Archive for the ‘budget’ category

Strategies for Thriving in a Tough Economy

August 8th, 2022

Whether or not you believe we’re heading into a recession, or even if you have come to believe that what we have now is pretty much as good as it’s going to get, there’s no getting around the fact that we’re experiencing poor economic times. An enduring lack of consumer confidence and decreased sales threaten all businesses, but small businesses are particularly vulnerable as they often don’t have the reserves to help them survive difficult times.

Entrepreneurs who are survivors will look at this as an opportunity to improve their business practices so they can not only weather the tough times, but thrive during them. How, then, can you recession-proof your business? Thinking through the following practices and how you can make them your strategies will help ensure your business’s success in a tough economy.

1. Protect your cash flow

To keep your business healthy, cash needs to continue flowing through it. As long as your business exists, you will have expenses. But the harder times get, the harder it can be to keep the cash flowing into your business. Be more diligent in how you are spending money. It’s important to be frugal and aware of your income and expenses. By doing a line item cost for each expense, you will be able to identify areas that need greater attention. Efficient cash flow management is crucial. The sections below are all, for the most part, areas that will have impact on your cash flow, but take special note of the ones regarding evaluating your vendors, reviewing your inventory management, and keeping your personal credit in good shape.

2. Streamline your business practices

This is an opportune time to review your business procedures for effectiveness. Consider areas that can be combined into one. Consider areas that can be structured differently to reduce costs. Think about sharing resources, like administrative or payroll work, with other entrepreneurs to reduce overhead. The goal is to streamline operations so you can still provide a quality product or service, yet realize a greater profit by reducing the expenses to produce it.

3. Evaluate your vendors

If you use vendors for packaging, labeling, distribution, or in other areas of your business, this is a good time to do some price comparisons. There is a lot of competition among vendors to attract new business, so you could realize some serious savings in this area. Since no one wants to lose business during a bad economy, chances are good that your current vendors will meet the competitor’s price. If not, it’s time to move your business to the lowest bidder, just as long as you’re not sacrificing quality.

4. Review your inventory management practices

See what can be done to reduce inventory costs without sacrificing the quality of goods or inconveniencing customers. Are you ordering too many of particular items? Can an item be sourced somewhere else at a better price? Is there a drop-shipping alternative that will work for you, eliminating shipping and warehousing costs?

Just because you’ve always ordered something from a particular supplier or done things in a particular way doesn’t mean you have to keep doing them that way, especially when those other ways may save you money.

5. Focus on your core competencies

A diversification strategy is often recommended for small business success. But too often small business owners simplify the concept of “diversification” to “different”. Just adding other products or services to your offerings is not diversification. It’s potentially just a waste of time and money. Worse, it can damage your core business by taking your time and money away from what you do best. It may even damage your brand and reputation. If you have diversified out into different areas over the years to improve market reach, it might be time to regroup and focus on the core of your business and outsource the rest. Evaluate what is and isn’t working and put more effort into what started you out as a successful entrepreneur in the first place. It’s important to get in touch with your core business and make sure it continues to meet the changing needs of customers. So consider dropping the extras and focus on what you do best and which is most profitable to recession-proof your business.

6. Develop and implement strategies to get your competition’s customers

If your small business is going to prosper in tough times, you need to continue to expand your customer/client base. If you have competitors, then they have customers. So, there are already people out there buying what you sell, just not from you. What will it take to attract those customers? You’ll need to offer something more or something different. Research your competition and see what you can offer to entice their customers into becoming your customers. It’s not only lower prices or a better price/quality trade-off that gets the business. Providing better customer service is often identified as one of the easiest ways to outdistance the competition. But you need to do the research in your own market to find out what it takes to be the customer’s first choice.

7. Make the most of the customers/clients you have

They say that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The bird in the hand is the customer or client you already have. These customers are an opportunity to make more sales without incurring the costs of finding a new customer.

Even better, he or she might be a loyal customer, giving you many more sales opportunities. If you want to recession-proof your business, you can’t afford to ignore the potential profits to be had from established customers. But remember that your customers are going through tough times too. In order to retain their business, implement measures to express your appreciation. This could be a one-time price reduction, a customer loyalty card, or a referral incentive. Whatever the strategy may be, it should be something of value to the customer and within your marketing budget.

8. Continue to market your business

In lean times, many small businesses make the mistake of cutting their marketing budget to the bone or even eliminating it entirely. But lean times are exactly the times your small business most needs marketing. Consumers are restless and looking to make changes in their buying decisions. You need to help them find your products and services and choose them rather than others by getting your name out there. So don’t stop marketing. In fact, if possible, step up your marketing efforts.

