When you are running an advertising agency, sometimes the question of what kinds of tools you’ll need pops up. There are some obvious ones, such as art, photo editing, and copywriting tools as well as employees who know what they’re doing to make your firm successful. There are other tools, however, that may slip your mind.
What are you doing your business accounting on? How are you communicating with your employees and customers? How are you keeping track of employee time and pay? Here are some of the various categories of management tools to take a look at to assist you along the way.
Let’s Checkout Various Four checklists Of Tools For A Successful Advertising Agency:
1. Accounting
Every business needs the means to keep track of its money. You need to track the money in, the money out, and what the money is actually being spent on. Larger firms have dedicated accountants but if you’re a small firm, you may need to rely on either outside help or a program to do it.
It’s likely for the best if you use a combination when you can afford to. Keeping track of things day to day can easily be done with a number of different software suites. If you’re good with math and creating spreadsheets, you may be able to work with something as simple as Office Excel.
In addition to this, you will have to keep in mind that tax season will come around. Whether you need to submit your taxes quarterly as an entrepreneur or have it done once a year, you will need either a software suite or a tax professional to take care of the work for you.
If you have employees, you will also need to make sure appropriate takes are not only taken from their pay but also issue any and all tax documents your employees will need to complete their own taxes for the year.
Speaking of pay, you will also need the means to get your employees their paychecks. There are many payroll services out there. Doing a google search or asking other business owners will point you in the direction to find the perfect service for your needs.
2. Time clock/scheduling
You will need a means of keeping track of your employees’ working hours. This can come in a variety of different forms. There is software available for employees to clock in digitally which can tie into your payroll systems.
Some may prefer to have a physical timesheet filled out by each employee. Yet others may want to put a lot of trust into their employees and have them verbally report their time in and out.
Each of these systems has its ups and downs. Verbal communication relies on your employee’s words and can turn out to be unreliable. A physical timesheet does generate a lot of waste and can still be lied on. Also, if you lose the only copy of an employee’s timesheet you will then have to rely on their word.
In this day and age, a digital time clock that is hard to lie to is going to be the best option. While the system does have a chance of going down, it can then be backed up with a physical timesheet. This also ensures that few people have access to an employee’s timesheet, making it more secure. For more on managing your agency, click here.
Related Resource: What is a Digital Marketing Agency and What Can It Do For You?
3. Interoffice communication
There are many different ways to manage interoffice communication. In this day and age, it has become common to use chat applications to communicate between employees. This can happen not only to employees in the same office but can help facilitate communication when an employee is out of the office. There are many programs available for this purpose.
For more in-depth conversations, telephone, video, and in-person conversations remain the best option. The logic behind this is that it is hard to read a person based on text alone, even if you know them well.
Misunderstandings can happen at times. Therefore, making sure you have a solid system set up for these kinds of meetings is vital. This may take some trial and error, but the results will help you have a better relationship with your employees and a smoothly communicating office.
4. Email
I decided to put email separately because an email address can make or break your first impression on a customer. Always have an email that is dedicated solely to your business.
To start out, it is okay to use a generic email service. You will want to make sure that, as soon as you can, you get a hold of an email domain name that is solely for your business.
Sometimes, especially if you use email marketing, your email address is going to be the first impression a potential customer gets of you. If it’s the email address you had as a young teen, with many letters and nonsense, or even swear words, you do not come off as a professional.
Instead, simply your name or your business name, with your domain name will serve to make people think of your firm as a professional business and make them more likely to want to do business with you.
While this was just a broad generalization of tools, you’ll need to make your Advertising agency successful, this should give you some ideas of what you’ll need to look out for. Get what you need to start out and expand on the tools through time to make your firm shine.
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