You’ve heard it a million times – cash flow can make or break a business. Lack of cash flow planning is the reason why many businesses fail. In fact, many PROFITABLE businesses fail because of cash flow issues. Without adequate cash flow, you can’t pay your bills and you can’t make plans for your business.

So… what is cash flow planning? Cash flow planning is projecting your future cash inflows from sales, services, and loans, and comparing them to your future cash flow needs (suppliers, salaries/wages, loan payments, taxes, etc.). The difference between the two is your net cash flow.

Why is cash flow planning so important? Cash flow planning can help you identify problems down the road, and fix them before they occur. Cash flow planning can also help you make decisions such as should I attend that conference I’ve wanted to attend, should I buy the new computer I’ve been wanting, or do I need to work extra hard this month to avoid a cash flow deficiency next month?

The first step in planning your cash flow is knowing where you spend your money! Solo entrepreneurs need to have a good grip on both their personal and business spending, as most solo entrepreneurs rely on their business income to meet personal finance goals (i.e., pay the bills!). So, you should track both your personal and your business spending, although I recommend that you keep them separate (that’s a topic all by itself).

What’s the best way to track your spending? You can use pen & paper, spreadsheets or a software program. The best method for you is the method that you will actually use on a regular basis.

You should project your spending for at least the next 12 months so that you include annual and other periodic expenses. If you are experiencing a cash flow crisis, you should track & project your cash flow on a weekly basis, instead of monthly.

If you are an existing business, you can project your cash flow for the next year by reviewing your expenses for last year. If you are a new business, you will need to estimate your start up costs in addition to regular operating expenses.

Start up costs include inventory, legal expenses, advertising, licenses & permits, supplies, and many more costs that you may not have thought of. To research startup costs you should contact your local Small Business Development Center, contact a SCORE counselor, join groups of similar business owners, and read as many books or articles you can find on the subject.

To improve your cash flow, you should:

1. Complete the first 3 steps. You have to understand cash flow planning, track your cash flow, and project your future spending needs before you can improve your cash flow.

2. Create best and worst case scenarios and create appropriate responses to both scenarios. For example, if your best case scenario is to increase sales by 50%, how will you use the profits? Will you put the profits back into the company by investing in new equipment, training, etc.? If your worst case scenario is a drop in sales by 50%, how will you continue to cover your monthly expenses? By planning for the best and worst case scenarios, you’ll be ready for any situation.

3. When estimating your future income, realize that some people will pay late, and account for that fact in your projection.

4. Charge what you’re worth. Many businesses, especially service professionals, under-charge when they are first starting out. This is a great way to go out of business. Make sure you are charging what you’re worth, and remember you’re in business to make money, not to give your expertise away for free.

5. Watch your business spending. Focus on the value the item brings to your business, and avoid lavish spending (i.e., do you really need the fastest, newest computer available?).

6. Don’t hire until necessary. Consider using virtual assistants or temporary employees before hiring permanent employees.

7. Give incentives for early payment for products and services. On the flip side, chase down invoices the minute they’re late. Charge interest or late fees to encourage timely payments.

8. Update your cash flow regularly. Your cash flow plan will change frequently as your business grows. You may want to update your cash flow plan weekly when you first get started, then switch to monthly once you’ve got a good handle on your cash flow.

Remember – whether you are a new or growing business, your cash flow projection can make the difference between success and failure.

Account and Finance Critical Activity in the Small Bookkeeping Business. Accounting software is essential for any business as it gives many benefits like maintains all your financial records and helps in completing bookkeeping accounting requirements.

Keywords:
bookkeeping services, bookkeeping business, small business bookkeeping, bookkeeping software, small business bookkeeping software

Article Body:
In the area of Bookkeeping Accounting there are many critical financial activity which has require to compulsory in the small Organization to manage it. So For that Bookkeeping Accounting Software is essential in this time to get fast work. These types of work are very time consuming because of double data entry type of work. A useful benefit to those organizations and their financial staff is the quantity to which financial data maintain in the data base can be queried for financial control purpose.