9. Keep your personal credit in good shape

Hard times make it harder to borrow and small business loans are often among the first to disappear. With good personal credit, you’ll stand a much better chance of being able to borrow the money needed to keep your business afloat if you need to. To recession-proof your business, keep tabs on your personal credit rating as well as your business one and do what’s necessary to keep your credit ratings in good shape.

There’s absolutely nothing that will make your small business one hundred percent recession-proof. But implementing the practices above will help ensure your small business survives tough times and might even be able to profit from them.

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Posted in accounting, best practices, bookkeeping, break-even, budget, business goals, business plan, cash flow, cost, customer retention, customer service, financial management, Inventory, management, profit, QuickBooks, small business, strategic planning

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Is Your Budget Incomplete?

October 8th, 2013

Is your budget incomplete?Estimating and matching expenses to revenue (real or anticipated) is important because it helps business owners to determine whether they have enough money to fund operations, expand the business and generate income for themselves. Without a budget or a plan, a business runs the risk of spending more money than it is taking in or, conversely, not spending enough money to grow the business and compete.

So you assemble a budget spreadsheet that starts with your projected profit, then accounts for the operating expenses required to generate that profit, and calculates the gross profit margin, and then estimates the required sales revenues. You look over the results and decide that the profit goal is doable because the sales revenues are realistic and the required expenses are complete. But are they? Have you considered all of the following?

Purchase Price vs Landed Price
Does your budget account for the difference between the purchase price for a product and the landed price? The landed price is what really matters, because it includes the costs of freight, duties, taxes, storage, etc. Knowing the true cost of getting the product into your hands is crucial when setting the price and insuring profitability. Clearly it is advantageous to reduce the cost of each or any component of landed cost. Each one will allow the seller to lower the final selling price or increase the profit margin associated with that sale.

Slow Growth
Many entrepreneurs don’t account for how much money they will spend if their idea does not take off as fast as they hope. When budgeting, make sure to create at least one “very worst case” scenario that does not have much or any growth, just so you know what will happen if it all goes wrong.

The Effects of Scale
Scaling may affect more areas of your business than you can anticipate. Ongoing processes such as training new employees and maintaining quality control are just some areas that might get exponentially more difficult, without even factoring in the effect of any new operations. Be sure to budget in the money and time to make systems and procedures more efficient, as new problems related to scale will inevitably arise.

Insurance, Equipment and Software Applications
Three of the biggest expenses that may surprise you as an entrepreneur are:

Insurance: You need to budget in much more than you pay as an employee for health, disability and business insurance.

Equipment: Will you need additional equipment and office furniture to provide the production capacity that your profit projection required? Even simple items like tools, racks, chairs and file cabinets can add up to substantial costs.

Software: You’ll need to purchase licenses for each user.

The Cost of Networking
Entrepreneurs sometimes forget how expensive it can be to do networking in the right places. Conferences, for example are great for networking. However, ticket costs, hotels and transportation to conferences add up. Even if most of your networking is at free or low cost events, consider how much money is spent taking people out to lunch and coffee to network with them one-on-one afterwards.

The Costs at Home
When you’re caught up in the fast pace of running and growing your business, it’s easy to forget that there needs to be at least enough money to put food on the table at home. Even if you cut your personal expenses down to bare bones, they do still exist. Make sure they make it into your budget, rather than stressing about them down the line.

Paying Taxes
It’s easy if you’re self-employed, especially if it’s in a start-up, to forget to put enough money aside for taxes. Budget 15-20% of gross revenue or 35% of net revenue (until you know your business better) for paying the taxman. It would be advisable to put the money aside in a separate bank account every month so you’ll always be able to make your tax payments in full and on time.

Unpredictable Costs
There will always be costs you couldn’t have predicted, and because of this it’s important to have a buffer-fund of as much money as you can spare to handle those server crashes, extra hires or other incidental costs you couldn’t have known to figure into the official budget. Consider that an extra 10% of your budget should be included in a Miscellaneous Expenses line item on your budget spreadsheet.

Review the Business Periodically
While many companies draft a budget yearly, small business owners should do so more often. In fact, many small business owners find themselves planning just a month or two ahead because business can be quite volatile and unexpected expenses can throw off revenue assumptions.

