I was on the phone yesterday with my client, Dave. He’s a marketing consultant and he asked me to take a look at the shopping cart on his web site and the credit card processing account that runs behind it.

Dave wasn’t having a problem; he just thought that, after a few years of running on autopilot, it was time to give it a fresh look.

Smart man, that Dave! Technology changes on a near daily basis, bringing with it lower costs (quite often) and new opportunities for the small business owner. Sure enough, when Dave and I dug in, we found that he could save about $55 per month on service fees by making a few adjustments.

The truth is, there are very few places in the world of small business where you can solve a problem once and walk away forever. Whether it’s people, processes or automation, things change; anything that runs without your hands on the wheel needs to be reviewed on a regular basis.

For starters, make sure to review these two areas at least once a year:

 1.  Subscribe to your own newsletter. Just the other night, for example, I added a free download as part of my newsletter process (click here to send me an e-mail and I’ll send you the download).

Once I made the changes on my site, I subscribed to my newsletter and went through the process to make sure that it was working as it should be.

What happened next surprised me. In order to subscribe, my new readers had to fill in a “CAPTCHA form” (where they ask you to retype a bizarre string of numbers/letters). I thought, “Hmm…I don’t remember setting that up, and I hate those things.”

After a few minutes of research, I discovered that Constant Contact had changed the default in their system. I then had to update my account in order to turn CAPTCHA off. If I hadn’t made a change to my site and run a test, I never would have known.

And after all, it was only costing us $4.95 a month, so I let it slide…and slide. One day I sat down and told myself that I wasn’t getting up until the account was cancelled. It took an hour, but I did it!

I recommend that you do the same. Not only do these things add up financially, but, every time you see them on your credit card statement, they trigger a little nagging voice in the back of your head that can bump you off track.

And remember, pricing structures change (as in Dave’s case, above). Maybe that $10.99 a month package that you signed up for three years ago can now be had for $1.99 a month. The only way to know is to give it a look!

While running your business with automation and systems is essential, you don’t want these things to run you!  Pay attention to what you’re doing and where your money is going, and make time periodically to check in on those solutions that you put in place a long time ago.

The other day my client George and I were working on his expense reports. George is not the best record keeper, so we were putting together a simple system to help him keep track of things and get reimbursed more quickly (and completely) by his clients.

As we talked about the obvious things – receipt tracking, reconciling expenses by trip, recording the business purpose for each expense – I asked him about his recent trip to New York City. I saw a receipt for parking at the Route 128 garage outside of Boston, but I didn’t see any notes about mileage. I asked him how he tracks that.

You know that look your children give you when you ask if they’ve brushed their teeth? That was the look on George’s face when I asked that question.

“Uh, I guess I don’t do a very good job of that,” he said. “But I don’t drive my car very much for business anyway.”

I promptly called a time out to have a little chat about mileage.

As I explained to George, I don’t drive that much for work either. And so for a long time, I didn’t bother tracking mileage. After all, it hardly seems worth the effort  for a 4-mile round-trip to Staples for office supplies.

And it isn’t, if that’s all you do. But if the trip to Staples is accompanied by visits to client offices, Starbucks meetings, the post office and other stops, multiplied by two or three or four times in a given month, it adds up to something significant.

Realizing this, I began diligently tracking mileage a few years ago. I began with a clean slate on January 1 and, at the suggestion of my friend Michael, got myself a Dome Auto Mileage Log and Expense Record. 

This tiny booklet ($5.40 on Amazon, here),divided into months, stays in your car.  

Each time you get in (don’t worry, you’ll get in the habit very quickly), you record your current mileage and where you’re going.

When you return to your office, you record the mileage again. At the end of the month (or year) you just add it all up.

And I’m so glad I did. In January alone, I drove 257 miles for business. That’s 31 days worth of meetings here, meetings there and those trips to Staples and more. With the 2013 IRS allowed deduction of 56.5 cents per mile, my trips added up to  $145 dollars for just one month!  I couldn’t believe it. 

(By the way, I used to use Google Maps to track my miles after a long trip. I later realized that I was losing money on those teeny tiny in-between trips that I forgot about.)

George is convinced now as well. And why not? While a $145 deduction won’t make or break you, as long as you’re driving to Starbucks to meet that new business prospect over a double, low-fat, extra milk latte, you may as well let Uncle Sam pay for it!