and you can make lots of mistakes. To avoid this you can use tools like SurePayroll or Zenefits to help you streamline your payroll process.

 

  • Cash Flow Analysis tool – even though you can be using accounting software, there are solutions like Float who can help you keep track on your cash flow on a daily basis, which is a crucial task when you are starting a business. Cash flow analysis helps you track ups and downs in your cash balance on a daily basis making it easier for you to forecast your financial future.

 

  • Inventory Management – when it comes to tracking your goods, generating sales reports, setting up automatic low inventory alerts, and managing order packing and shipping, one of the tools that can make your life easier are SOS Inventory or Scout’s topShelf.

 

  • Expense Tracking – little expenses like meals, cabs rides or gas can be very hard to track when you are running a business and bringing a lot of cash flows. Expense report tool such as Expensify or Xpenditure, can help you scan receipts or add cash expenses from your mobile devices and upload them; easily import the information, do rebilling, do expense accounting, and reimbursement if needed.

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By Eva Piperevska