Bookkeeping services India has own bookkeeping accounting software professional their expertise and experience handling most of the bookkeeping business accounting and financial software solutions:

* QuickBooks
* Peachtree
* Sage Line 50
* Quicken
* MYOB
* IRIS
* LaCerte
* Pro Tax

Financial Statements:
An accountant requires not only guarantee that the financial information is exact but also get any part of the accounting reports to reply bookkeeping accounting queries on the accounts. It is also offer a legal basis for the queries and report the financial statements at daily intervals.

But Financial Power is also required from middle level organization accounting software as the bookkeeper is often the head manager who has most important person understanding of every task. Templates are also required for reading and a perfect acquire of create a set of financial theory for tax purpose is that each inserted record is by other proof.

Accounting Software for small or middle level Business Profit:
Choose your Accounting Software for bookkeeping business but it is thing to do very carefully. Because of prefer your software will meet your most important work and your work running smoothly and improve your profit? There are numbers of bookkeeping accounting software available in the market but you have to find effectiveness, accurate and reliable from it and make your business fast. So be sure when your new business account software will purchase.

Any Bookkeeping Business requires the most important thing is Accounting Services. All process of Business has recorded carefully in day by day. For that Accounting Software is useful software for any Business to keep all your financial records and help to complete your bookkeeping accounting requirements. And generate daily, monthly and yearly reports for give you accurate future planning of your business.

If you are small Bookkeeping Business or large Business, you don’t want to hire personnel for software and want to low cost account software. For that it is best that use a web based software so you don’t worry about changing computers, storing the data and lost of data. And important thing is you can access it at any time.

As we enter the final weeks of 2005, you are undoubtedly hunting for gifts. While these are obvious year end considerations, you should also be reviewing your business strategy for 2006.

Business Strategy – 2005

Whether your fiscal year ends in December or doesn’t, the end of the month is a good time to take stock of how things went in 2005. While the old saying is “time flies”, it is particularly true for businesses. Business owners tend to be fixated on two to three month time periods. As a result, they can fail to see developments over longer periods of time.

After you’ve taken care of all your holiday gift purchases, you should have some down time in the last two weeks of the month. Business tends to slow down as people deal with the holidays, travel to see family and so on. This is the perfect time to go back and consider the business year. Specifically, you should focus on where your business was in January 2005. What were your goals at that time? Did you meet them during the year? If not, why? You will almost always be surprised when you realize how the business developed over the last year. This global view can give you a better perspective and evaluation of how things are going.

Business Strategy – 2006

After contemplating 2005, you should give consideration to what you want to accomplish and where you want to be by the end of 2006. Ask yourself the following:

1. What is a reasonable revenue increase for 2006 compared to 2005?

2. Are their products or services you should pursue?

3. Are their products or services you should drop?

4. If a strategy is underperforming, does it make objective sense to continue pursuing it or cut your losses?

5. What are your biggest frustrations and how can you deal with them?

6. Who are your most valued employees and have you taken a moment to thank them?

7. Who are your least valued employees and what should you do about it?

8. Which vendors or suppliers do great work for you and which don’t?

Many other questions will run through your mind. There are no wrong ones. What is important, however, is you write the goals and thoughts down and keep them somewhere private. Next December, you should pull them out and see how things are going.

Being a retail consultant, there is a comment many business owners used. It is “I’m not giving away my inventory”. It is most common among store owners that business is in bad shape. It is too bad that most retail owners don’t understand about inventory. Inventory does two things. It eithers makes you money or costs you money.

You need to have sufficient inventory to be profitable. However, having too much inventory is a larger problem than too little inventory.

Too much inventory ties up critical cash for your business. It can also result in more damages to your merchandise. The key is to find the right price to move your merchandise. Slow moving items take up space and cash that could be used for more profitable items.

There are times you have to adjust your pricing strategy. For example, let’s assume your retail price is double your cost. In this example, you pay $10 and it retails for $20. If it is a slow mover or discontinued item, what should be the new price? I would take 20% off for 1-3 months, 50% off and then 75% off. If you have to sell at 75% off, you will sell below cost. Cost should never be a factored in marking down an item.

I can hear you yelling now. I’m not giving away my inventory. You are looking at your inventory from the wrong perspective. Your product is worth what a customer will pay for it.