Bottom Line
Budgeting is an easy but essential process that business owners use to forecast (and then match) current and future revenue to expenses. The goal is to make sure that enough money is available to keep the business up and running, to grow the business, to compete, and to ensure a solid emergency fund.

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Posted in , action plans, best practices, budget, business goals, cost, entrepreneur, profit, small business, start-up, strategic planning

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Top 4 Cash Flow Tips

September 19th, 2013

Water tap dripping dollar bills, Water waste conceptProfit is important because without it your business will fail. But for small businesses, cash flow is king. Your company’s cash flow will determine its profitability, and scrutiny of your business’ cash flow will increase your control over this dynamic. Follow these 4 cash flow tips to establish the structure you need to succeed.

1. Know Your Balance Sheet
Many business people don’t understand how cash flow works and its significance to keeping their business operating. Focusing on the profit and loss statement is potentially a fatal mistake as healthy profits can mask an impending cash flow crisis. Profit and loss statements don’t usually contain the information required to make an adequate cash flow projection. What is need is a structured balance sheet that includes all the influencing items such as debts, interest payments, inventory and so on. You want to see the data that represents your cash flow and which can be employed to project the comings and goings of your cash over the period you have selected.

2. Set Up a Cash Flow Budget, Revise it Periodically, and Stick to It
Plan forward to generate a projection of likely future sales and expenses. You, or your accountant, can set up such a cash flow worksheet in Excel to automate this exercise.

Reviewing and updating your cash flow budget regularly is your best insurance against potential cash shortages. If your business has a predictable cash flow, then revising the cash flow budget on a quarterly basis is probably sufficient. But the greater the cash flow uncertainty a business has, the more frequently a new cash flow budget should be prepared.

If cash is tight, you may need to do to weekly projections, and decide which invoices you’ll pay and which customer payments you need to collect as soon as possible.

Rapid growth sounds good but, ironically, it can bring on a surprise cash crunch. Additionally, a sudden increase in sales often creates an inventory drop that can make the timely fulfillment of orders difficult.  The extra time you spend managing your increased sales often takes up your time and results in debtors not being tracked or followed up on when their accounts become overdue. Strong sales one month often means a cash shortage next month. By monitoring the business’ cash status you can arrange credit from suppliers, banks and other sources such as factoring, to cover the temporary shortfalls.

Just like your company budget, you need to continuously reference your cash flow budget worksheet in order to drive your cash flow situation rather than become a casualty of it. So set that budget and stick to it. As your cash flow circumstances evolve you will need to revise that budget and adjust to the new level of cash management it will then require. Stay on top of your cash flow process.

3. Set Credit, Accounts Receivable & Accounts Payable Policy & Procedure as One Strategy
What credit you allow, how you monitor its use, how you manage the bills you pay, and how you pay the bills you owe, are the components of your cash flow process. How you coordinate them is what determines your actual cash flow, and often times the survival of your company.

Set Your Credit Policy & Terms
If the nature of your business requires offering credit, then it is important to set clear limits to your terms of credit.

Manage Accounts Receivable Strictly
Get payments in quickly. Master the art of debtor management. Let debtors know how much time remains before due dates. Stay in close touch with major debtors as payment deadlines approach. Offer small discounts for early payment as an incentive.

Pay Your Creditors Strategically
Take advantage of credit terms and prioritize payments according to the consequences involved in becoming past-due. Wages, taxes and direct debits are at the top of the list for on-time payment. Key suppliers may be prepared to wait to keep your business. Don’t pay early just to get a discounted price unless getting the discount is better than being without the cash.

Plan for Lean Times
Monitor your bank balances, be aware of when lean cash flow periods are coming up, and plan accordingly. Avoid funding major purchases from your business’ working capital unless you are sure you have the cash to cover it.

4. Get financial products working to your benefit
Overdrafts, premium funding, lease facilities and cash flow 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. In a pinch, the business credit card can be a good way to ease the crunch as long as it can be paid off before interest kicks in.

Of course there are other items that impede proper cash flow, and are important to avoid, such as:

  • tax penalties
  • non-budgeted purchases
  • personal use of company monies
  • making advances and loans to employees
  • having un-deposited checks sitting on your desk
  • not investing excess cash
  • etc., etc., etc….

But the four major categories discussed above should be your first concern as they are the foundation for establishing control over your cash flow and the impact it has on your business’ profit, survival and growth.

