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4 Ways To Improve Small Business Finances

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Small business finances can be a tricky subject for many. After all, poor cash flow is one of the primary reasons why small businesses go under. In an age where finances are squeezed, and more small businesses are under pressure, how can you get the most for your money without wasting it?

Look At Outsourcing

Outsourcing offers small businesses a way to draw on the skills and experience of others without having to learn these skills or employ others for them. It can also give them a way to free up time from repetitive and time-intensive tasks. Customer service, cyber security, HR, and accounting are popular choices for small businesses to outsource. For it to be cost-effective, you need to be clear about what services you will be getting for your payment and be sure they work for you. Each business needs different things to operate, and as such, you should make certain any outsourcing partners are on the same page as you too.

Hire Not Buy

Hiring equipment for short- or long-term use can help you reduce the cost of buying new, especially for equipment that you might not need to use frequently, such as specialist tools or one-time-use items like speakers or music systems for events. So whether you are looking for tool rentals or hiring a larger vehicle for deliveries, it can be easier to hire than buy as you can choose your contract length and know what costs to expect to pay and then return it when required.

Get Proper Financial Advice

Financial advice for small businesses can be invaluable, especially if you are struggling; working with financial advisors for small companies or an accountant can help you identify waste in your finances and where you need to invest your money for maximum return. Getting another set of eyes on your finances can help you see things differently and make the required changes for your business to see improvements.

Once you have this advice, you can ensure your business doesn’t become another failed statistic from poor cash flow and work towards longevity and growth.

Be Proactive with Invoices

One major factor that impacts cash flow is not having invoices paid on time. You must be chasing up customers and vendors to ensure all of your invoices are paid on time, and you can also pay your suppliers on time. State your payment terms upfront and include this in your contract, in writing, or on your invoice itself. Give your clients multiple ways to pay, make it easy for them to do so, and don’t be afraid to send friendly reminders close to the due date if it’s still outstanding. If you have frequent later payers, it can be worth incentivizing them to pay by offering small discounts or freebies on their next order for prompt payment. Failing this, you can request payment upfront to ensure you are not working at a loss.

Conclusion

All businesses want to be making money, not losing it, and managing your finances and paying attention to your cash flow can hope you get ahead of any untoward trends regarding finances and ensure you are staying in the black and looking healthy.

8 Things Every Small Business Should Automate

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For any small business, automation is one of the advanced and key features that can take over mundane business activities. Whether it’s payroll, bookkeeping, blogging, or recruiting, automating these tasks enables you to concentrate on other important areas in the company.

Automating duties in your company can save you time, reduce the risk of errors, boost efficiency and productivity. Here are just some things all small businesses can automate which can truly elevate how you run your operation.

Social Media

Whether you love it or loathe it, all small businesses need to have some kind of social media presence. It’s where customers flock to when checking out a company. To build your brand and bring in more revenue, you’ll need to get to grips with social media marketing. This can help in boosting engagement, helping more people find your brand, and build trust and recognition.

Rather than having to sit behind a screen manually posting and going over your social media feeds, you can bring automation into the mix. This involves pre-scheduling social media posts, setting up bots to respond to basic queries, and pre-planning social media updates. Rather than wasting time maintaining and expanding social media brand accounts, you can use specialist tools to do the job for you – perfect!

Meetings

Meetings are part and parcel of business. Whether you’re having a one-on-one meeting or a company-wide discussion, they’re in place to ensure the business is ticking along nicely and everyone knows where they stand within the operation. However, the labour involved in scheduling such meetings can be stress-inducing!

From finding a time to bring everyone together to filling out contact information, these tasks are deemed monotonous, not to mention time-consuming. Thankfully, you can keep track of meetings by using a scheduling tool for automation. There are various tools that can empower your supplier or customer to select time from available slots, rather than an unending chain of emails.

Customer Feedback

Your customers are the ones who keep your small business growing. While many will be more than satisfied with your products or services, others may need to get in touch if they have a problem. You’re able to make changes to what you provide based on your customers’ requirements. This all falls in the realm of customer feedback.

Of course, you haven’t got the time or luxury to go to each customer manually to ask for feedback. But, what you can do is collect customers’ input with the help of mobile questionnaires and website surveys.

Document Production

If there’s one thing you’re going to sift through a lot in business, it’s documents. Whether it’s income statements, payroll records, receipt records, or bank statements, all of these are critical documents that help small businesses monitor their income and expenditures.

When it comes to document production, have you ever thought about automating the process instead? You can automate PDFs, for example that can eliminate manual errors and boost accuracy. Automating can also make data processing easier, and speed up large volumes of document creation. You can enlist the help of Pdftools who can let you automate all things PDF with flexible pricing. With their help, you’re able to run and manage tasks and actions to create, generate, and extract certain content in your documents.

Invoices

Another core responsibility small businesses need to manage is invoicing. Invoice automation is a positive step forward. This is because it’s able to free up a huge chunk of time, even for the smallest of companies.

Invoice automation involves sending out pre-scheduled invoices at a certain date and time. Taking this step helps you process invoices quicker, reduces errors, avoids delays and late fees while maximising visibility in the process. Other benefits include improving vendor relationships, and most importantly, ensuring clients are paid on time!

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a crucial aspect of business life. All your audience base are going to have an email address, so you need to make sure you’re targeting them and sending out specialised emails that are tailored to their needs. As you can imagine, doing this manually can be time-consuming and send your stress levels through the roof! Thankfully, automation can be your best friend here.

You can use an email automation platform to send out emails with the right messages to your audience. This will be done at the right time too and you won’t have to worry about doing anything manually. There is the option to utilise automated email responses to create email sequences specifically customised to your customers’ needs.

Automated Reminders

If your business website sells products, you’re bound to want to gain as many sales as possible. To increase sales, it’s important to remind clients who have abandoned their carts to take a second look. The good news is this is easy to automate, and you can incorporate it into your email marketing program too.

When you send out automated reminders, customers will get a ping to check whether they’re still interested in the product or not. If you’re hosting an event, you may wish to send out pre-written emails with instructions on what to bring, directions, and other vital information.

Customer Support

Organising customer service with automatically-generated help desk tickets is brilliant for saving time and effort by enabling your team to know in what order they need to respond to inquiries, as well as tracking resolutions.

For example, you may not like the idea of sending out a robot-generated email to every customer who asks the same question. Instead, you have the ability to set up prefabricated responses in email. This allows you to make changes if you so wish before sending them out.

As a small business, you may need to wear several hats to get projects and tasks completed. However, with the help of automation, you can use technology to your advantage to get the job done while you concentrate on other areas of the company. Automating tasks can lower stress levels too, making it a no-brainer to implement for small organisations.