As you figure out the payroll and write out the checks to pay your employees, you think that there really should be an easier and faster way to do this. You’re missing the big game to write names and numbers until it feels like your hand is going to fall off. How many checks do you have left, anyway? Only four? Didn’t they have some kind of other check option you were considering when you ordered the last time? There it is — the computer check. You’re throwing in the pen and ink, buying some printable business checks and leaving the Dark Ages behind.

To order printable business checks successfully, you should:

• Take a look at your current business financial software. If you aren’t sure what you use, give your accountant a call before placing the order. These checks are designed to work with the specific software you use, such as QuickBooks Pro or Peachtree.
• Think about how you’ll use the checks. If you are just doing payroll, some financial software packages use a specific check design for this purpose and another design for miscellaneous bills.
• Make sure you have all of the financial information, such as the bank’s routing number, available.

You’ve been working on a swap with a large group of other artists and you finally have all the pieces ready to go. Now, you just need to put your name, email and website on the back of 51 pieces of artwork. You’re getting hand cramps thinking about it and you are signed up for two more swaps this month. There has to be an easier way to identify your art when you are doing massive art exchanges like this. Then, you remember that you can make custom return address labels. There are several custom options available. To choose the labels that are right for you, you should:

 

• Think about where you are as an artist. Are you experimenting with new styles or are you just starting out? If so, you probably will want to choose simple customization options, like using the address fields to type in your email address and website URL instead of your home address. If you feel that your style has evolved to the point that you are going to be happy with a piece of art for quite some time, perhaps you’d rather upload a photo of one of your pieces to replace the standard artwork on the labels.
• Consider how many swaps will be using the colors of the label you are designing. You may want to choose a label with a neutral background color if you don’t use the same color palette in most of your art.

As you pull into the drive through at your bank, you realize that you forgot to sign your company’s name on the back of your checks. As the teller stands and waits and cars pull into the lane behind you, you guiltily dig through your glove compartment, find a pen that works and then endorse the checks as fast as you can. Short of hiring someone to stop you at the door to go through a pre-trip checklist, what can you do to make things run more smoothly? What you need is a pocket stamp.

Pocket stamps are small enough to easily travel in a purse, change tray, or glove compartment and are quick and easy to use. A “For Deposit Only” stamp is really a time saver for people that need to run the company’s checks to the bank, while a “Confidential” stamp can come in handy for people who need to leave messages that they don’t want anyone but the intended recipient to read.

If you have something special you’d like a pocket stamp to say, you can create a custom stamp with your message, from “Sorry I missed you. Jane Doe,” to “Paid in full. Jane Doe.”

You’ve got three different meetings two conference calls and four progress reports scheduled and that is just for the morning. You’re simply too busy to take time out to sign the 21 letters and memos you’ve asked your assistant to type up for you, but they have to get in the mail. It isn’t like they are binding contracts that need your signature to be notarized, but you can’t exactly give your assistant the go ahead to forge your signature. You need a solution better than your current one, which is to eat a few stale crackers with one hand as you sign away your lunch hour with the other. You mention this to your assistant and, within minutes, you are looking at options for ordering signature stamps.

To create a signature stamp, you will need to scan a copy of your signature into your computer, adjust the scanned signature so that it will be able to fit within the space on the stamp, save it as a pdf file and upload it. You may want to consider ordering the stamp with optional text, such as your name printed below the signature. If you are going to be using your new stamp heavily, you may also want to buy some extra ink pads at the same time.