1. Review Your Business Plan.
Every business must have a business plan. Firstly 54% of businesses have no formal business plan. So if you do not have one, get a business plan. The Local Bookkeeper (http://www.thelocalbookkeeper.co.uk) offers a business plan service which is associated with the London Business School. When you have your business plan you should review it regularly, make it a living document. Many businesses often tend to deviate from the plan and fail as a result as of the lack of preparation. Your plan should be guiding the path that your growing business takes to ensure mistakes are minimised. You should have regular management accounts to ensure you are meeting or exceeding your targets.
2. Take the time to look at how you can better manage your cash flow.
Everyone knows that cash is king! The biggest key to the success of any business is to ensure your cash is managed well. Being able to identify ways you can manage costs and improve your cash flow is crucial. Frighteningly, many businesses are unaware of their true financial position as they do not take into account their current and future cash position. It is essential that businesses of all sizes have a ‘financial cornerstone’
3. Start running credit checks and develop an age debtor system
They say the best cure is prevention; this cannot be truer, when it comes to customers that will not pay on time. £18.6 billion is owed to small businesses by unreliable customers and a great proportion of these could be avoided with an effective credit control system in place. It can be difficult for a small business that does not want to risk losing business to place a more forceful hand on a regular customer and feel they cannot spare their time from the main focus of the business so outsourcing this system is ideal. The Local Bookkeeper (http://www.thelocalbookkeeper.co.uk)
4. Start assessing your progress on current reports instead of historic end of year accounts
Having Management Accounts allows business owners see what direction their business is heading in now instead of seeing the damaging effects of something that happened 18 months ago in an end of year report when they are then unable to do anything about it. Having the benefit of seeing what is happening to their finances on a regular basis, allows the business owner to be fully equipped to make sensible decisions to guide them away from any foreseen difficulties and promote a healthy cash flow. A qualified bookkeeper will be able to supply you with this financial assistance.
5. Dismiss the myth that any business is ‘too small’ for a professional financial help or does not need it.
As long as your business has incoming and outgoings, you will need a professional. A qualified and experienced bookkeeper will take away the burden of the paperwork to help business owners apply their time to the more important everyday running of the business. In some ways, smaller businesses need this help even more as their small cash flow could be better utilised or even increase by a trustworthy bookkeeper, allowing them to make the investments they need to grow larger or save them from failing.
Further information can be obtained from The Local Bookkeeper website: http://www.thelocalbookkeeper.co.uk, or by calling either 0845 862 1078
