If you’ve put off getting yourself organized as a mystery shopper, you could be losing money without even knowing it. You may think a disorganized work life would just lead to a little bit of chaos and stress from time to time, but there’s much more to it than that. Here why you should take a little time and organize your mystery shopping life today!
Know What’s Going On. You may think you can keep track of your mystery shopping assignments in your head. After all, you just book your assignments a day or two before you head out to complete them. At the long end, you may have a week that passes by until the shop date and time arrive. Certainly you can keep track of that in your head, right?
You may be able to keep track of most assignments in your head, and your disorganized system of scheduling may work for awhile. But eventually you are going to run into a rather busy portion of your life and that mystery shopping assignment is just going to erase clean from your head amidst all the chaos of your daily life. Once you’ve missed one assignment with a provider, it will be incredibly difficult to regain trust from them, and your paycheck will most definitely suffer.
Also, you are likely wasting both time and money by not making an effort to double book your schedule. If you are heading out to one mystery shopping assignment on a certain afternoon, why not kill two birds with one stone and try to pick up another assignment to complete while you are out. We all know mystery shopping in many cases is not the most lucrative job, but you can make your time more worth your while by doubling up on assignments.
No Log, No Money. If you are not keeping a travel log in your car and writing it in religiously each time you do anything mystery shopping related, you are losing money. There is no ‘maybe’ about it. In many cases, the mileage that you can write off will completely negate any income you receive from your mystery shopping mystery. So what this means to you is that your mystery shopping income can essentially be tax-free, or very close to it. If your tax rate is 15-25%, this means, you have another 15-25% added to your bottom line profit from mystery shopping. So pick up a notebook on your next trip to the grocery store, keep the notebook in your car, and be sure write off the mileage you traveled to buy that notebook!
Keep Your Papers Straight. The tendency for the disorganized mystery shopper is to print out the mystery shopping assignments an hour or two before the assignment date and review the assignments then. This may be fine most of the time. But think about what would happen if you ran out of paper or toner in your printer. Sure, you could probably read the requirements online and then simply try your best to remember them while you are stressed about your printer. Or think about the possibility of other things interfering with your schedule, such as sick kids, a car accident, a crisis at work, bad weather. These things can and do happen all the time, and they cause us to run late. The smart mystery shopper is prepared for these things and prints the requirements out ahead of time to allow for delays.
Chances are, if you have been delaying printing out your assignment requirements, you may not have a good organizational system at your home office. After all, who wants to print out twenty pages of paper and have them lying around for a week? Spend a few minutes and make a file organizational system for your home office. Make a “to be completed” file, and a “completed” file. Buy a stapler or box of paper clips to keep the papers from getting mixed up. You can definitely create a much more elaborate filing system, but even a filing system as simple as this will go a long way in ensuring you get to your assignment knowing what the requirements are regardless of what is going on in your regular life. And this means ensuring you get paid on an assignment!
Even the most organized person has a tendency to let things falls into disorganization from time to time. Spend a few minutes today taking a look around your home office with fresh eyes. Make any small improvements to your organizational system that will help you be a better mystery shopper.
The importance of organizational skills is a no brainer. Other articles in ‘The Mystery Shop Maven’ have highlighted this. My system is very elementary. The completed shops are filed altogether in one folder, the order that they are done. I have a desk top as back up for my laptop; however there is no back up for my printer. I usually like to print off from my log pages as soon as shops are posted.
A note pad from the Dollar store is left in the car, upon which I record the Kms for that year. On each separate page, I keep track of the location and associated numbers, scheduler, date and time of day that I head out. If I do more than one shop that day, they all go on the same page.
One thing that I have observed is that some accounts/logs do not provide a link whereby one can check jobs done and payout. I am totally in the dark about how to keep track of ‘money due.’ Money received, is easy enough to track, however some checks received do not have any details linking them to the shop scheduler or to the company for which the shop has been done. Moreover some companies will not pay out unless an invoice is submitted, which is fine, however not all of them advise you of the amount or the due time to submit it. I had to suffer a loss at one place (a true learning experience) for two or three shops, since they had had not stipulated the requirements to get paid. I now ask. I am always on the look out for a pointer or two.
Happy shopping!
I have been using a large calendar (from one of the office supply stores) for several years. As the assignment comes in I write it dow. Some assigments are on a weekly basis, and some are a couple of weeks away. One quick glance and I can see what is coming up for the next week.
I do all of my printing on Sunday. That way if the job is for Thursday, I have time to re-read the instructions. I also know at a glance where I will be when those last minute pick up jobs and might grab a couple of those.
Sunday is also the day that I get everything organized for the week. Extra pens, paper clips to clip reciepts to paper work, stapler, driving directions if it is some place new,clothes to wear, gas up the car, make sure the batteries in the camera are charged, ect. All of those little things that require some detail, but I try not to put them off until the last minute cause we all know how that works.
I learned the hard way that I couldn’t keep track of my assignments in my head. I got more organized, but then I started double booking when I didn’t have my calendar in front of me when I sat in front of the computer. Since I am signed up with many different companies, they don’t always understand when I want to change a date, although I have managed to endear myself to some by always doing an excellent job and a wonderful report. They remember the people who always turn in reports that don’t require followup, and they appreciate it.
I definitely agree with all the tips you ladies have graced me with. The facts are as follows; Mystery Shopping is quickly becoming one of the Best work at home jobs for 2009 and beyond. Statistically the workforce is in high demand for quality assurance,data mining and focus groups. The only way to gather the pertinent information is w/ people,human resources. The work is detailed and can be fined tuned to the individuals schedules and work habits. I for one enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done, my only complaint is that the payment methods have a lot to be desired at this time. My peeve is that the excuse is not equal to the amount of time spent doing these jobs for the companies. I truly hope that these companies begin to appreciate the work-force that they have for these jobs.