How do you get on with Excel? I am an unashamed Excel geek - I think it's a brilliant piece of software. The versatility and usability are superb and you can do almost anything with it: from keeping track of your accounts to full-on project management.

However if you don't know your way around Excel it can feel overwhelming and simple tasks can end up taking a lot of time, not to mention causing a huge amount of frustration.

So for this month's bumper blog I'm sharing 12 tools and time-saving formulas that will make your Excel life so much easier.

Sick of losing your to-do list? Fed up with going from meeting to meeting with no break? Never sure if you’re working on the latest version of a file?
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There are many ways to make running your small business easier. This month’s blog looks at five areas where online tools can help to make your business more efficient and increase productivity.

OK, it’s not the sexiest headline in the world but stick with me. If you run a business, even a small one where you’re the only person in it, you need to be using templates. If you’re not you’re almost certainly wasting huge amounts of time and energy every time you onboard a new client or send out quotes or invoices, not to mention creating all the other documents that businesses need on a regular basis.

Creating templates is a key thing that I undertake for lots of my clients and it benefits them hugely.

​Here’s why…

April is stress awareness month. With most of us having just lived through the most stressful 12 months of our lives I imagine we’re all feeling the strain right now. As a VA my professional purpose is to reduce stress for my clients by taking on a myriad of tasks so that their day-to-day lives are easier. It’s not possible for everyone to hire a VA though so this month I’m sharing my main tips on how to reduce stress whether you’re a small business owner, corporate CEO or a swamped employee.

“I must get more organised next year.” Needing to get more organised is a common theme among many small business owners and never more so than when we’re heading into a new year. The good intentions and resolutions that we make in January are the perfect context to start putting those systems and processes in place to make our businesses run more smoothly and efficiently. And there’s no better place to begin than your inbox.

It’s the first thing we look at in the morning and most of us dip in and out of our inbox throughout the day. An overfull, disorganised inbox can create feelings of overwhelm more quickly than almost any other area of a small business and the time wasted trying to find past emails is immense – you can waste up to half an hour each day re-reading old emails while trying to find the one you’re looking for.
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Luckily there are some very simple, quick fixes that can help you to break your old email habits and create a beautiful, streamlined inbox (and get you back all that lost time).

We are ten days into a brand new year and decade, and resolutions are being made and broken left, right and centre. I’ve heard many friends and colleagues over the years resolve to be more organised in the new year, having come out of the Christmas madness more than a little dishevelled. But if you’re not a naturally organised person this is one resolution it can be difficult to stick to. Did you to know that it takes around two months to break old habits and form new ones? No wonder it’s tricky!
To give you a hand I’m sharing my 5 top tips for getting yourself organised.
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