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Posted in Accounts payable, Accounts Receivable, best practices, budget, cash flow, entrepreneur, factoring, financial management, invoicing, profit, small business, Uncategorized

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Simplifying the Profit & Loss Statement

March 29th, 2012

You might not need to be an accountant to be successful in business, but understanding financial reports will help you understand the basics of financial management and feel comfortable using standard financial tools and metrics to monitor and appraise the performance of your business.

How a Profit & Loss Statement helps you manage your business

Financial reports distill the vast amount of daily business data your company produces and arranges it into a usable format, useful in making the best possible business decisions.

Producing regular profit and loss statements, at least quarterly or monthly, will enable you to:

1. Answer the question, “How much money am I making, if any?”

2. Compare your projected performance with actual performance

3. Compare your performance against industry benchmarks

4. Use past performance trends to form reasonable forecasts for the future

5. Show your business growth and financial health over time

6. Detect any problems regarding sales, margins and expenses within a reasonable time so adjustments may be made to recoup losses or decrease expenses

7. Provide proof of income if you need a loan or mortgage

8. Calculate your income and expenses when completing and submitting your tax return.

What is a Profit & Loss Statement?

A profit and loss statement, also know as a P&L or an Income Statement, records sales income, costs and expenses and shows business performance over a specific period of time.  Profit and loss statements:

1. Show business performance over a specific period of time

2. Show income (revenue from sales)

3. Show the costs of the goods you sell (Cost of Goods Sold) such as purchases made from suppliers for goods or raw materials

4. Shows your gross profit (income minus cost of goods sold)

5. Show operational expenses (overhead and other expenses of running your company)

6. Show net income or loss (whether a profit or loss has been made )

Creating a Profit & Loss Statement

The figures in a profit and loss account will come from a number of different sources in your business, so it’s best to organizes and categorize your day to day receipts and expenses into a Chart of Accounts which represents the income and expense categories you want to track and evaluate. This Chart of Accounts forms the core structure of your bookkeeping system, and will be the basis for your Profit and Loss Statement.

A Profit and Loss Statement will usually look something like this:

$250,000       Income
  $10,000        Less Discounts
$240,000        Equals Net Income

   $50,000       Less Cost of Sales/Cost of Goods Sold
 $190,000       Equals Gross Profit

$100,000       Less Operating Expenses
  $90,000       Equals Operating Profit

$5,000        Plus Other Income
    $3,000        Less Other Expenses
  $92,000        Equals Net Ordinary Income (Profit Before Taxes)

  $33,000        Taxes
  $59,000        Net Profit (or Net Loss)

 Accounting Software and Financial Reporting

Accounting software makes it easy for you to create different views of your data. For example, you can compare this month with last month, this year-to-date with last-year-to-date, several months in sequence, or you can convert the figures into percentages and compare them that way. All this makes it easier for you to identify trends over time.

Your goal in business is for your sales and profits to increase, and your expenses, as a percent of sales, to decrease. Look at your profit and loss statements and compare them from one period to another. Are there any sudden changes or anomalies that raise a red flag? For example, if your office expense spending suddenly rose from $100 a month to $500 for one month, you would want to look into this. Or if your staff costs on average 30% of your income and this figure suddenly goes up to 40%, again you would want to investigate.

You can also draw some deeper conclusions than just seeing that more money is coming in than before. Is the increase equivalent to, or better than, the rate of inflation? Is it the result of more sales, or is it hiding the fact that although you have charged more per sale, you actually made fewer sales? And looking ahead, is the rate of increase in line with your goals, or do you need to set a new target? These are just some of the many questions accurate reports can help you address.

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Posted in , action plans, best practices, bookkeeping, budget, business goals, cost, entrepreneur, financial management, Income Statement, P&L Statement, profit, Profit and Loss Statement, small business

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9 Strategies for Thriving in a Tough Economy

March 13th, 2012

Whether or not you believe we’re in a recession, or slowly moving out of one, or even if you have come to believe that what we have now is pretty much as good as it’s going to get, there’s no getting around the fact that we’re experiencing poor economic times. An enduring lack of consumer confidence and decreased sales threaten all businesses, but small businesses are particularly vulnerable as they often don’t have the reserves to help them survive difficult times.

Entrepreneurs who are survivors will look at this as an opportunity to improve their business practices so they can not only weather the tough times, but thrive during them. How, then, can you recession-proof your business? Thinking through the following practices and how you can make them your strategies will help ensure your small business’s success in a tough economy.

