Is More Money Coming In? Or Going Out?
Information is the new currency, and responsible cash management is necessary for anyone who desires to succeed in business, whatever the scale of the enterprise. Cash flow management is the handling of the movement of money in and out of a business. It involves cash the business uses to provide goods or services to customers, and cash collected from the sales or services.
Thus, cash flow management describes a process in which cash flow is monitored, analyzed, and adjusted within a business setting. There is nothing trivial in managing cash flows in a small business. Indeed, industry analysts, experienced business owners, and consultants have often pointed out that cash mismanagement is the biggest cause of failure in small business ventures.
These two phrases need to be the small business owner's guide to creation and maintenance of wealth: positive cash flow, which occurs when the cash being channeled into your business from sales and/or services is more than your business expenses (accounts, salaries, etc.), and negative cash flow, which occurs when the outflow of cash from the business is greater than incoming cash. The latter may result from several factors, including market forces, seasonality of products, bloated workforce, or mismanagement.
Cash flow mismanagement can be directly linked to the main areas that small business owners focus on when they launch their business. First of all, most small business owners are preoccupied with worrying about how they can improve their products to bolster market performance. Secondly, small business owners worry about how to compete effectively and grow their market share.
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In most cases, your customers have forgotten to pay or lost the invoice. Sometimes, all they need is a phone call to remind them their invoice is overdue for payment. But nagging people to pay doesn't do a lot for the business relationship and proprietors are loathe to chase up overdue payments for fear of offending customers or worse still, losing them altogether.
Off-Site Business Services fulfills this function for a number of clients - very successfully. We are a third party and therefore the business owner preserves that good relationship with their clients. We merely remind people they need to pay - and arrange for copy invoices or intervention as needed to get the payment through.