12 time management tips for small business owners

Published 14 November 2025

Table of contents

• Why time management matters for small business owners
• Time management tips for small business owners
• How to measure time management success as a small business
• How Xero saves you time
• FAQs on time management for small business owners

Key takeaways

• Implementing time-management strategies helps you focus on more important tasks, reduce stress, and increase your profitability.
• Block out your time to give your workday structure and help reduce distractions.
• Automate repetitive tasks and use tools like Xero to help you focus on more important or complicated projects.
• Batch similar tasks together to help you stay focused on your current project and minimize distractions.

Why time management matters for small business owners

Small business owners are stretched between accounting, operations, customer service, and marketing.

A few solid time management principles can help you:

• Boost your small business productivity. Managing your time intentionally helps you focus on performing important tasks that make your business more productive.
• Improve profitability. Effective time management helps you prioritize income-generating activities and reduces unnecessary costs.
• Reduce stress. Time management helps you prioritize tasks and reduce procrastination, lowering your stress and improving your work-life balance.

12 time management tips for small business owners

Here are some tips for time management in your small business.

1. Set clear priorities for your business

Identify your top objectives that align with your business goals, such as increasing revenue or streamlining operations. Once you know what matters most, you can look at your other tasks and decide whether they get you closer to your goals.

To do this, consider using frameworks like the Eisenhower Matrix, which categorizes tasks into four “quadrants” based on their urgency and importance. You can then clearly see what to do, what to schedule, what to delegate, and what to delete – helping you schedule tasks and start on your highest-priority work.

2. Use time blocking to structure your day

Adding structure to your day can help you increase productivity and reduce distractions, giving you more time for your most important tasks.

One way to do this is with another kind of grouping and categorization exercise: time blocking. Group similar tasks together in “blocks” of time. For example, set aside specific times in each day for focused blocks of:

• Administrative tasks: Find a specific time each day to complete admin tasks like scheduling and invoicing.
• Customer work: Use this time to take client calls, attend meetings, and complete other customer-related tasks.
• Business growth-related work: Use this block to focus on strategic planning and business development.

Schedule breaks and lunchtimes within these blocks to avoid burnout. Then decide when to complete each of these blocks. You could, for example, focus on customer work in the morning, admin tasks midday, and growth activities in the afternoon.

Grouping similar tasks together helps you stay focused on those tasks, while making sure you set aside time for duties you might often push aside.

3. Automate repetitive tasks

Automating repetitive tasks saves you the hours you would have consumed doing these tasks manually – time you can then spend on growing your business.

Accounting software has many tools to automate your necessary, but time-consuming, admin. Here are some areas where accounting software can help your business

• Invoicing: Some accounting software provides customizable templates, sends automatic payment reminders, and accepts payments directly from invoices – speeding up the payment process.
• Bank reconciliation: Some accounting software connects to your bank accounts to download your transactions into the software. It then matches them against your records and updates your books automatically. That means your finances are up to date without manual data entry – a huge time-saver.
• Payroll: Xero’s integrated software and apps help automate payroll processes like calculations, payments, and tax compliance. This ensures accurate record-keeping and compliance with tax rules.

Here’s more about Xero’s time-saving tools

4. Reduce your workload by delegate specialized tasks

If you try to do everything on your own as a small business owner, you might burn out – and stall your business’s growth. So see which routine tasks you can pass to others so you can focus on more important areas.

Here are some ways to lighten your workload:

• Outsourcing specialized tasks. Hand off tasks like IT support or bookkeeping to professionals who can complete them faster and better.
• Hiring freelancers or contractors to help during busy periods, without committing to a full-time staff
• Training your team to help prevent bottlenecks in your workflows.

5. Batch similar tasks together to help with focus

Keeping similar tasks together helps you focus on your current task. You can then tackle these grouped duties together in dedicated sessions, reducing distractions and helping you stay focused for longer.

Here are some typical tasks to group and deal with in one go:

• Emails: Instead of constantly refreshing your inbox, checking your email during set times of the day.
• Calls: Schedule your calls back to back so you can move through them efficiently.
• Bookkeeping: Spend a set time each week on reviewing invoices, expenses, and reports to avoid getting burned out with numbers and calculations.

Here are more ways to run your business efficiently.

6. Minimize distractions

Avoiding interruptions saves you valuable time, reduces stress and helps keep you productive.Here are some ways to minimize distractions:

• Reduce notifications: Turn off non-essential or non-work-related alerts on your phone and computer.
• Set email boundaries: Check your email during set times instead of responding to every email instantly.
• Create a dedicated focus area: Create a quiet home office or workspace to reduce outside noise and interruptions.

7. Use digital tools to stay organized

Having the right digital tools makes it easier to stay on top of tasks, deadlines, and finances. Here’s some key digital tools and how they help.

• Digital calendars help organize your time: Schedule meetings, deadlines, or work blocks to help you use your time intentionally. A digital calendar like Microsoft Outlook calendar or Google Calendar help you visualize your day and lets you set reminders for important tasks, meetings, and deadlines.

• Project management software eases your project workload: Use project management apps to track tasks, assign duties, and monitor ongoing projects. This saves you time and helps keep your projects on track.

• Accounting software keeps your finances organized: Xero’s dashboard puts your cash flow and other important financial metrics right in front of you, helping you make faster, more informed decisions without having to hunt down the numbers.

