Business Blog

Posted on 02 May, 2011

Top ten business cash flow essentials

More and more otherwise successful businesses are increasingly facing cash flow pressures which unfortunately can result in business failure.

Here are the key essentials for effectively managing your business cash flow.

  1. Operate a rolling cash flow forecast. It doesn’t have to be particularly sophisticated and shouldn’t be over complicated. This will enable you to manage your day to day cash flow requirements and create an early warning system for potential problems.

  2. Act quickly on any identified problems and seek funding solutions immediately if required.

  3. Decide on your payment terms and make them clear at the very start of all transactions.

  4. Charge a deposit whenever you can before starting work or delivering goods.

  5. Consider offering a discount for early payment

  6. Collect monies owed to you as quickly as possible by issuing invoices as soon as the work has been completed or sending invoices with the goods. If the job is expected to take more than a few days introduce a staged payment system.

  7. Consider invoice finance including invoice factoring and invoice discounting as a way of improving cash flow which immediately advance funds against outstanding invoices. Invoice finance also has the benefit of bad debt options to reduce the incidence of lost cash flow when a customer goes out of business.

  8. Credit check your customers to reduce the risk of bad debts which can adversely impact your cash flow. Take payments by card or in advance if a customer or prospective customer shows as a credit risk.

  9. Reducing your costs will reduce your cash outflow and improve your overall cash flow.

  10. Don’t tie up too much cash in stock. But more prudently, increase stockturn and take action to turn slow moving and obsolete stock back into cash.

About us

The invoice Finance Company is one of the UK’s fastest growing independent finance brokers. We do not charge for consultations, advice or financial assessments, so if you would like to find out more about invoice finance including invoice factoring and invoice discounting feel free to call us on 0845 459 7504 or email us at info@invoice-finance-uk.co.uk

 

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