Supporting small businesses is a great way to strengthen your local community. If the businesses within it are strong and healthy, they will be able to provide for the community’s needs and put money back into it. Since small businesses are so varied, there are many different ways to support them. If you want to encourage your whole family to support small businesses in your community, here are five ways to do so.

Leave Good Reviews

If you love a business, give them a good review online. There are many review sites where you can post your experience and encourage others to give them a try. You can also do this on social media, posting for your followers about how much you enjoy this business. Small businesses often have limited marketing funds, so word of mouth can be a lifesaver for them.

Give Second Chances

If you have a bad experience with a local business, don’t go straight to leaving a negative review. Unlike big corporations, small businesses won’t have a lot of reviews. Your single one-star review could have consequences for them. Instead, give them another chance to give your family what you need. Many small businesses have to deal with internal problems. An accounting industry overview showed that 36% of small businesses have timeline issues. Meanwhile, others feel unprepared, with 32% saying they don’t have enough guidance, 29% feeling that their accountant didn’t provide advice, and 23.6% saying their accountant didn’t educate them. With problems like this, there are bound to be some negative experiences. But if your family wants to support small businesses, try to give them a second chance to make it right.

Shop Online

If you find a small business to support, but can’t get to their physical location, try shopping online instead. Not only will it be easier for you, it will also give them a good idea of what people need from them. Over the next 12 months, businesses will overpay for three-quarters of their IT purchases. If your local small business runs a strong online market, they will be able to recoup those costs. Meanwhile, your family can support them and make purchases without leaving the house.

Switch Where You Can

While you might not be able to fulfill all your needs through small businesses, you might be surprised at what you can do. Small businesses are much more than just stores. In fact, 80% of the 322,488 clinical laboratories in the US are operated as small businesses. Look at what your family needs, then consider if a local small business can provide it for you.

Leave Tips

If you and your family go to a small business and have a wonderful experience, be generous with your tips. This is especially true for restaurants, where the waitstaff is nearly entirely reliant on tips in order to make money. While the standard for tipping is generally 20%, you might be able to offer more occasionally. These tips are good for both the small business’s financial health and as a morale boost. So, while it isn’t necessary to leave huge tips every time you’re out, make sure that you’re budgeting it into your plans as often as possible.

Small businesses face a lot of challenges, so it is important to support them in your community. There are many ways for your whole family to do this, no matter what kind of budget you have. So take a look at the businesses in your area and decide how you want to support them. Then apply these five tips. You might be surprised at the difference that your family can make.

When thinking of making updates to your household, it’s good to think along the lines of which ones will be the most important and yield the best results for you. Read on to see some of the updates you can make that will be both simple and money-saving for you in the long run.

Get Good Window Treatments

One simple household update that can save you money is getting good window treatments. These should enable you to improve your privacy as well as energy-efficiency and thus enjoy a more functional home. One of the longest lasting options for window treatments you can get that will also be low maintenance is aluminium blinds, which are available for all sizes of windows. Find a color that will work well with the rest of your home and have them installed. The difference they make will be a noticeable one and it will give your family a more comfortable time indoors.

Switch to Energy-Efficient Appliances

If you’re still using old appliances in your home, you should consider upgrading to energy-efficient ones, which will make you good savings in terms of the energy you use over time. Shop for appliances with a good energy star rating to ensure you get the best use of energy within your home. From the washer and dryer you use to your thermostat and other items in your home, there are many items you can upgrade to get better energy-saving abilities.

Keep Your Estate Plans Updated

Experts recommend that you should update your estate plan at least once every five years. This should be done barring any major life events such as moving states and marriage as these can have a big impact on your time and resources and other general plans. With this in mind, ensure you have an expert close by who will help you keep your estate plans current and updated so that, in case of anything, you know that your family’s future is secured.

Seal Your Ducts

The ducts that you rely on to ferry treated air in and out of your home should be in a good state at all times. To ensure that they’re not leaking and costing you more energy, have them sealed. You could hire an expert to do this for you or do it yourself if you’re able. When you’re not losing treated air meant for use in your home and your heating and cooling is working efficiently, you can save a sizeable amount on your energy bills over time.

