How Store Owners Can Plan Their Time and Delegate Daily Tasks

To free up time for managing your store, record your tasks and the hours you spend on them throughout the week. At the end of the week, choose one recurring task an employee can handle. Give them instructions, the access they need, and authority to make specific decisions. Agree on the deadline, expected result, and how you will review the work.

Review a brief summary of the store’s work each day, and your own time use once a week. Calculate the hours freed up, including time spent on training, oversight, and corrections. Their monetary value can help you plan the cost of support, but does not by itself mean additional profit. Decide in advance how you will use this time: to work on the product range, negotiate with suppliers, or rest.

Record How You Spend Your Workweek

Start a time log in a spreadsheet or notebook. Record the actual start and end time, a brief description of the task, and its result. If you are interrupted, note the reason and how long the interruption lasted. Add entries when you finish each task: it is easy to forget small requests at the end of the day.

Time tracking helps you identify recurring demands even when nobody pays you by the hour. This approach is described by Shopify. Use one complete workweek for your first review. If it was unusual because of stocktaking, an employee’s absence, or a large delivery, keep tracking for another week.

This is a sample time log. In the second row, 40 minutes elapsed: the owner spent 30 minutes preparing the order and another 10 on calls. If you record calls on separate rows, subtract them from the time for the main task so you do not count the same minutes twice.

At the end of the week, total your hours by type of work: purchasing, sales, oversight, administrative tasks, and employee training. Separately note repeated explanations and corrections. Asana also recommends reviewing the log weekly: this helps identify the tasks that take the most time.

Choose the First Task to Delegate

Start with a task that recurs regularly and has a clear result. For example, an employee can prepare a list of products to order, check that price tags match the approved list, or collect customer questions. Define what they can do independently and which decisions remain yours.

If you answer the same question every day, first find out why. The employee may lack instructions, access to data, or permission to make a decision. Assigning the task alone will not solve the problem.

According to the Center for Creative Leadership model, a manager should give the person doing the work the authority, resources, explanation, and support needed to achieve the expected result. In a store, you can set this out in a short task brief.

Sample Task Brief: Prepare an Order for a Supplier

This example is illustrative. The owner sets deadlines and limits to suit the store’s operations.

• Person responsible: store administrator.
• Result: a table listing products, current stock, proposed quantities, and purchase total.
• Deadline: every Tuesday by 12:00.
• Data: stock levels, sales for the agreed period, expected deliveries, and the supplier’s current prices.
• Authority: the administrator prepares a proposal and checks product availability with the supplier. The owner approves the order and the spending.
• Limits: do not add new suppliers or change payment terms without approval.
• Review: the owner reviews the proposal on Tuesday at 12:30; the administrator sends any questions that are blocking preparation by 11:00.

For the first attempt, show the employee one completed example. Ask them to explain what they need to prepare, when they should contact you, and what they cannot decide on their own. After reviewing their work, add any necessary clarifications to the instructions so you do not have to repeat them verbally next time.

Set Up Daily Oversight Without Constant Questions

Agree with the administrator or sales associate responsible on one daily summary. Set a time for it to be prepared and include only the data you use to make decisions. A small store could start with this list:

• sales and returns totals for the day;
• a summary of money movements in the selected cash register and any discrepancies that need explaining;
• products that were unavailable for customers’ confirmed orders;
• overdue tasks, the people responsible, and new deadlines;
• questions the employee cannot resolve within their authority.

For each problem, the employee notes the fact, the next action, and the deadline. For example: “Three units are missing for two confirmed orders. The administrator will check delivery availability by 11:00.” This gives the owner a basis for making a decision.

Agree separately on situations that require the employee to contact you immediately. These might include cases where an employee cannot complete a sale or finds a discrepancy they cannot explain. Collect other questions until the agreed time. After the first week, check whether this process is delaying the store’s work.

A Store Owner’s Plan for the First Week

In this plan, the owner first gathers data and then prepares one task to hand over. Schedule a review of the employee’s independent work for the following week. If your schedule is different, move the steps to your own workdays.

You could initially set aside 30 minutes for the weekly review. This is a suggested duration that you can adjust based on how the process works. Bring the time log, task brief, employee’s result, and a list of unresolved questions to the meeting.

How to Estimate the Value of an Hour and Time Freed Up

For a management calculation, use the owner’s income from the business after store expenses and taxes for a chosen period. Divide it by the actual hours the owner worked during the same period. Do not use total sales revenue: some of the money received is needed for inventory and other expenses.

The “money earned ÷ time spent” approach is described by Shopify in its article about hiring an assistant. For a store owner, the figure is an approximate estimate of the value of their time: income also depends on the products, invested capital, and the team’s work.

Illustrative Calculation for Four Weeks

Suppose the owner’s income after expenses and taxes was UAH 52,000 over four weeks, and the time log showed 160 hours of work. Estimated value per hour: 52,000 ÷ 160 = UAH 325.

The owner delegates a task that previously took six hours a week. Suppose the employee also takes six hours to do it. For this example, the store’s total additional cost for this work is UAH 150 per hour. Over four weeks, the owner spends two hours on training, four on oversight, and two on corrections.

In this example, the owner gains 16 free hours at an additional cost of UAH 3,600. The UAH 5,200 figure estimates the value of that resource using the chosen formula. It is not money received, so the difference between it and the cost should not be recorded as profit.

Include all additional costs in your own calculation: payment for the work, related mandatory payments, required tools, and training materials. If an existing employee takes on the task, check which other tasks they will need to reschedule. After four weeks, replace assumptions with actual hours and costs.

Employee Access Rights and the Daily Report in Torgsoft

When you assign an employee work in Torgsoft, create a separate account for them in the “Settings → Users” menu. Each user has their own login and password, and their role determines access to the program’s functions. Grant the rights needed for the agreed task and test the login using that account. The process is described in the instructions for setting employee access rights.

To review data each day, open “Report → General Report for the Day.” It shows money movements in the selected cash register of the current accounting center, the number of sales and return receipts, and information about opening and closing the cash register day. When the “Cash register day closing is mandatory” setting is enabled, the first financial transaction of the current day in that cash register closes the previous cash register day and opens the current one. These timestamps should not be treated as the actual start and end of a sales associate’s shift. See the help page about the General Report for the Day for more detail.

Agree on who will review the report and explain discrepancies before your daily check. Use its data to verify cash register totals. Record time spent preparing orders, negotiating, training, and on other tasks in your own log. A list of available reports is on the official Torgsoft reports page.

What to Check After the First Week of Independent Work

Compare the time spent on the delegated task before and after the handover. Add the hours spent on explanations, oversight, and corrections. Also check the quality: did the employee meet the deadline, provide a complete result, and stay within the agreed authority?

If you are still spending the same amount of time, review the specific cause. Add to the instructions, correct the access rights, change decision limits, or give the employee another example. Once the first task is completed on time and requires an acceptable level of oversight, choose the next task from your time log.

Sources

• Shopify — 6 Time Management Strategies to Transform the Way You Work: tracking and reviewing time use.
• Asana — Free Work Log Template: task logs and weekly analysis.
• Center for Creative Leadership — Models for the Development of Leadership, section “The Delegation Cycle”: results, authority, resources, and support when delegating.
• Shopify — How to Hire a Virtual Assistant: an approach to estimating the value of time.
• Torgsoft — Setting Employee Access Rights: accounts and roles.
• Torgsoft — General Report for the Day: report data and the condition for closing the cash register day.
• Torgsoft — Report Types: the purpose of the program’s reports.