AIBU - DH's business or mine?

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My hubby and I both work for ourselves. He's a creative type and I help him out with his back office (in addition to having my own business and projects). At the moment his company is going through lots of change which is putting massive pressure and extra work on me in terms of sorting finances, payroll, HR etc. It bores me to tears, and I don't want to do it for him (it was ok when it started and I was occasionally writing him a letter or paying an invoice, but it keeps growing). However if I don't do it he's in the shit as he just hasn't the skills at all to deal with this stuff (as I said, he's the creative strategic one, can't work out simple accounting to save his life!). Unfortunately my own work is exceptionally busy at the moment, but with stuff I love doing. I'm stressed due to the workload but I will get through it.

What's really pushing me over the edge though is DH's constant demands that I do stuff for him, and it always needs doing Right Now. It doesn't matter how much I tell him I am overwhelmed with my own job he just keeps pushing more and more onto me from his side. He's completely in his own head only thinking he's the one under pressure.

I can't work out the best solution. I want to say he should actually just hire someone to do what I do for him, but tbh his business is not all that profitable at the mo, so paying someone to do what I do would probably mean he gets a tiny pay packet... which ultimately impacts on me again as I am forced to earn more to cover our house and family costs if he can't.

The more I write the more I'm not even sure what it is IABU about. AIBU to tell him to stick his work and get someone else to do it and put my own work first? How can I resolve this?

Why does he think you're his secretary?
Tell him he needs to get someone to do it, ok it impacts your finances but at least you can then focus on your own work

You can resolve it by giving him work to do for your business and telling him to do it Right Now and when he refuses tell him to shove his admin up his arse.

He could learn to do it if he wanted to. At the moment he doesn't because you do it.

I think you need to get an office. Even if it's only your old bedroom at your mum's.

I freelance doing this work on a very piecemeal basis. Not touting for business, but suggesting you and husband use this sort of service for the peaks, and between you decide how to reasonably divide your admin-type tasks when they’re at their ‘normal’ level.

You need to talk to him

He either needs to hire someone OR you agree times when you can help and he keeps everything to those times

He needs to get someone in.
How long would it take someone who knows what they are doing, to get all the work you do for him done???
2 days a week?
This could really work for a mum with school kids.
Tues, Wed, Thurs - 10am-2pm - would that cover it all do you think?
12 hours a week.
You can't continue like this so this is really the only solution.
If that doesn't work for him then tough.
He can find his own solution.

I think you have to practice in the mirror - 'No I can't do that right now. I'll let you know when I have a minute. If that doesn't work for you then fuck off and do it yourself. I am NOT your employee!'
Rinse and repeat and repeat and repeat.

He needs to learn to do it himself but you can be there for guidance or a second opinion. Are there any short courses he can take to upskill himself.
What if you were seriously sick, how could he cope?

Is there any way to automate any of it?

I used to use an accountant, just kept my stuff in spreadsheets, then once a year emailed them and all the invoices etc. over to her and let her sort it out., then I moved, and had to get a new accountant, who told me to get Xero, talked me through setting it up, and I grant access so they can generate my end of year accounts from it.

It took a while to get used to, but now it's just forwarding emails to Xero, and clicking 'OK' to match them to bank statements. Filing the VAT return is copying numbers of a report etc. It's annoying, but it's not hard, and it's not as involved as my end of year stuff used to be.

Could he do that? Would that help?

YANBU about not wanting to do something for him that isn't even your job, because he won't put in the effort to do it himself (even though the effort will be harder for him than it is for you because of personality).

There are loads of people who do bookkeeping or accounting from home. It's an ideal WFH job. They are surprisingly cheap as well (from what you describe I guess maybe a couple of hundred a month would cover it, depending on employee numbers etc.)

Yes, keep giving him work for your business and tell him to do it immediately. When he says he's overwhelmed with his own job, just keep pushing more and more onto him from your side.

My guess is that he'll be amenable to hiring someone at that point.

Bottom line is that you have to show people, not tell people. When you show them how it impacts THEM, rather than telling them how it impacts you, they'll see the light.

Is there a way to put boundaries around what you do for DH? Give him a set amount of time to get his things done (a particular morning, or 10-11 daily, or whatever works for YOU) and that you need him to leave everything in 1 place for you to get on with then.

Meanwhile, the rest of the time is for YOU to get on with YOUR business tasks, and he can't drop things on you in those times because you are already busy.

