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Setting Business Goals and Actually Achieve Them

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Ready to make 2020 your best year yet? Many business owners are constantly setting goals to work towards within their business. However, just like in your personal life, once the to-do list gets too long, or there's a fire to put out, all those good intentions fly out the window. We're going to set you up right for 2020, and this new decade, in creating business goals you will actually be able to stick to, and also how to systematically achieve them. Work Smarter - Not Harder The goals that are successful are SMART goals, and they require a well thought out plan: S - Specific M - Measurable A - Attainable R - Relevant T - Time-tracked Be specific and realistic in what you can accomplish within your business. Where do you want your business to be by the end of this year? Another key to choosing and navigating your goals is to know your WHY. Why do you want to achieve this specific goal? Why is this a priority over the other items on your to-do list? Havi...
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Creating a Small Business Budget

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Often, the key to making money, is knowing how to spend it.  Knowing how much revenue is needed to keep your business afloat, or even better, growing is vital information. If you want your small business to be successful, you will need to create and maintain a business budget. It's A Necessity - No Really Budgeting is necessary to make educated financial decisions. You must have a grasp on where your money went last week, last month, even last year. Additionally, where is your money coming from? How much revenue can you feasibly make in the next year? Once you get the hang of it, your budget will also help you to forecast for the upcoming months. Do you know a slow period is up ahead? This gives you time to minimize expenses before money gets tight. As you update your budget with actual costs incurred, and income made thus far, it will be easy to see if you are on target for year end. If you're not, seeing it laid out in a clear way will make troubleshooting and b...
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How To Track Cash Flow For Your Business

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Does setting up a cash flow statement sound daunting? Some things are best left to the professionals. We have talked endlessly on the importance of this financial statement on this blog in the past. You will have a much better understanding of how your business is doing, what is working, and where you can improve or reinvest once you've had one done properly. Think of your cash flow statement as a budget for your business. Budgets help us keep our households running smoothly, the same is true for your business. Let's go over some cash flow basics: Tracking Money Coming In Start by listing out every single source of income you have. It helps to break it down month by month, but depending on your business, a weekly or even daily cash flow statement may be appropriate. Unlike with regular accounting, when it comes to your cash flow statement, you're only tracking the money actually being deposited. The bills you sent out to customers or clients don't count unt...
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Tips on Generating Cash Flow

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The goal of any business is to be profitable. Let's discuss the ways you can be bringing in more money: Breaking It Down There are two sides to cash flow. There is money coming in, and there is money going out. A profitable business simply has more money coming in, than going out. To make sure that happens, we can either focus on making more money, or spending less. The most effective strategy would be to focus on both: increasing income while cutting expenses. Minimize Expenses You should be reviewing your negative asset and liabilities statement each month. Do you spot any expenses that don't give you the return you expected, or are no longer necessary? Cut them out. Any dollar you save in another dollar in the bank. There's only so many expenses you can cut before you start to hurt future profits. For example, you can save a lot of money by letting your virtual assistant go, but it will also keep you from making progress on things like drumming up new busin...
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Why Your Cash Flow Statement Is Your Most Important Financial Statement

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Cash is the lifeblood of your business - which is why the cash flow statement is the most important financial statement to generate and study. Without cash, your bills don't get paid, there's no new inventory coming in and you won't be getting paid either. Without good cash flow, your business doesn't have a secure future. Not The Whole Picture Yes, there are plenty of other important accounting statements that you may find helpful in running your business. Maybe you're working with income reports and are keeping an eye on accounts payable and receivable. Those statements still won't be giving you the whole picture. Missing Data Here are a few key pieces of data you may be missing without a cash flow statement: How much cash you have available to pay suppliers, bills or invest into business upgrades. How much money is tied up in the company and can't be used for the day-to-day operations. How many of your customers have actually paid for the p...
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How to Get Through a Period of Negative Cash Flow

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Cash flow in the red? It happens to all of us. Here are some tips to get you through the lean times: No matter what you do, and how careful you plan, chances are that there will be times where you end up spending more than you earn in your business. In other words, you're going through a period of negative cash flow. What's important is how you deal with it! Build Your Safety Net An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure. The same holds true for cash flow problems. You won't have to worry about generating more income if you have a bit of a financial buffer in the bank account. Think about your operating expenses and then come up with a figure that would help you make it through a "Cash Flow Drought". Set aside 2 to 5 percent of your monthly profits to build up that safety cushion. Quick Solutions You don't want to burn through the savings you've set aside too quickly. As soon as you start to notice that your expenses are higher than y...
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Tracking Cash Flow To Increase Profits

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Are you tracking your cash flow? You should be, and here's why: You can find out some interesting things about your business by crunching the numbers. More importantly, you can analyze the data and find little tweaks you can make here and there to increase profitability. Planning Ahead If you know what money you can expect to come in over the coming days and weeks, you can better plan future expenses. By looking at your cash flow statement or even better, your cash flow forecasting, you can decide if you can go ahead and buy new equipment or hire someone new. After a while you should be able to not only track your cash flow, but also forecast what you can expect to be doing in a given week of the month. That's good data to have and will help you make smart decisions in your business like ordering extra inventory or hiring part time staff during busy periods. At the same time, it will also help you scale down to the bare basics during slow times - or even better ...
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