Two of the focuses of my blog are Financial Literacy/Money and Business/Entrepreneurship. A to running any business/enterprise is efficiently and properly managing its finances. The following contributed post is thus entitled; The Essential Guide To Honing Your Company Finances.
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Ask any entrepreneur what their biggest concern is when they are launching a startup, and the chances are that they will say their finances. The financial health of any business is crucial to its success. If you are just starting out along the road of self employment, it’s imperative that you get your monetary situation sorted out. There’s no point leaving your nine to five with excellent promotion prospects, a steady wage, and superb colleagues if you don’t have the financial readies to make your ideas practically viable.
Before you hand in your notice, you need to have constructed a business plan for your proposed venture. This needs to detail your sources of funding, your potential future investments, your cash flow projections, and your profit calculations. Going blindly into the world of entrepreneurship without financial certainty means your business will be doomed to failure.
Funding Sources
If you are setting up a business that sees you working from home and with minimal overheads, the chances are you will not need to raise much capital. However, if you need to seek premises, you have to build up stock, or you are looking to import and supply products to consumers, you will need to source funding.
The number one port of call is usually the bank. Specialist business managers will assess your plan and listen to any presentation that you wish to give to convince them that your business is a worthwhile investment. Just because they are large corporations and you have been a loyal customer for a decade or more doesn’t mean that this is a sure fire source of investment. You need to dress smartly, know your figures like the back of your hand and enthuse them with your pitch.
The bank isn’t the sole source of funding in the twenty first century. With the advent of crowdfunding, sole traders from across the globe have one online platform in which to convince professional and amateur investors alike to claim a stake in their business. This is a novel and exciting way to raise capital. Hundreds if not thousands of people from across the planet could be investing in your business. This also allows your brand to claim a global reach that your bank manager simply doesn’t possess.
If you’re after expert advice and contacts as well as financial acumen, you might like to consider a business angel. These (not quite) celestial beings are experts in their fields and have made a small fortune using their business knowledge. They will have a ridiculous amount of guidance and advice to impart, and they are worth tapping into. If a business angel is willing to back your idea, this validates your business venture. To maximize your chances of gaining investment from a business angel, you must be passionate about your ideal and be ready to answer a variety of questions. The pitch will be more demanding than if you were presenting to a bank manager. Remember, a business angel is investing their own hard-earned cash, so they need to be certain of a return.
Cash Flow
When your business is up and running, it’s important that you don’t attempt to run before you can walk. It’s vital that you build slowly and grow at a manageable rate. In principle, it sounds fantastic if a product was to garner a huge following and the appetite for it is almost insatiable. The orders will flood in. However, if you don’t have the cash flow to import the goods and distribute them, your supply chain can stall, you will have dozens of unhappy customers, your reputation will slide, and your business can fail.
To avoid this situation, you need to employ the best ecommerce for b2b by setting up a software package that can control the way your products are marketed to customers. From one platform, you can hide or show certain products or services to your customer base, giving you more control over your ecommerce website. From here, you can also set up the credit terms and analyze your accounts information. This interface is ideal for more complex business and financial needs.
When you set up your business, you are hungry for success, and rightly so. But you mustn’t allow your startup to become a victim of its own success. You must ensure that your business is always in a position to fulfill its obligations, by ensuring that your capital remains buoyant, your cash flow is healthy, and you have the finger on the pulse of your company finances at all times.
