Sandy. Harvey. Florence. As superstorms such as these have devastated regions over the last few years, their names have become synonymous with the massive destruction and expensive recoveries they leave in their wake. Families returning home after evacuating are often greeted with standing water, damp walls, and damaged family heirlooms… but these families aren’t the only ones left to recover from the chaos.
For home-based businesses, the impact of a disaster can be even more devastating. If you keep paper copies of important records, receipts, and invoices in you home office, they are at high risk of being lost or damaged. If you maintain digital backups of paper records on your computer or your external hard drive, the risk isn’t much lower – in fact, in some cases the risk may be greater. You could easily forget to bring your important business documents with you in the frenetic moments of an evacuation.
In addition to natural weather disasters such as hurricanes, floods, fires, and tornadoes, you could also lose data from a power surge, a cyber attack, or a burglary. And as home business owners who are parents of young children may know, sometimes accidents caused by tiny hands and feet wandering into the wrong room can also lead to a disaster.
September is National Preparedness Month, which means that it’s a great time to consider all the ways that you can prepare your home-based business to survive a disaster. Though there are many efforts you can take to reduce the likelihood of natural, cyber, and accidental disasters, it’s still critical to ensure that your business can continue to run without a loss of important data or records when and if one does hit. Here, we dispel 4 disaster preparedness myths and explain what you can do instead.
4 Myths About Disaster Preparedness
Myth: Home businesses can’t continue operating during disasters.
Reality: The right business continuity plan will keep your business moving.
Some home-based business owners are able to return home to their place of business after a day. Some may never be able to return home. Setting a plan on what to bring and where to go to keep your business running can help you continue operating, even if you don’t have access to your home office.
Much like an emergency plan can help your family survive a disaster, a business continuity plan can ensure your business faces minimal interruptions. If you live in a flood-prone area, prepare a bag with essentials to set up a mobile office after you leave. Consider where your files are stored and how you’ll be able to access them, and make sure you have a “go bag” to bring everything you need. If you lose power for an extended period of time, consider how you might able to continue to run your business from home – or whether there are nearby locations that will allow you to continue your work.
Myth: As the business owner, you and you alone must have access to all of your important files.
Reality: With the right access to important records, strategic partners can help ensure your business obligations are met.
As business owners, it’s easy to fall into the habit of wearing all the hats and running everything yourself. But this approach can have its downfall. If you are evacuated when your quarterly taxes are due, having someone who will be able to make sure you don’t fall behind can be a good way to reduce the impact of a disaster.
Making sure that strategic partners such as accountants or bookkeepers can see the most up-to-date records will allow them to make sure your business’s financial house stays in order, even if you aren’t able to work in your business for a period of time.
Myth: Backing up my files to a hard drive is enough protection.
Reality: Electronic records that aren’t replicated in the cloud are still at risk.
When a storm is rolling in, you’ll make sure family members, pets, and medicine come with you—and it’s unlikely that you’ll want to waste time pausing to search for all of the hard drives that might contain your business’s important records. But if you leave your backed-up files behind and they are destroyed in a flood or fire, you could lose records of all the investments you made in your business over the course of the year, which could have tax implications later on.
The only way to truly ensure that your important files won’t be lost in a disaster is to back them up to the cloud. Updating all of your records to a cloud-based accounting and bookkeeping software will give you the piece of mind to know that your business’s financial records are always safe, no matter what happens to your original paper and digital copies.
Myth: Disasters are always costly, and there’s little you can do to reduce the financial burden of recovery.
Reality: Risk insurance can help reduce the impact of a disaster on your home-based business.
It’s certainly true that some recovery-related costs will be unavoidable, that doesn’t mean you’ll have to foot the cost alone. You can get financial assistance for your business from the government after a disaster.
To get even more protection, you might want to consider risk insurance for your home-based business. This will allow you to recoup the costs that may be associated with replacing equipment or lost business during a disaster.
Preparation is Key
The likelihood of some disasters can be reduced. Putting a gate on your office door can keep small children and pets out. Implementing safeguards to protect your business from cyber attacks can reduce your vulnerability to an attack. But certain disasters are unavoidable. The best way to reduce the impact of a disaster on your small business is to prepare.
Building a business continuity plan, providing access to your important documents to strategic partners, ensuring your important documents are backed up to the cloud, and making sure that your business is properly insured can help your business weather a storm and get back to business as usual.
