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☕ Grab a cinnamon latte. Let’s go undercover in your business.

Running a business means wearing many hats but managing your finances doesn't have to slow you down. QuickBooks Online combines AI-powered automation with trusted expert support to help you save time, gain real-time financial insights, and make smarter business decisions. From automating everyday accounting tasks to answering questions about cash flow and profitability, QuickBooks helps you stay focused on growth.

🕵️ How Small Businesses Use Customer Research & Mystery Shopping to Protect Revenue

Want to take this week's challenge a little further? SCORE is holding a free workshop on Sept. 29 specifically for small business owners on customer research and mystery shopping. You'll learn how to spot problems before they turn into bad reviews or lost customers and leave with a mystery-shopping starter guide you can put to work in your own business. 

🛍️ Customer Experience Trends for Ecommerce in 2026
What do customers expect from businesses today? This look at customer experience trends covers everything from personalization and faster service to creating a smoother experience across different touchpoints. As you mystery shop your business, it might give you a few more things to look for.

😊 Smiling Report 2026: Stronger Sales, Weaker Human Connection
Efficiency matters, but so does how you make customers feel. Based on more than 600,000 customer interactions across 36 countries, this report found that businesses are getting better at selling while some of the human connection is slipping. As you go undercover, don't just ask, “Did everything work?” Ask, “How did the experience feel?”

Copy and paste this prompt into your favorite AI tool:

How to Keep Track of Business Expenses in 7 Steps

Tired of hunting receipts and tax-time surprises? Learn a simple 7-step system to separate accounts, capture receipts, reconcile monthly, and turn expense tracking into cash-flow control — the checklist most small-business owners skip.

QuickBooks Workforce Review: Features, Pricing & More for 2026

Ditch payroll headaches—QuickBooks Workforce syncs payroll with QuickBooks, automates tax filings, and pushes time-tracked hours straight into pay runs. Find which plan saves you time and where rising per-employee fees might make a cheaper alternative smarter.

5 Best Time Tracking Integrations for QuickBooks Online in 2026

Make QuickBooks stop losing work hours: this guide ranks the top 5 time-tracker integrations (Buddy Punch, Connecteam, Zoho People, ClockShark, eBillity) and shows which preserves job, payroll, and billing data—find the right fit for your workflow.

This week, we're going undercover. Let's mystery shop our own businesses and see what we find.

Pretend you've never interacted with your business before. Pay attention to anything that's confusing, slow, frustrating, or harder than you expected.

The trick: Don't fix anything as you go. Make a list first. Then choose the one thing that would make the biggest difference for your customers and start there.

When was the last time you actually used the contact form on your own website?

Pretend you’re a potential customer and send yourself an inquiry. Then see what happens. Did it go through? Did you get a confirmation? How long did it take to get a response? Was it clear what would happen next?

Your quick win: Submit your own contact form today. You might discover your customers aren’t experiencing it quite the way you thought.

Ever wonder what customers actually do when they visit your website? Microsoft Clarity lets you watch anonymized session recordings and use heatmaps to see where visitors click, scroll, get stuck, or leave. It can even flag behaviors such as repeated clicks that may signal frustration.

And here's the part small business owners will appreciate: it's free.

Think of it as a mystery shopper for your website. Instead of guessing where customers are getting confused, you can see how people actually use it.

Try this: Watch a few customer sessions and look for one place where people hesitate, click repeatedly, or leave. That may be your next quick fix.

Rayanne Harmon

Senior Small Business Writer and Entrepreneur

Rayanne Harmon is an entrepreneur and finance professional with decades of experience building businesses while working in banking, accounting, and business finance. Inspired by a family of entrepreneurs, she successfully owned and operated a photography studio for 20 years before launching a social media marketing agency dedicated to helping small businesses grow. Through Small Business Insider, Rayanne shares practical advice, real-world insights, and actionable strategies to help entrepreneurs navigate the challenges of starting, managing, and growing a successful business.

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