Category Archives: Office Manager Tips

Office Manager Tip: The Dishes are Piling Up

One of the biggest pet peeves I have is dishes piling up in the sink. Not only does it totally gross me out, but I can’t start cooking with all of the countertop space consumed by dirty dishes–this is what gives the dishwasher the starring role among other appliances in the kitchen.  It is an out-of-the-way space to store dishes until it is full enough to run.  The key is this: after the dishwasher is finished, it needs to be unloaded.  The dishes have a place — the cabinet — not the sink, countertop, or dishwasher.

In the highly fluid office of a general contractor, items in my inbox are constantly reassigned priority levels, especially when the newest five tasks needed to be done last week. It is all too easy to pile up filing on my back counter and say to myself, “I’ll do it later.”

The back burner seems to be the purgatory of choice for incomplete tasks with even a slightly-lower priority; more often than not, this is the default for filing. A secretary I once worked with, who will remain nameless to protect her innocence, often left the back burner burning for quite some time. This would create more problems than it was worth: missing information, can’t find an invoice, where is the letter I received from Mr. So-and So?, and their cohorts. Ideas on time and task management were answered with the all-too-predictable response of “I don’t have time.” Continue reading

Office Manager Tip: Who Am I Again?

Depending upon the size of the company the job title “Office Manager” may take on a slightly different flavor.  Some office managers simply manage personnel whose individual job titles and tasks make up the entire skill set required in smaller offices. The title of “Office Manager” can encompass a mind-boggling array of skill levels, personality types, and even schools of discipline.

One day you may be the Accounts Payable Clerk and another, the entire Collections Department.  You may field calls like a Receptionist while dealing with a Human Resources issue.  By morning you are the head of the Marketing Department and in the afternoons you clean the toilets–well, maybe it doesn’t go that far, but you get the point. The diversity of tasks goes way beyond their titles and presumed prestige (or lack thereof).  You may need to actually switch personalities in between. Continue reading

Office Manager Tip: Process Your Laundry, I mean Invoices

As I mentioned in my first post, I often equate routine office work with housework. To further exploit that theme, today’s topic is laundry, I mean, accounts payable.

To the degree that the diversity of your tasks vary, this tip becomes more applicable. Like laundry,  where the whites and the colors are sorted, I sort my AP invoices before processing. For me this means job-related invoices (from subcontractors) and overhead expenses. This is the first batching.

If you’re like my husband and further sort the laundry by fabric type, then sort out your AP batches by due date, vendor number or name; you get the gist. For example, not only do I sort out my AP invoices by job-related and overhead expenses, I further sort out job-related invoices by the job number. Continue reading

Office Manager Tip: Office Work is to Housework as …

Do you remember having to fill out those analogies in school for IQ testing?  Some of them seemed obvious (boy:girl :: male:female) while others eluded me. Either way, analogies can be helpful tools for the mind when encountering new tasks or concepts.

Working in offices over the years, I have developed strategies, analogies, and general tips that have recently been formulated in a series of tweets which will be explored through this blog series.

How is office work like housework? Not to be sexist in a male dominated industry but you know. No seriously, in the posts to come I will exploit this analogy for all that it is worth; but, for now, let’s stick with the strategy.

Office work, more often than not, is routine in nature as is housework.  Much of office work is done in batches while housework can be done in loads.  When I view the workload and diversity of tasks much of the way I view housework, I find that I become more organized, efficient, and productive.

Questions: