How to Reduce Admin Tasks in Your Service Business

Reducing admin tasks is essential if you want to grow your service business; if you’re overwhelmed now, think how much worse it will be when you’ve opened a new location or onboarded more employees! 

But finding ways to reduce admin is also just good practice for any service business, regardless of size or future expansion plans. If you reduce the time your team spends on recurring admin tasks like scheduling, payroll, or invoicing, you free up time to focus on customer service, sales and marketing, or finally finishing at 5 pm. 

Here’s how to reduce administrative tasks in your business. 

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#1. Identify recurring administrative tasks 

Before you can start reducing administrative tasks, you need to identify how your team spends their time. Draw up a list of recurring admin tasks that you, or your team, do on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis. 

Common administrative tasks include 

• Time tracking (for service providers) & processing time sheets (for office staff)
• Bookkeeping, including invoicing & tracking expenses 
• Employee scheduling (one of the most time-consuming admin tasks for service businesses) 
• Identifying which provider can travel for mobile service appointments 
• Managing employee records 
• Organizing customer bookings
• Processing payroll & staying compliant with tax laws
• Managing benefits & vacation days 
• Customer service, including monitoring reviews & responding to customer queries or complaints 
• Email marketing 
• Uploading to social media 

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#2. Audit & eliminate unnecessary admin tasks 

Once you’ve identified the recurring admin tasks in your service business, it’s time to audit them. Are there any duplicate or overlapping tasks that can be merged? Are there tasks that don’t need to happen and could be eliminated? 

Tip: If you spend a lot of time creating content for your social media accounts, consider which platforms are getting results. If you step back and realize that only 1% of your customers find you via TikTok, you could consider eliminating that from the list altogether. 

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#3. Automate as much as possible with business scheduling software 

Even without knowing what your list looks like, I’m going to say that 90% of your admin tasks can be automated with business scheduling software (also referred to as scheduling software or appointment management software).

The easiest and quickest way to reduce admin tasks in your service business is to implement business scheduling software because you can automate 

• Time tracking (for service providers) & processing time sheets (for office staff)
• Bookkeeping, including invoicing & tracking expenses 
• Employee scheduling (one of the most time-consuming admin tasks for service businesses) 
• Identifying which provider can travel for mobile service appointments 
• Managing employee records 
• Organizing customer bookings
• Processing payroll & staying compliant with tax laws

Business scheduling software like MarketBox puts your business on autopilot and takes some of the most time-consuming admin tasks off your list. When everything from employee scheduling and payroll to customer bookings and invoicing is done for you, you can focus on other tasks like customer service and marketing. 

Oh, and even those can be largely automated through review management software and CRM tools like Hubspot or Salesforce.

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#4. Consider outsourcing certain administrative tasks 

Even after implementing business scheduling software and automating 90% of your admin tasks, you could still consider outsourcing tasks like payroll to a third party. After all, just because it has to get done doesn’t mean you have to do it! 

To discover how MarketBox can help your service business reduce admin and streamline your booking, scheduling, and payments, book an introductory call with one of our business experts. 

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