1. Protect your cash flow

To keep your small business healthy, cash needs to continue flowing through it. As long as your business exists, you will have expenses. But the harder times get, the harder it can be to keep the cash flowing into your business. Be more diligent in how you are spending money. It’s important to be frugal and aware of your income and expenses. By doing a line item cost for each expense, you will be able to identify areas that need greater attention. Efficient cash flow management is crucial. The sections below are all, for the most part, areas that will have impact on your cash flow, but take special note of the ones regarding evaluating your vendors, reviewing your inventory management, and keeping your personal credit in good shape.

2. Streamline your business practices

This is an opportune time to review your business procedures for effectiveness. Consider areas that can be combined into one. Consider areas that can be structured differently to reduce costs. Think about sharing resources, like administrative or payroll work, with other entrepreneurs to reduce overhead. The goal is to streamline operations so you can still provide a quality product or service, yet realize a greater profit by reducing the expenses to produce it.

3. Evaluate your vendors

If you use vendors for packaging, labeling, distribution, or in other areas of your business, this is a good time to do some price comparisons. There is a lot of competition among vendors to attract new business, so you could realize some serious savings in this area. Since no one wants to lose business during a bad economy, chances are good that your current vendors will meet the competitor’s price. If not, it’s time to move your business to the lowest bidder, just as long as you’re not sacrificing quality.

4. Review your inventory management practices

See what can be done to reduce inventory costs without sacrificing the quality of goods or inconveniencing customers. Are you ordering too many of particular items? Can an item be sourced somewhere else at a better price? Is there a drop-shipping alternative that will work for you, eliminating shipping and warehousing costs?

Just because you’ve always ordered something from a particular supplier or done things in a particular way doesn’t mean you have to keep doing them that way, especially when those other ways may save you money.

5. Focus on your core competencies

A diversification strategy is often recommended for small business success. But too often small business owners simplify the concept of “diversification” to “different”. Just adding other products or services to your offerings is not diversification. It’s potentially just a waste of time and money. Worse, it can damage your core business by taking your time and money away from what you do best. It may even damage your brand and reputation. If you have diversified out into different areas over the years to improve market reach, it might be time to regroup and focus on the core of your business and outsource the rest. Evaluate what is and isn’t working and put more effort into what started you out as a successful entrepreneur in the first place. It’s important to get in touch with your core business and make sure it continues to meet the changing needs of customers. So consider dropping the extras and focus on what you do best and which is most profitable to recession-proof your business.

6. Develop and implement strategies to get your competition’s customers

If your small business is going to prosper in tough times, you need to continue to expand your customer/client base. If you have competitors, then they have customers. So, there are already people out there buying what you sell, just not from you. What will it take to attract those customers? You’ll need to offer something more or something different. Research your competition and see what you can offer to entice their customers into becoming your customers. It’s not only lower prices or a better price/quality trade-off that gets the business. Providing better customer service is often identified as one of the easiest ways to outdistance the competition. But you need to do the research in your own market to find out what it takes to be the customer’s first choice.

7. Make the most of the customers/clients you have

They say that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The bird in the hand is the customer or client you already have. These customers are an opportunity to make more sales without incurring the costs of finding a new customer.

Even better, he or she might be a loyal customer, giving you many more sales opportunities. If you want to recession-proof your business, you can’t afford to ignore the potential profits to be had from established customers. But remember that your customers are going through tough times too. In order to retain their business, implement measures to express your appreciation. This could be a one-time price reduction, a customer loyalty card, or a referral incentive. Whatever the strategy may be, it should be something of value to the customer and within your marketing budget.

8. Continue to market your business

In lean times, many small businesses make the mistake of cutting their marketing budget to the bone or even eliminating it entirely. But lean times are exactly the times your small business most needs marketing. Consumers are restless and looking to make changes in their buying decisions. You need to help them find your products and services and choose them rather than others by getting your name out there. So don’t stop marketing. In fact, if possible, step up your marketing efforts.

9. Keep your personal credit in good shape

Hard times make it harder to borrow and small business loans are often among the first to disappear. With good personal credit, you’ll stand a much better chance of being able to borrow the money needed to keep your business afloat if you need to. To recession-proof your business, keep tabs on your personal credit rating as well as your business one and do what’s necessary to keep your credit ratings in good shape.

There’s absolutely nothing that will make your small business one hundred percent recession-proof. But implementing the practices above will help ensure your small business survives tough times and might even be able to profit from them.

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Posted in , action plans, best practices, budget, cash flow, cost, customer service, entrepreneur, management, profit, small business

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