If you’re like most small business owners, you spend a lot of your time researching ways to save money. After all, running a business can quickly break the bank. There are office supplies to buy, employees to pay, and software to purchase and install, among many other things.

Don’t get discouraged over finances—there’s good news. Among other HR solutions, thorough documentation is a simple, effective way to protect your hard-earned money. Although paperwork is probably the bane of your existence, it can make a huge positive impact on your budget. Here are six ways good documentation saves your small business money.

Saving Money with Documentation

1. Tax Breaks
When you own a business, everything from gas mileage to business lunches can be written off as an expense and deducted from the amount of taxes you owe to the government. Even your internet bill can become a deduction if you work from home.

But what do you need to have in order to back up these expense claims? Documentation. Make sure to keep accurate records of all expenses you incur that relate to your business.

2. Hiring
Employee hiring is a time-consuming and often frustrating process. The cost of placing job ads and spending time reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates significantly affects your business’s bottom line, cutting into productivity and sometimes causing chaos in your office.

Proper hiring documentation—including employee applications—provides you with a reliable resource for finding the perfect job candidate in a timely manner.

3. Legal Compliance
Most forms used in the running of a business require certain legal considerations. Making sure your documentation is all-inclusive and meets these requirements saves your business money in legal fees.

4. Employee Efficiency
Policies and procedures manuals are vital to the productivity and engagement of your employees. When team members know what to expect right from the start, they have no loopholes to fall back on when they don’t want to comply with company policy.

Everything from time off to office dress code should be meticulously outlined, in detail, in your policies and procedures manuals. This could save your company money by keeping employees on track and productive.

5. Payroll
Sometimes small business owners don’t take payroll as seriously as they should. But that’s a mistake. Keeping proper records of things like hours worked, personal time used, and tax status prevents your business from inadvertently paying too much in taxes on the wages you pay to your employees.

6. Customer Satisfaction
In addition to improving small business HR processes, proper documentation helps boost customer satisfaction. When you keep accurate and detailed records of customer transactions and buying behavior, you’re better equipped to continue providing products and services that each specific customer needs and finds useful.

Working with MJ Management Solutions

Our HR WebForms service provides businesses with customizable, up-to-date, legal forms to meet all their documentation needs. With this service, you can easily get organized in your business and prevent unnecessary expenses. Reach out to us to learn how we can help you save money with HR Solutions for good documentation.

This article first appeared at M.J. Management Solutions, Inc.

Employee hiring is vital in building a desired culture within small businesses and organizations. Having a team that truly understands what your business is trying to accomplish and that works well together to meet common goals is the quickest path to success. But how do you get to that point? It all starts with finding the best HR solutions for the employee hiring process—more specifically, detailed employee applications.

You may think that accepting a resume should be sufficient, but using a comprehensive employee application saves organizations time and money in the long-run by making the hiring process more efficient.

Here are five reasons to develop and use a strategic employee application.

Reason 1: To Weed Out Obvious Wrong Choices
The employee application is your first chance to filter out those candidates who simply aren’t a good fit for your company culture. When you include relevant, behavior-driven questions, in addition to the basics, you’re better able to filter through applicants before ever meeting them in person.

Using the employee application form in this manner prevents wasted time on interviews that won’t produce qualified job candidates. It also frees you up to spend more time learning about potential employees in whom you’re genuinely interested.

Reason 2: To Be Prepared for Interviews
Scheduling and conducting interviews is a time-consuming process. More often than not, the majority of interview time is spent discussing job history, career and personal goals, and values. Knowing the answers to these types of questions before you begin each interview allows you to dive right in and get straight to the point.

A comprehensive employee application helps you prepare for interviews so that you can truly get to know every interviewee and determine if he or she is a good fit for your organization.

Reason 3: To Remain Legally Compliant
In today’s world, inadvertently asking someone the wrong thing can lead to serious legal repercussions. This holds true whether the incident occurs in person, in writing, or otherwise. Unfortunately for business owners and managers, there’s a fine line between getting the information you need and digging too deep.

It’s important to the success of your business that you know as much as is necessary to choose the right person for your team; the engagement of your employees depends on it. On the other hand, being too invasive could get you into trouble. Finding the right balance starts with developing an effective employee application.

Reason 4: To Eliminate Untruthful Candidates
When you use employment applications instead of relying on resumes only you have a strong base for rejecting candidates who are untruthful. Applicants can be required to sign an application and state that all information contained in the application is true. Failure to be truthful or omission of relevant information such as a criminal conviction can later be grounds for immediate dismissal. Resumes only give you the information the candidate wants you to have. An application can ask for information you need to evaluate the suitability of the candidate

Reason 5: To Streamline the Employee Hiring Process
Last, but certainly not least, developing a comprehensive and strategic employee application helps to streamline the hiring process, making it a more efficient and effective procedure. This relieves some of the stress that naturally accompanies times of transition and growth within organizations.

Now What?

At MJ Management Solutions, Inc. we offer HR solutions to keep your business in compliance while streamlining processes like employee hiring by providing customizable, downloadable forms. Reach out to us today to learn how we can help you customize an employee application, or subscribe to our newsletter to receive one free form each month.

This article first appeared at M.J. Management Solutions, Inc.