If it was laid out for him in that way, perhaps with a chart showing your timetable (and perhaps how much time you have already put into his business to the detriment of your own? Do you have any idea how much it has increased recently to show that? And perhaps show that you have deadlines of your own to meet or similar?) and a dedicated in tray or similar that he can drop papers into for you to deal with when "his" slot arrives?

He's not going to like it, because presumably you currently do the job for nothing, but he needs to find a local book-keeper to do invoicing and payments etc for a few hours a week. They don't even have to do the payroll, that is far better outsourced to a specialist payroll firm, or to your accountants. They are experts, and will only charge a small fee every month.

This will free the two of you up to earn more money for your businesses, and that should more than compensate for the cost of hiring someone.

I'm going to go against the grain here and say I can't fully understand that HIS and MINE mentality. You are a family; surely they are both effectively joint ventures for the benefit of your lifestyles. Therefore, if you don't help him and he needs to outsource it, resulting in it eating in to his small profits, its not the best choice for your FAMILY?

There are free/inexpensive courses for small businesses out there that could help him. Look up things like Business Gateway which offers courses on bookkeeping and accounts. It would be beneficial for you both for your husband to get clued up on how this side of things works so that he does not have to rely on you so heavily. I dont think it is unreasonable to continue assisting him until he knows how to do these things himself. If him training isn't viable, perhaps you need to spend the time showing him how it is done, with the stipulation that in X number of weeks, you will be withdrawing your concentrated assistance and he should have learned the competency to do it on his own. For a small business, its really not that complex to do basic admin, prepare invoices etc. Get a basic accounting software such as Xero for £30 a month which will automate so much of this work for you both. Its the simplest accounting software I have ever used, literally a monkey could make sense of it!

I don't think you should continue helping him forever, and he should 100% be understanding that you are not his secretary, available whenever he calls. But for the benefit of your families businesses, it would be wise to tackle this as a team so that you can both be as successful as you want to be.

I think he needs to learn how to do basic business tasks; or he can’t have a business.

He has the same choice as any other self employed person. He learns how to do the tasks he needs to do to get by, or he outsources it. He can’t afford the latter, so it’s got to be the former.

He’s just not doing it because he’d rather push it at you.

Why are you allowing him to even run a business if it isn't that profitable? Tell him to go and get a paye job!

Your husband has a “lifestyle” business. This means he will never make a profit. It isn’t a business at all. If there is in fact a saleable service/product there, he needs to team up with a business type & do it right. Business partner will run ops/finance/marketing & your hubby can do the creative bit.
The fact that he doesn’t make enough to pay help says he needs to up his prices. He will lose unprofitable clients but will keep his profitable ones & can grow from that base.
As PP said, there are loads of business courses, but it doesn’t sound like he is actually interested in business per se. That is why he needs a partner.
That partner is not you, BTW.

I doubt you were born with the ability to do the accounts. You learned, and so can he.

So he wants you to spend less time on your profitable work, so you can spend more time on his unprofitable work, doing things you don't like doing?

If he has to bring someone else in to do the admin, and pay them (reducing his own profit) then HE can be the one to work extra to top up the finances, not you!

If he pays someone to do this work he may well find out he doesn't have a viable business.

Is that the real problem, that his business only pays when you work for free? That's not acceptable or fair, especially if it limits your income.

Yep he needs to learn, plenty of courses around teaching these skills!

He needs a VA. You can get them from £25ph - ask around for a recommendation on LinkedIn or check out Upwork (quality is more variable, there). If he refuses, start billing him at your hourly rate, if only to make a point. He does not get to have an office because he married you.

You can also automate a lot these days - for example I use Wave accounting with Stripe that embeds a direct payment button into the invoice and updates the accounts on receipt. You can also link up your business bank account and email through receipts for automatic upload and reconciliation.

That's just one example. The same applies to emails, time tracking (try focus booster, if its a service based business), calendar appointments, etc. He needs to put a system in place.

Depending on how much you will resent it, consider merging the back end of the office, use Trello or Asana for task management and jointly hire someone for the admin. If you both run to the same system, it's a lot easier to pull him up on disorganisation and just point to the right card/ proceedure.

He needs to learn how to run a successful business and either do it effectively himself or be able (and afford) to delegate. My dh is a creative type and runs a creative type business, but he went to uni for business so he’d know how to do all these things. If it’s not making enough money, he needs to get a day job and do this in the evening until it takes off or close up shop.

He either learns or hires someone it's simple!