If you have a great idea for an online business and have decided to make your office at home, you certainly wouldn’t be alone, as thousands of budding entrepreneurs are launching business empires from their spare room. There’s a lot to organise when starting a business, and as far as setting up your office, here is a checklist to ensure that nothing is overlooked.
- Desk & Chair – This could be anything from a basic fold-away table to a nice business desk, with all the compartments you need. Of course, budget determines your scope and if other things take priority, choose something cheap but sturdy. The chair is a little different, however, as you will spend many hours sitting at your workstation, so choose a good quality executive chair, the ones with adjustments and armrests, and make sure to test it out first.
- IT Hardware – The very heart of your office, you can either invest in a basic PC or laptop, and a colour printer is a must; you can get printer toner from Toner Bee, who stock everything connected to printing inks and cartridges. Ideally, you want a scanner/photocopier, which wouldn’t cost a fortune, and with a broadband Internet connection, you are ready to take on the online world.
- Filing Cabinet – If you’re going to digitalise everything, a small tray for paper items would suffice, otherwise a small filing cabinet can fill one of the room corners. If you run a cloud-based accounts system and keep all of your data on the cloud, you have no need for paper copies, and, of course, you would have data backups as a matter of course.
- Landline Phone – Of course, you could get by with your smartphone, however, if you want to look like a company, a landline number is preferred and you can buy a nice headset that allows you to make and answer calls, plus it integrates with Bluetooth, allowing you to make video Skype calls. Whether or not you need a fax, depends on the clients you deal with; frankly, faxes are outdated and if it is required, there are computer programs that can send a receive faxes.
- Personal Organiser – Even though all your data will be on your PC, you should still invest in a large desk organiser, which has date squares where you can jot important info about meetings, schedules and other important stuff. The fact that the planner is right in front of you when you sit at your desk means you can’t fail to see what you are doing each day, so do get one and you’ll not regret it!
- Lighting – Aside from the obvious room general lighting, you do want a desk lamp, preferably LED, with a dimmer control; they make USB rechargeable LED desk lamps and they are sleek & elegant in design.
Once you have a basic office in place, you will gradually add to it and before very long, it will be a very effective workstation and a haven for those quiet moments.
