Even the most organized of mystery shoppers can fall behind on organizational tasks, and the summer months are a perfect time to re-organize your work area to prepare for a profitable second half of the year. During your busy days and weeks of mystery shopping, you may find that you drop your mystery shopping paperwork here and there, and over time this can result in quite a messy work area. With a disorganized work area, you will not be as efficient or profitable as you could be otherwise. So take some time this month to get your work area organized for the rest of the year.
Bring Your Accounting Up To Date. Part of the paperwork that you have stashed away in the nooks and crannies of your desk are more than likely receipts for business expenses as well as mystery shopping assignments you completed. If you haven’t been keeping track of these expenditures, take some time to get on top of that right now. The last thing you want is to have tax day roll around and have 12 full months of receipts to catch up on. Now is the perfect time to get started on your accounting if you’ve fallen behind. It’s far better to catch up on six months of paperwork than twelve!
Throw Out The Trash. You don’t need to keep every piece of paper you print out. You absolutely should keep receipts for tax purposes. And you should also keep a copy of your shop details in the event there is a discrepancy with the mystery shopping provider and you can’t get paid. Don’t trust the provider to keep the job on their website indefinitely. But that being said, you don’t need to keep a copy of your reporting questions or all of the assignment details – unless it just makes you more comfortable to keep all of this information. So keep what you need, and then recycle the rest of the paperwork. You really don’t want to be a pack rat, because this can turn into an organizational nightmare.
Out of Sight, Out of Mind. After you’ve gotten paid on an assignment, you really don’t need any reminders of that job. You need certain paperwork for tax purposes, but you certainly don’t need to look at this paperwork all the time. So file your needed paperwork in an organized file cabinet or some other storage system. You have some flexibility here to create a filing system that works for you. Just make sure that the system is easy enough to keep you organized for the rest of the year.
There is nothing worse than coming back from a busy day of mystery shopping site visits to find that your desk is buried with paperwork. This will likely leave you feeling stressed out and frustrated. When you have a clear desk, you can breathe easier and focus on the reports ahead of you. So go ahead and take some time now to organize your work area, and you will enjoy the results for months to come!