09 Dec The Home Stretch!
Only 3 weeks to go until Christmas rolls around. Where has the year gone! There are some practical considerations to be made – do your customers know your shut down dates? Is the staff roster planned? If you’re away, who’s in charge?!?!
However, once the pre-Christmas rush is done and dusted, most of us will get to have a bit of down time over Christmas and the New Year. ‘Switching off’ for at least some of your down-time is important to help you recharge. However, time without distraction or (as much) stress is also a fantastic time to reflect and plan for the coming year. What is it you want to achieve over the coming 12 months? What should you focus on? What different things do you need to do? Perhaps most importantly, what do you need to STOP doing?
A few hours spent working on your future will mean when you come back to work, you’re not only feeling recharged but also focused.
We want to help our clients achieve their goals, so if you would like to schedule some time to go over your plans for 2019, get int touch!
Reliance on IT
Increasingly, businesses are highly reliant on their IT systems. This includes becoming more reliant upon external organisations to provide/host/run many of these systems. However, every now and then, these providers can let us down. For example, anyone who uses email provided by Spark (or wants to correspond with someone whose email is provided by Spark…) have likely had some issues. You can read about it here.
If you depend on any sort of IT, what would you do if it ceased working as it should? Do you have a plan? Do you backup your data frequently? To that last question, chances are the answer is no – the results of one survey found that on average, 73% of people backed up their data somewhere between once a year and never!
IT issues are a fact of life – chances are, sooner or later you will be plagued by one. Whether it is minor or major can in part, be down to how you prepare for it to happen. What should you be doing in advance to prepare?
Updates to Xero
Speaking of IT, if you’re using Xero (and logging in from time to time…) you might have noticed different navigation. While dealing with a change to how you do something can be a bit of a pain, it is unlikely that these changes will be reversed. Perhaps more reassuringly, the overwhelming majority of changes that Xero have made in the past have proven over time to be good ones.
If you’re struggling to find your way around the new look Xero Navigation, check out this blog, and if you’re still having trouble, contact us.
Christmas Hours
As for our Christmas hours, we are aiming to be finished up by the 24th of December and not fully back until the 22nd of January. We will be intermittently available so if there is anything urgent, please do get in contact, we just might take a little longer to respond than usual.
Have a fantastic December!