Take Regular Care of Your Lawn

Finally, your lawn is responsible for your home’s curb appeal, at least in part. Take good care of it to make sure it’s in the best possible state and won’t have your home looking old and neglected. With most lawns found to require at least one inch of water a week, you need to ensure that you water your lawn as often as is necessary after mowing it so it stays in good shape for a long time. Alternatively, get a xeriscape instead of grass, as it will need less water to thrive. The native plants that you will get should also be drought-resistant in order to give you the best results. You will be able to spend less time monitoring and babying your lawn doing something else that you enjoy.

With these simple updates, you can get a home that will look as good as it feels for your whole family. Take the time to make the updates suggested and you will get good returns in the form of saved time and money as well as improved value of your home.

Any freelancing job comes with the added fun of being your own accountant. Sure, you’re your own boss too, but now you’ve got to handle all the finances yourself. You need to make sure you’re working enough to live, a little extra if you’ve got something to save for, and, crucially, that you are doing your taxes right.

It’s already a hassle doing your own taxes every year, so to shake up the routine for the sake of taxing a freelance job can feel like a headache. If you’re having trouble, take a look at these tips to help make your taxes easier.

Don’t mix personal and business

You might have decided that, since you are the sole trader of your business, and the bank therefore doesn’t require it, you’ll not bother with a business bank account. That’s fine; however, not recommended. Keep your personal finances separated from your business for a lot of reasons.

For one thing, it will stop you just from spending business money on a new pair of shoes you just had to have, or personal money set for the utilities on an unexpected business bill. A little bit here and there can lead to more. Keeping the two separate will keep you from confusing the two, when looking at your account, which tend to present everything as one big pot.

By keeping business and personal accounts separate, you will see clearly how much money is tied up in business, how much to budget for costs, and you won’t have to decide which expenses are business related down the line.

Keep all your documents digital

There are a lot of logical reasons to keep your documents digitally stored. There is the obvious, that it lowers physical clutter, keeps things accessible, provides a backup, etc., but it also makes everything a lot easier to find. If life had a search tab, we’d never have to have a hide-a-key.

When it comes to taxes, you need to keep a hold of all your documents for at least five years after the 31 January tax deadline. That’s a lot of documents to go hunting through for something that happened five years ago.

This is important for purchases and expenses. Expenses are one of the few ways you can reduce your taxable income, and there are a lot of expenses that you can gain in a year. But getting your expenses wrong could be a tax liability. The taxman is going to need proof of all of these expenses in order to write them off, and they will be a lot easier to find and present to the taxman if they’re not in a huddled pile in a drawer in your office.

Another tip is to file them in chronological order and label them with a date so that you can easily pull them. There are lots of accounting software out there to help you with this. When it comes to creating a digital copy, you can invest in a scanner to make things clearer.

Stick to a routine

One of the main perks of freelancing is the flexible working schedule, which can be tempting to sway from anyway, so it’s important that you find some semblance of a schedule. But when it comes to accounting, it’s vital. The flexible work routine doesn’t really hand itself to accounting as you will need to be prompt with everything you are doing.

It’s recommended that you get a little done every day, rather than a lot done in a week. Set aside at least 30 minutes every day to file your documents as you need to to keep everything in order. Keep it to raising invoices, adding expenses, and reviewing reports on your dashboard and you’re done until January. It’s a case where a little tedium now will save you a lot of stress down the line.

Keep track of all sources of income

If you are freelancing, it’s likely you will have various sources of income, various clients hiring you for your work, various rates of work done for various people. Keeping track of all this is a lot easier with the new addition of online banking, and it’s important that you use it in your bookkeeping. There is accounting software that can help you here. You can link your bank feeds to the accounting software so that the software can do all the heavy lifting of tracking your accounts. Plus, your cloud-stored files will be available to the software for you to pull out as you need it.

Get professional help when you need it

Unfortunately, some of us simply don’t have the mind for numbers, never mind accounting. It’s a tedious process, with consequences if we get it wrong – and there is a lot of room for error.

If you find yourself struggling, there is nothing wrong with consulting a professional. You can hand over all your accounts and documents to a freelancer accountant to deal with and trust that they have your taxes handled. With the finances looked after, you can keep focused on growing your business. Growing your business will mean more income, and more income will mean more work for the accountant to get done.

Of course, all this will be moot if the freelance job you’re looking for is in accounting. Then you’ve just got a side task to get done.