Small Business Accounting Tips - Are You Making These 3 Deadly Cash Flow Mistakes

Small Business Accounting Tips - Are You Making These 3 Deadly Cash Flow Mistakes

Small business accounting is the remit of many UK accounting firms. With more new start up businesses than ever being registered it is vital that they receive the best and the most valuable advice possible.

One key area that many new small businesses fall down on is cash flow. Often the issue being the timely arrival of cash in their business account. Are you making these 3 common cash flow mistakes?

1. Forgetting to Invoice as soon as possible

Now this might seem total nonsense and believe me it happens on a regular basis. Just the other day a client of ours admitted they had delayed sending an invoice to a corporate client who had a 60 day payment cycle. By being just a couple of days late this resulted in a delay of an extra unnecessary 4 weeks before their fee was paid. For small business operations a number of these can make the difference from thriving or surviving.

Make it a priority that the invoice always goes out within 24 hours of a service being delivered. Depending on what it is that you deliver it might be reasonable to ask for payment upfront. If you don't ask you will not get.

2. Not Having Various Payment Options

Many business owners are still behind the times when it comes to taking payments. Waiting for a cheque to arrive that then takes 4 days to clear is painful and can, and does increase any business owners stress levels. A quick remedy for this is to increase your range of payment methods for your clients.

Why not take online payments or credit cards. It is much less work and cost than you think. For instance having a PayPal account costs nothing and people can pay through an email account or for some of the low cost options via fax. The delight in seeing money in a PayPal account is wonderful and enables transfers to happen on a daily basis.

3. Using the Wrong Service Providers

So often we get stuck in a rut and continue to use service providers without thinking about the value they bring. Image if you take some time to shop around you just might find that somebody down the road provides a better service.

Let's use an example of an ink provider for your stationary printing. What if a new type of ink cartridge was a little bit more expenses and yet you could print an extra 100 items. Don't always assume the large national companies are less expensive. Recently we stopped using a national stationary supplier and changed to the little guy down the road. We saved money and can have a delivery within 2 hours rather than 24.

You might be amazed to realise that these sorts of ideas and suggestions are exactly what your small business accountant can provide you with. Remember as a group of service professionals we are dealing with these aspects of business every day. So the next time you want to improve your cash flow. Why not pick up the phone and talk to your friendly small business accountant.

Colin Foster is the director of an Accounting Firm in Chorley who specialises in helping small businesses grow their business. If you found all the information here useful in finding an accountingfirminchorley You will really like his website at Expertaccountancy

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