3 Things I Had to Learn For Business That I Didn’t Already Know

I never thought much the business tools I would need to use or even learn when I first began blogging. Now all these years later I am a freelancer which has its own set of tools, but I am also the go-to geek chick for my brother’s company. By the go-to geek chick I mean he calls or texts and tells me what he wants done and then I figure out how to do it. Either that or they all mess up something with their computers and I spend the next five hours playing technical support. I had to learn so many things like all about FICA and other acronyms that I had no clue about previously, but I thought I would share three of them with you today.

Data Management

Can I tell you that I had no idea what data management was at one point? I mean I had an idea but let me tell you that learning to master data management was hard for me. This wasn’t something that I thought I would ever need for blogging and while I haven’t had to use it much for that I have used it for both my brother’s company and while working with Lenore. It’s funny because I know so much about so many different things (most of them useless) but when my brother asked if I could handle their data management I was like “Ummmmm…..”

I had to look it up. If you were like me and didn’t know data management is then let me enlighten you a little. Data Management is an administrative process that includes acquiring, validating, storing, protecting, and processing data to ensure the accessibility, reliability, and timeliness of the data for the data’s users. Too geeky? For my brother’s company I monitor sales and record the items that sell the most. However, I also receive information from all the vendors on bestselling items. I check competitors on items that go on sale a lot, things that are out of stock the most often, etc. Now this all isn’t the technical way of doing data management, it is the what I taught myself.  What do I do with all that information I gather?

I create monthly reports on sales trends and other information so that the partners of the company can make informed decisions on stock to carry, things to put on sale, etc. It’s boring and I had to learn what a lot of the stuff I was looking at. When I first started it was a nightmare. Now that I understand more I can do everything within a day or so. I use a spreadsheet to log my data in and then create reports from it. I do NOT gather things like customers names, emails, or anything like that. I am simply looking for trends.

Expense Reporting

This was something that I never had to do before. I do it now and the sheet that I use I created. I again, use a spreadsheet to log in all the expenses for each month. I use these in all the businesses that I work with including my blogs. I got into the habit of doing them and when I look back at each month I know just what I have spent money on. I know if I am buying too many paperclips (those dang things keep coming up missing!) or if I haven’t bought paper in a while.  I cannot tell you how much doing this simple report has helped me. Another good thing is I can invoice my brother properly. I can tell him that he didn’t pay me back yet for the graphics that I had done.

Taxes

Oh, good lord! Where to begin with all of this? I had done personal taxes before. No big deal, right? Business taxes are like the nightmare that never seems to want to go away. I thank the heavens that people at the IRS are okay with the nine million questions I call and ask them while I am working on the taxes. When my brother asked me to do his taxes I thought sure. What I didn’t know but had to find out was that partnerships don’t file the same return as other businesses.  It could have been a nightmare, but I took the time to ask the questions, read more books that I want to share with you, and learned them. The first time I did all these taxes it took me a week. It takes me about three hours now tops. It takes that long because I must organize my brother’s stuff first. I keep my own organized each month, so it takes me no time at all.