Friday, August 13, 2010

Organizing Your Expenses and Using Accounts Receivables Factoring

Expenses and Using Accounts Receivables Factoring

 

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When it comes to keeping track of your company's finances, research shows that a great number of business owners neglect their books.  They neglect to track income and expenses by letting business receipts pile up, or worse, they lose the receipts altogether. They also fail to enter their expense data into a bookkeeping system. Or maybe they are keeping their income and expense records up to date, but they fail to use the numbers to answer questions about their business's financial condition. This scenario is more common among owners of small to medium-size businesses. The reality is that by simply keeping up with the basics, or possibly employing accounts receivable factoring, you can help prevent a true financial disaster, especially given today's economic conditions.

 

Many business owners look at financial management with fear or they claim to be too busy running the business to deal with tracking their income and expenses. There are also excellent procedures that can help your cash flow such as accounts receivable factoring, but first, here are some essential tips for better managing your business expenses:

 

  1. Open a separate business bank account. I have met far too many new business owners who do not have a separate business bank account, and run their whole operation out of their personal bank account. This is a huge mistake for a number of reasons.
  1. Don't comingle personal and business funds.  Mixing your business transactions with personal transactions will make it impossible to do the types of simple financial management tasks and what's worse, even if you have set up an LLC to protect your personal assets, this will cause you to lose that protection.
  1. Use bookkeeping software. It will automate and track account balances and also generate financial reports.
  1. Create systems to help you stay organized. Using a simple process for organizing your receipts and files will help you to handle most bookkeeping tasks.
  1. Organize records of expenses and income. Financial management starts with keeping records of all the money the business spends (expenses) and all the money it earns (income). This means carefully keeping and organizing your receipts and expense and your income receipts (such as a cash register tape of your café's income, check stubs from your client's payment checks, or your invoices to clients marked "Paid").
  1. Generate financial reports. Generating reports is key to managing your business's finances and making strategic decisions. With up-to-date information entered into your bookkeeping system, you'll generate reports including: cash-flow projections, profit and loss reports comparing monthly income to monthly expenses, and cash-flow projections that also include other sources of income.

Implementing the above steps will help you to pace your company's growth, trim expenses and/or price your services or goods more effectively. It is also possible that you will be able to reduce your taxes by being better prepared to claim all deductible expenses. What's more, you will be able to manage your business's cash flow better. And if you are currently in a pinch and are cash poor because you don't yet have these systems in place, and you can't pay your bills on time, an effective cash management tool known as accounts receivable factoring. You may also need to hire a financial business consultant a couple of times during the start-up phase of your business to help the business get off the ground.

 

 


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