5 tips to manage cashflow and improve business costs

5 tips to manage cashflow and improve business costs

Whether planning a start-up or reviewing financial management and operation of an existing business, there are usually two questions at the forefront of the mind: how do I manage cashflow best? And how do I keep business costs low?

To list down every recommendation, trick, piece of advice, process and consideration to address these fundamental areas of business success would require an extensive textbook… so this article offers five quick tips to establish control over your cashflow and business costs, and the impact they have on your profit, survival and growth:

1. Invoice smarter

Slow-paying customers can present a huge issue for small businesses in particular – especially when those businesses are experiencing the same issues as your business and waiting for their own cash to come in. It can be a tricky cycle.

Ensure your invoicing process is streamlined, invoices are promptly mailed out and the invoice content is clear and easy to read. Simple omissions such as failure to include purchase order numbers and payment terms can bring on setbacks and delays.

Assess whether your business is able to go one step beyond and make the payment process easier and faster for your customers.  Electronic payment systems, or discounts offered for rapid payment of invoices, can speed up transactions and may also improve processing times on your side.

2. Negotiate

Just because a price has been quoted, or you have been paying the same rate for years and years, doesn’t mean that is what you have to pay.

Work hard to negotiate with your suppliers since many are willing to discuss pricing and rates (they want to retain your business after all!)

Every little bit might just help – whether addressing standard utility overheads such as energy and phone bills, or working to pay less for the office stationery  – it could have a significant impact on your bottom line.

3. Get close to your accountant 

Many businesses, particularly smaller ones, look to liaise with their accountant only at a time of need.

A solid accountant can provide invaluable advice and serve as a useful resource, sharing knowledge, insight and recommendation all year round.

Services such as cost management, profit management, investment, funding consultancy and general check-ups can help you keep things on track and optimise the health of your balance sheet.

Build a regular relationship and dialogue with your accountant to drive smarter business decisions, higher profits, reduced taxes and improved cash flow

4.  Explore alternative credit and funding options

A wide range of alternative funding solutions are available in the market – non-bank lending is now at its highest in five years as more and more SMEs recognise the benefit of short-term, affordable cash flow solutions.

Beyond the company credit card, hire purchase agreements, leasing arrangements and overdrafts – cash flow products such as crowd-funding and invoice finance could provide much-needed cash and capital to help you manage seasonal demand, or the challenging peaks and troughs of delayed customer payments. If you have followed the previous tip and have a good accountant, they will be full of advice and recommendation on the best path for you.

Overdrafts, premium funding, lease facilities and cashflow funding products such as factoring can all be excellent tools to help match cash supply with outlays. These arrangements take time to set up, so you need to be prepared in advance.

5. Plan, plan, plan – and stick to it

Heavily monitor your balance sheet and your cash flow budget.

The continual review and action planning for the credit you arrange, the bills you pay, how you pay those bills, and when your payments are coming in are all critical for the survival of the business.

It is important to revise your cash flow budget periodically which an accountant can assist with and deliver as an automated, streamlined process. Simple exercises such as payment prioritisation, strategic management of credit terms, weekly cash flow projections and payment collections all form the foundations of the dynamic accounting function of a business.

A solid system in place such as this will also allow you to plan for lean times and schedule purchases and allocation of capital when you need it most.

About the Author: Beth Nicholas is a professional writer for Plus Accounting – chartered accountants and providers of business financial services based in Brighton, England.

Mint.com Interview on Crowdfunding

Dr. Letitia Wright has a huge heart for entrepreneurs. She loves their energy and the twinkle in the eyes they get when talking about their product. She’s passionate about helping them because she has personal experience seeking help for running her own business and coming up empty handed.

Wright started her career as a chiropractor, and while she loved the medical part of her job, she struggled with the business side. There weren’t enough clients and she needed a marketing strategy. The lowest point of her journey was when she went to hire a practice management company to help her troubleshoot the business issues and they told her she didn’t make enough money to be one of their clients.

She focused on learning about business herself, eventually creating a TV show in 2000 for entrepreneurs called “The Wright Place,” which offers advice, resources and growth strategies to small business owners.

“I never wanted anyone to feel the punch in the stomach that I felt,” she said.

She stopped seeing patients in 2004 to focus on growing her business career and hasn’t looked back. In the past several years she’s thrown much of her energy at becoming a go-to source for information on crowdfunding, constantly reading new information, following trends, keeping up to date on SEC best practices and growing her knowledge on what is a relatively new way to raise capital for a project.

Working with private clients as well as running her own successful crowd-funding campaigns to pay for a book and workshop has given her plenty of insight on the ins and outs of open source fundraising.

With the economy still struggling and credit being hard to come by, Wright couldn’t have picked a better time to become an expert in alternative methods of paying for an idea.

“You can crowdfund anything,” she said. “It’s fantastic.”

Wright answered questions for Mint about crowdfunding. Here’s what we learned:

What’s the biggest misinformation about crowdfunding?

Read  rest Mint.com Interview Here

Evaluating Youtube Video Performance

Evaluating Youtube Video Performance

Do you use Youtube for marketing? If you don’t, you should definitively consider doing it. Through Youtube you can drive traffic to your site, build your brand, interact with your customers and much more. Furthermore, Google loves Youtube and often ranks Youtube videos very highly in its competitive search results. Many marketers that have started to utilize Youtube and its benefits have had difficulties in analyzing the success of their video and content. For information about evaluating Youtube video performance, be sure to check out this article.

The most basic statistic you should be looking to when determining the success of your video is the number of views. Though often overvalued, the view count of your videos is nevertheless important. You should be able to look at not only the views, but also the “estimate minutes watched” through the Youtube Analytics panel. These statistics can tell you two very important things.

First, your view count can tell you how effective your title, picture, and description were in attracting viewers. Views are not dependent of how long the user watched nor are they dependent on whether the user liked your video. A high view count suggests that your video has a successful title and might be highly ranked in Google or frequently shared through social media.

The number of minutes watched is important because it describes how engaged your users were when watching the video. By dividing your minutes watched by the number of views you can tell what was the average number of minutes watched. A low number of viewers mean that your viewers quickly became disinterested and bored.

When evaluating your video’s success you also want to look at the traffic source page. Here you can see where your viewers came from. Common traffic sources include Google Search, Youtube channel pages, external webpages, and Youtube search. Unfortunately two other popular sources (embedded player & mobile apps and direct traffic) are unknown sources. However through these statistics you can still roughly determine what avenue of traffic is having the most success and which methods you still need to improve on.

Along with determining where your audience came from, you can also determine several important demographic factors such as age and gender. By finding which audience is most highly attracted to your videos you can tailor future content to apply directly to this specific  audience which cans increase subscription rate and user engagement.

Next, you want to pay attention to social shares. There is a certain “Sharing” page on Youtube where you can view the number of shares you receive. Popular sharing services include Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus

Finally, you want to take careful notes on comments. Customers often provide valuable feedback. By responding to their questions and comments you can often answer questions you did not address in the video.

To learn more about marketing, or ecommerce visit us at http://www.thepowersellersunion.com

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