8. Set realistic deadlines for your small-business projects

Achievable deadlines can help you stay motivated while improving productivity and your wellbeing. Avoid unrealistic timelines that can add stress, create burnout, and lead to last-minute scrambling.

Here are some ways to do this.

• Break projects into smaller tasks: Assign mini deadlines for each step of the process so you can track your ongoing progress and make the project more manageable.

• Account for unexpected delays: Add in some buffer time during each of your projects in the event of interruptions, revisions, or approvals you’re waiting on.

• Prioritize tasks effectively: Consider your deadlines and your most important tasks. Then, use project management software or calendars to visualize your timeline and ensure you’re staying on top of everything.

9. Track how you spend your time at your small business

Track how you spend your time to identify mistakes, patterns, and inefficiencies so you can make smarter decisions about where to spend your energy.

It’s a good idea to use either time-tracking apps or manual logs to log and categorize your tasks to better organize and analyze your workload. Some apps let you set reminders and have other digital integrations that work together as a unified ecosystem to help you track your time effectively.

10. Protect your work-life balance by setting boundaries

Don’t forget to rest and recharge. Here are some ways to ensure you have a solid work-life balance.

• Set clear boundaries. Stick to your specific work hours and log off when you’re officially done with your workday. Communicate your hours and availability to your staff and clients to ensure you’re not always working around the clock.

• Prioritize rest. Take regular breaks throughout the workday to give your brain the rest it needs. It’s also important to get a good night’s sleep to maintain your energy levels.

• Unplug intentionally. Try setting your phone down for a certain amount of hours per day. Stepping away from your devices, email, and apps can help you return with a fresh focus.

11. Learn to say no

Set clear boundaries that protect your time and help you focus on your priorities. Say no to:

• Non-essential requests: if you receive a request that doesn’t align with your business, it’s OK to decline.
• Low-value projects: It’s OK to turn down work that costs your business more than it gains.
• Unnecessary meetings: If you don’t need to be there, clear it from your calendar.

12. Review and adjust regularly

Your priorities and workload change as your small business develops and grows. So set aside time each week or month to review your time management strategies – check what’s working, identify any bottlenecks, and refine your strategies to better fit your business processes.

Tips for measuring your time management success

Based on your findings, consider how best to allot your time. For example, if you’re spending too long on accounting tasks, implement tools like Xero to automate these tasks so you can spend this time on another area of your business that needs help.

Here are ways to track your time management success.

Log your time to understand how you spend it

Create a time log for a week or so and analyze how often it takes you to complete certain tasks. Note distractions and interruptions, and decide which tasks take the most time.

Set achievable goals, then check your progress against them

Make clear goals for your time management – like spending fewer hours on a certain task. Then check your progress every week or month and adjust your goals as needed.

Use digital tools for time management and planning

Download apps that record how you spend your time and help you organize your schedule. Apps can provide valuable insight into your habits.For example, they can let you know if you’re spending too long on one task.

How Xero saves you time

Even the best time management strategies can’t eliminate repetitive administrative tasks. Xero helps by automating financial tasks so you can focus on customer relationships and business growth.

For example, Xero:

• Helps you easily create and send invoices, schedule payments, and set up recurring bills
• Securely connect to your bank to download and and match transactions automatically giving you accurate, up-to-date books
• Generates instant financial reports to give you clear visibility of your business’s financial health

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FAQs on time management for small business owners

Here are some questions small business owners often ask about time management.

How do I find time for strategic planning?

Treat strategic planning like any other task to ensure you have time for it. Try blocking out time for it or freeing up time by outsourcing or automating tasks. By being intentional about your scheduling and protecting this time, you’ll gain perspective and make decisions that help your business grow sustainably.

How can I save time on my bookkeeping?

Accounting software is a great way to cut down on the routine, time-consuming bookkeeping tasks. Xero, for example, automates tasks like data entry, helps you set up recurring payments, and stores all your business data in one place – minimizing paperwork and saving you time you spend tracking down business information.

What are the best time management tools for small business owners?

A few of the best time management tools for small business owners are Clockify: Time tracking software for your projects

Trello: A Task and project tracker that lets you visualize your workflow and how you’ll manage it

Notion: All-in-one workspace for notes, project plans, and tasks that lets you customize your workflow.

You can find these with a Google search and download them straight to your computer or use these tools via a webpage.

What is the biggest time waster for small business owners?

One of the biggest time wasters for small business owners is getting stuck in manual, repetitive tasks like bookkeeping, invoicing, and chasing payments. Xero can help you save valuable time by creating automatic payment reminders, setting up invoice templates, and automatically importing bank transactions.

How do I balance my daily operations with long-term planning?

It’s useful to protect space for both. Start with time blocking and create weekly or monthly planning sessions, then delegate and automate admin work to your staff, a freelancer, or to software tools like Xero. It also helps to batch similar tasks, set priorities, and review your system to ensure you’re staying afloat each day while making progress towards your long-term goals.

How can I put better time-management practices in place when I'm already overwhelmed?

Start by picking one habit at a time. For example, consider batching similar tasks first and going from there. You can also delegate one task at a time – handing off even one task lightens your workload and lets you focus on higher priorities. From there, gradually add in new strategies to help you avoid getting more overwhelmed and ensure you’re creating the space to grow.