Office Setup, Have You Got A Professional Approach To Your Office.

How A Good Office Setup Builds Trust And Confidence

Looking to find great professional tips for your office setup ?

Not sure how a good home office will help boost your small business to greater success ?

No problem. We are your accounting guide, and are here to offer you the much needed extra touch of professional planning.

A good office setup is a must, if you are looking at building trust and confidence among your customers or clients.

Your office equipment, the systems and the environment will all contribute to making you and your small business look more efficient . Instead of cobbling your office together as you go along, plan it properly from the start and you wont need to look back at your failures.

Here is a summarized outline of your expectations from this page:

How to furnish your small business office at start-up.

Putting the right tools of communication in place.

How to decide the right equipment for your office setup.

How to get the stationery you need.

How to set up a home office if you choose to work from home.

Furnishing Your Office

Start with a basic minimum of furniture and equipment.

A standard-height (2ft 4in) desk, with an adjustable (height and back support) chair, on castors, suits most people. A larger, L-shaped desk may be better for using a PC.

Look through an office setup supplies catalogue to work out what you may need.

Auctioneers hold regular sales of furniture — often almost new — that has been seized by bailiffs. Look in Yellow Pages under ‘Auctioneers and valuer’s.

If you rent space in a business centre, basic furniture is often included in your license fee.

Plan your office setup for efficient working.

Organize the office to minimize the time wasted moving about.

Store frequently-used files in easy reach.

If you have employees, place those who work together close to each other.

If you expect visitors to come to your office, think about their requirements.

Will you need a separate meeting room?

Do you need visitors to be impressed by comfortable surroundings?

Or would they rather see evidence of a cost-conscious, no-frills office setup, with simple, workmanlike furniture?

Planning your Communication Requirements

Make sure you have enough telephone lines and extensions.

Shop around for a supplier to save money on calls.

If you decide to work from home, think about swapping your home phone line for a business line.

Email is cheap and fast and lets you send and receive messages at any time.

It also allows you to send any sort of computer file as an attachment.
As well as word-processed documents, you can transmit diagrams, photographs, spreadsheets and software.

In many industries, customers and suppliers will routinely expect to contact you by email.

A fax machine is a good fit in your office setup because it allows you to send information quickly and efficiently to customers and suppliers.

Most fax machines can also be used for basic photocopying.

There are several options available when it comes to acquiring communications equipment.

Most types of equipment can be bought, rented or leased.

Suppliers can be found in the Yellow Pages. Shop around, especially for bargains in secondhand extension phones and small business phone systems.

Remaining constantly reachable

Being contactable is very essential at the start of your business.
Failing to be reached at the time your potential or existing client needs you could mean the death of your business.

Consider the range of services and devices you can use in your office setup to ensure you can always be reached.

A mobile phone allows you to be contacted at all times. Call charges can mount up, but there is a range of tariff structures, including pre-pay deals, to suit your business needs.

Call waiting alerts you during a call if another caller is trying to reach you. You can switch from call to call and back.

Call diversion lets you redirect incoming calls. There might be a standard charge plus the cost of the diverted calls.

An answering machine is simple and cheap for the office setup, but many callers do not like leaving messages.

An answering service will take your calls and pass messages on to you. Some services will answer calls in your business name.
Regularly test the service by leaving messages for yourself to ensure it serves the purpose.

Choose a flatbed scanner which is fast, with high resolution and a good operating software package.
Test the model you are thinking of buying, by trying it out on a document that is typical of your workload.

Before buying any item of office equipment for the office setup, consider whether you would be better off using an outside service. There are some business centres which provide office equipment for a higher license fee.

Office equipment

The time saved by having the right equipment in your office setup will more than justify the cost.

Many small business start-ups have found that a computer system pays for itself within a year, even if they only used it for word processing, some spreadsheet work and storing a simple contacts database.

If you need a photocopier, choose one to suit your expected copying workload.
To be cost efficient, you may just use the fax for everyday copying, and use photocopy shops for large numbers of cheap copies (usually 4p to 8p per A4 copy).

Copier prices start at around $375, though machines are often leased, rather than bought.
Prices start at about $25 a month for a three-year lease.

Maintenance charges are around $0.4 a copy all in (including toner powder) for smaller machines and up to 2,000 copies a month, falling to $0.2 per copy for volumes of over 5,000 copies a month.

However, watch out for expensive maintenance commitments, buyout clauses and minimum usage contracts.