Using my example, let’s say you sold your product at 75% off. How much did you make on that item?Your answer most likely was a loss of $5.This was based on a $10 cost and $5 retail. That answer is partially correct. The more correct answer is that you made $5.

You took an item that was producing zero and turned it into $5 cash. You can take that cash and space and use it for a profitable item. Many times a business does not have enough cash to buy the needed quantities of the best-selling products. If you take the cash from the poor sellers and use it for good sellers, you will more than make your money- back.

No matter how good a buyer you are, there will be items that don’t sell. The key is to realize this and react before it ties up too much cash and profit.

An added benefit of taking care of your problem inventory is increased sales. You will get customers who will shop your store regularly looking for your markdowns. Many of them will buy your high gross items also. If you take care of your problem inventory regularly, your markdowns dollars will be less.

Inventory is critical to your business success. The key is to take action on the slow moving and discontinued. This will make your bottom line better in the long run.

Catalog retail is a world all it’s own. Many considerations that other retailers don’t have to deal with are of utmost importance to a catalog retailer. To name a few, the ordering process, warehousing and shipping must be streamlined for maximum efficiency. Maintaining a top notch inventory control and receiving department is also very crucial to business success. Above all, however, a catalog retailer must have a quality business phone system.

Considering the fact that the majority of customers will reach you over the phone, it is paramount to be able to not only handle call volume during peak times, but also to provide your customers service representatives with the features they need to do their job well. Business phone systems should be capable of not only putting your customers in touch with you, but also offer routing flexibility, voicemail and forwarding options for the administrative side of your company. Often, the difference maker for catalog retailers is not the products they sell, but the service behind those products. People who want to buy will have questions regarding an item that a simple picture and brief description will not answer. Most companies have service reps who take orders and product specialists who are familiar with the inventory.

It is essential for the product specialists to have access to a phone system that will accurately and easily allow them to receive and transfer calls between departments. After the initial contact by the sales representatives, the most common transfer of waiting customers will be to product specialists and hopefully back to the sales reps. A customer who is dropped accidentally during this transfer is likely to not call back. Additionally, customers who are made to hold for extended periods of time without an automated message thanking them for their patience are a primary example of lost revenue that could be curtailed by the proper business phone system. All in all, a well thought out business phone system is an integral necessity for any company, but it is especially important for catalog retailers.

When you contact a vending machine distributor, you have the option to choose from many different types of vending machines. Some distributors specialize in one type of vending machine, such as soda vending machines, whereas others have all kinds for you to choose from. Most of the distributors have a website where you can browse the list of used and new vending machines. When you do choose a vending machine distributor, you should choose one that can also supply you with the bulk products that you need.

Bulk vending distributors have a wide variety of supplies that you can purchase for stocking your vending machines. When you sit down to discuss the business with a vending machine distributor, you can get a good estimate of the costs involved in operating this type of business. You do have to factor in the costs of buying the machines and the bulk vending products that you need. You also have to deduct the commission that you pay the business owners of the locations where you place your machines.

Distributors of vending machines deal directly with the manufacturers and they also have great associations with other vending business owners. If you want to find a vending route for sale, you best source of information is a vending machine distributor. In dealing with the various operators, the distributor will be able to tell you why the person is selling the route and whether or not he/she thinks it would be profitable for you to buy it. There are also bulk vending distributors that sell products only and do not deal in the vending machines themselves.

Take at look at the types and condition of the machines that a vending machine distributor has to sell. Most of the time you will see very little difference in a new and used vending machine. The main difference will be in the price of each one, so after your inspection you will realize how much money you can save by buying used vending machines. Distributors of vending machines also offer payment plans so that you can finance the cost of the machine over a period of time, saving you money on the initial investment. If you are not sure whether or not you will remain in the vending machine business, you can also lease the vending machines from bulk vending distributors.

You won’t find it hard to contact a vending machine distributor when you search online. Distributors of vending machines will deliver the machines to you and will also arrange to pick them up if you decide you no longer want to use the machines of a specific distributor or you want to get out of the business. However, bulk vending distributors do not take back any supplies that you purchase, but you may be able to sell what you have left over to another person just getting started in the vending machine business. A vending machine distributor will be able to give you expert advice on how to operate your vending route and on the products that have the most profit.