Since we don’t know each other very well, I have decided to start off by terrifying you. Sincerity is hard to convey over the internet, and being too friendly can easily come off as crazy. Fear, however, seems to transcend time zones and language barriers.

To begin with, as I’m writing this, it’s exactly 2 weeks until Christmas. Don’t have everything bought yet? Me neither. And, my kids are all in double digits now, so I can’t bail on this, and just blame Santa for the fallout.

The end of December also means many of you are also approaching your year end. Regardless of whether you’re an army of one making $5,000 in your spare time, or in charge of a large staff bringing in millions, the end of the calendar and/or fiscal year means taxes are just around the corner. Are all your financial records in order? More importantly, do you find yourself in a panic every year during tax season?

Show of hands…how many of you are now curled up in the fetal position, slowly rocking back and forth with a glazed terror in your eyes? It’s ok. I promise we’ll get through this together.

Instead of repeating this pattern next year, here are a few ways to help organize your business (and personal) life in 2011.

Tip 1: Hire a bookkeeper

As a bookkeeper, I’d be shooting myself in the foot if I didn’t suggest this. The most important thing an entrepreneur can do is use his or her time wisely. Focus on what you’re really good at, and outsource what you’re not. For me, spending 5 hours trying to redesign my site isn’t productive. No matter how hard I try, I’m just not artistic. If you enjoy doing your own books, or just don’t have the budget to outsource it yet, these next 4 tips will help.

Tip 2: Shoeboxed.com

Are your receipts crumpled up in an box like packing materials? Does the idea of going through them one by one send shivers down your spine? The folks at Shoeboxed have a solution. Pack all of your receipts in a prepaid envelope, and send it to them. They will scan, data enter, and organize them for you. All you have to do next is go online and pull out the information you need. There’s an iPhone app that lets you take pictures of receipts or business cards, and you can export your billable receipts straight into Freshbooks.

Tip 3: Evernote

Evernote is a no brainer for small business owners. Sign up for a free account, and then send everything you want to remember into Evernote. When I pay bills online, I want to keep the details, but don’t want to bother printing out a page. I just take a screenshot and send it to Evernote. At any time, it’s really easy to search out what I need. It even reads text from images, so you can find the contact info from that business card you snapped a picture of. You can even import your data from Shoeboxed, so everything is in one central location.

Tip 4: Mint.com

Finally! Mint has finally added Canadian banks. What’s Mint? Well, it’s like an online Quicken (in fact, Intuit now owns Mint), but with a very simple interface. Oh, and it’s free! Instead of trying to go through bank statements each month, just feed your bank accounts through Mint. You can very quickly see where you’re spending your money, and set financial goals for both yourself and your business.

Tip 5: Freshbooks

Since you’re reading this blog, most of you probably use this already, but you might not be using all of the features. It integrates with lots of other services you may already use, like Shoeboxed, Basecamp, and Salesforce. It’s a great way to keep track of business expenses, especially ones you bill back to the client. Plus, if you submit GST reports, it can generate those too. With great apps for your smartphone, you can track your time and expenses wherever you go.

Let’s face it, running your own business is really hard. Sometimes just remembering your name is too much to ask, let alone what your gross margin on Widget A was last quarter. If you get signed up for these services, and just set aside some time each week to go over the data, I assure you things will be much easier to manage. Who knows, maybe the reduced stress will afford you some luxuries like hair growth or 5+ hours of sleep per night.

Do you have other great tips to get 2011 started on the right foot? Let us know in the comments.

I was writing a post on the weekend about ways to get organized in the New Year. It’s not up yet, in case you’re trying to find it.

During the post, I had included Shoeboxed in my list of suggested services. No, it’s not a service I have personally used yet, but from my research and the reviews I’ve read, I feel safe recommending it. At some point after finishing the post, I had an epiphany.

I’ve been wanting a Fujitsu ScanSnap 1500 for what seems like forever now. Well, that or a NeatDesk. Basically, I really wanted a high powered scanner that would digitize my receipts, business cards, and invoices in a snap. Going through crumpled up receipts is such a large part of my daily routine, and any product or service that would streamline this is a big deal. Unfortunately, these two scanners run somewhere in the neighbourhood of $500. Yikes!

To be fair, these are meant to be business grade products. These aren’t your $99 scanners you get for free when you buy a PC, but that’s still a lot of money. Plus, with all things tech, I don’t really expect it to be useful for anymore than 2 years. Within 24 months, my guess is that it will fall apart, or just stop measuring up to my needs.

My Epiphany:

Shoeboxed IS a ScanSnap 1500. Well, ok, not literally. But is there that much of a difference? For a monthly fee, you send all of your crumpled up papers to them, and they do what the Scansnap does (and maybe even better). Plus, I don’t have to sit next to them while the papers go through. I don’t have to clear up paper jams, and I don’t have to talk to someone trying to sell me an extended warranty on my Shoeboxed.

Based on their prices, I think I’d end up needing either the Lite or Classic plan, which are $9.95 and $29.95 per month respectively. Or, if I pay annually, $99 or $299 per year. Using my 2 year scenario, that would be $600 for 2 years, instead of the $500 for the Scansnap.

This might just be the answer I’ve been looking for. Setting aside $500 for a scanner is tough (at least for me it is), but $30/month is doable. Plus, all the time I would have spent scanning the documents is freed up for other work. If I even bill out 1 extra hour a month due to my extra free time, it just paid for itself.

So, what do you think? Does my epiphany make sense? Is the freed up time worth the extra $50-60/year? Do any of you use Shoeboxed? How about a ScanSnap or a NeatDesk? I’d love to hear your experiences and your opinions.

I can’t believe it’s been a month since I started my experiment with Freshbooks. Tomorrow will be the last day of my trial, and then I’ll be making some decisions.

I’ve enjoyed the chance to learn about a program in this way. Usually, when I “review” a product or program, I spend a day or two with it, and get a very superficial idea of the overall experience. Spending a full month has been nice, it let me try everything out, without the time pressure. It also allowed me to use my own data, so instead of replicating a real life situation, I used it in my real life.

During the past month I also received a message from two other companies, one that works with Freshbooks, and another that is an alternative to it.

Early in the month, the folks at Shoeboxed recommended that I try out their service alongside Freshbooks. With Shoeboxed, you send in your receipts in an envelope, and the folks at Shoeboxed scan them, organized them, upload them, and then send you back the originals. Considering how much time I spend doing this with my own business and personal receipts, it sounds like a great thing to outsource.

Also, the folks at WorkingPoint offered me a trial of their premium service. WorkingPoint is much more robust online bookkeeping software. Although a freelancer can use this, it seems like you could run a fairly substantial business with this app as well. It handles banking, a full Chart of Accounts, inventory, and payroll (optional).

I wanted to focus on Freshbooks this month exclusively, so I didn’t try either of these out yet. I’m seriously considering taking a similar experiment with both of these companies in July. No matter what bookkeeping app I use, I think Shoeboxes would be a great time saver. I think the membership I’d use is around $20/month, which is much less than my billable time that is spent every month doing this on my own. WorkingPoint looks interesting. It might be something to suggest instead of QuickBooks. My main concern is that it is very US-centric, so I wouldn’t get some of the reports I’d like. Since Freshbooks is a Canadian company, it natively supports the GST reports I need.

I’m going to finish up the month tomorrow. I’ll need a couple days to sort through the pros and cons, and then I’ll be writing up a full review.

Stay tuned!