Check the number of copies a minute the machine can make. This is shown in the manufacturer’s brochure. Ask for written confirmation of the number of copies a month it is designed to handle, and of its expected lifespan.

Features you may want include reduction and enlargement, the ability to use A3 paper, and automatic paper handling for multiple sheets.

You may be able to save time and money by investing in basic postal equipment for your office setup.

Buy a set of postal scales, to avoid frequent trips to the post office.

A franking machine saves fiddling about with stamps by automatically stamping your mail.

If you use stamps, keep them in an indexed (1p, 2p, etc) stamp book.

A dictating machine can be a cheap and efficient way of recording information.

You may need a scanner with optical character recognition (OCR) software within your office setup. This can save you hours of work, if you routinely need to re-type large volumes of text into your computer.

OCR allows the scanner to read text off a page and capture it in a computer file suitable for word processing or other uses.

Attaching Value Through Your Stationery

Your stationery is an important factor in creating your business image.

All your stationery should at least have the same overall style, with matching typefaces, design and paper — or card — quality.,p>

Choose a clear, easily-read typeface.

Paper weights range from 80 gsm (grams per square metre) to 120 gsm. Card varies from 180 gsm to over 300 gsm.
Wouldn’t you consider heavy, ‘quality’ stationery important for your image?
A recognizable logo, or a slogan, can help to build up your company image. But these would not necessarily be high priorities for an office setup in a start-up business.
A good sign printer or designer will be able to advise you and show you samples of their previous work.

Letterhead stationery (A4 size) is used for letters to customers and suppliers.

Include your business name, address (including postcode), phone and fax numbers and email and website addresses.

By law, you must include names of the sole trader or of all the partners, or the full company name — unless this is the same as the business name.
A limited company can add either all or none of the directors’ names.

A limited company must show the registered number, the registered office setup, address and the country of registration.

Businesses registered for VAT must show their VAT number on invoices.

Compliments slips are a cut-down version of your letterhead, giving all the basic information (but omitting details like registered office) on a smaller piece of paper — usually the same width, but one third the depth.

They are useful — and economical — for sending brief messages and cover notes.

Invoices, receipts and statements may be needed by the handful or by the hundred, depending on your business.

If your business only issues these occasionally, you can use your letterhead paper, with an appropriate heading inserted below the letterhead.

Alternatively, have your name, address and VAT number (if registered) printed on labels or incorporated in a rubber stamp and use standard duplicate stationery.

Use a standard card size.

Your name (including first name) and job title (eg managing director) should be given prominence.
You may want to add any relevant qualifications.

If appropriate, include your numbers for your direct telephone line and mobile phone, and your personal email address.

Include the business’s name, address, telephone and fax numbers and email and web addresses.

Working from home

Many small start-ups find the home office setup as the most attractive option. It is cheap and handy, but there may be drawbacks you must look out for.

Is it legal?
It should usually be possible for you to use part of your home as an office.

Will it provide the right working environment?
It can be difficult to discipline yourself to be productive.

Take yourself seriously.
Even if you work only a few hours a week, remember you are running a business.

Establish a good office setup with reasonable work space.
It will be easier to concentrate on work once you enter the work space, and to switch off when you leave.

Separate ‘at work’ from ‘home’.
Discourage social phone calls and domestic interruptions during your working day.

Arrange your work patterns to fit in with the family and set working hours during which you are not to be disturbed.
Outside working hours, give family and friends your full attention.

Will working from home provide the right image?

Do you expect visitors to come to your office? What will they think?
Could you arrange to visit their premises or hire a meeting room instead?

Will your address code be suitable within the home office setup? Should you use a mailing address?
Business centres often offer a ‘virtual office’ facility, receiving post, telephone calls and faxes on your behalf and then forwarding them on to you.

What are the financial implications?

You may treat an appropriate proportion of bills (eg electricity, water) as business expenses and offset them against your tax liability.

Unless you claim mortgage payments or rent against tax, you should not usually be liable for uniform business rates (UBR).
If part of the property you use in your office setup is used wholly or mostly for business, you may be liable to a uniform tax rate.

You must tell your insurers you work from home (and change the insurance on your car, if you use it for business).
Otherwise, your insurance may become totally invalid.

You may be required by law to take out public liability insurance.
If you employ people — even part-timers — employer’s liability insurance may be compulsory.

In all, if you devote effort towards a cool office setup, your clients will not only see you as caring, but they will increasingly feel safer, bringing more business to you.

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