So, when I started my life in the admin profession we were still using electronic typewriters and carbon paper – where one spelling mistake would mean starting your whole job again! And emails were just for techy types and internal mail in those lovely brown envelopes was the way of communication! Skip forward almost 15 years (has it really been that long – I feel old!!) and we now have paperless and peaceful offices. Yes, gone are the days where the office lines would be ringing off the hook “just drop me an email – I’ll get it straight to my blackberry if I’m out of the office”. Thus inviting 24 hour business, are we ever away from the office when its right there bleeping away at you! But this is a plus side to the modern way of doing business. It allows small and independent businesses to work from wherever they are – with the invention of free Wi-Fi often that business is done from the local McDonalds!! But seriously, streamlining the modern day office helps small and independent companies keep overheads and costs down. For instance, with the lovely online accounting tool Xero you can log in from anywhere and check your bank line, payments and even send invoices. Xero have their own iPhone app – which even allows you to take a photo of your receipt and send it straight through to your expenses! This stops the need for a whole Accounting Department for just a small monthly fee. And another very useful tool is ‘Who’s Off’ which is an online holiday/sickness tracker for your employees. This calculates holidays and sickness which also makes payroll so much easier. This also allows employees and managers arranging holidays a doddle – send the request – it goes straight to your line managers email and they approve or decline and it comes straight back to your inbox – what could be easier than that! Who’s Off have also launched the WhosOff app on the iPhone, Blackberry and Android smartphone devices, which is amazingly free to download if you are a user – making it even easier to manage staff on the move!
