Taming Your Cash Flow Before It Eats You Alive

There are no shortage of “beasts” your business needs to tame in order to thrive in the marketplace.

Some might read that and think of scaling to meet the needs of a growing client base or managing difficult employees, but cash flow can be one of the biggest monetary monsters you can encounter as a business owner. This far-to-often overlooked financial factor can be contained as easily as it can go out of control. Take a look at these four simple, yet sound, principles for taming cash flow in order to make it your business’ best friend rather than an arch enemy.

Let’s discuss how to keep the cash coming in rather than rolling out.

1. Increasing Incentives to Deter Debt Collection

This might seem like a simple psychological trick, but it is an easy way to tame the cash flow beast. Adding incentives for clients who consistently pay on time (or, even better, early) and/or having consequences for clients who are tardy with the amount due will help you keep your cash flow steady and on time. Another way to ensure cash flow is to offer incentives to clients who decide to pay in full rather than installment payments. You can rest assured you get all the cash you need with only a minor deduction of a discount, or whatever incentive you choose. A small discount now is better than having to pay for debt collection later to support cash flow.

2. Cash Flow Cognizance: Being Present & Aware of Cash Flow

It’s your business, livelihood, and financial future. So, why wouldn’t you want to be as aware of and up-to-date with all of your cash flow details? Analyzing your monthly cash flow and keeping a more frequent check on accounts receivable will help you stay on top of delinquent payments from clients and reel in any out-of-control outgoing cash on your part. Knowledge is truly power, as it can be easy to overlook cash flow issues. Awareness equals accountability for you and for your accounts receivable.

Being keyed into your cash flow is the best way to continue saving money instead of burning up revenue.

3. Be Crafty With Credit Cards

Utilizing credit cards in the right way is another simple way to tame your cash flow. Not only do credit cards provide you more time to make payments as it can take 1-2 months for money to be deducted from your company account, but you can increase your credit score over time to gain access to even more benefits from your credit cards. The number one thing to remember for this tip to be successful is that you must always pay the balance in full and on time to avoid even more cash out with extra interest fees or penalties.

4. Consider Your Taxes

Taxes are, unfortunately, unavoidable. You have to factor them in when analyzing cash flow. If you are not taking the cost of taxes into consideration, then you are not properly projecting your cash flow and will be doing yourself a disservice. Automatically set aside the taxes that you will need to pay out and don’t even factor this money into anything you could utilize as cash out for your business. Try to even save extra just to have a cash buffer. In tough times, a little buffer can go a long way. You can also check into any tax discounts and creditsthat could be applicable to your business, because who doesn’t like a little help from time to time?

Stay educated on business taxation to continue to tame cash flow.

Keeping these cash flow tips and tricks in mind will help your business position itself for the most potential profit and the least unnecessary loss. There’s a lot more of these principles to be taught and we can help you learn more about how to optimize your revenue today!