Financial planning and management for small businesses cannot be understated – they are essential components to both short-term success and long-term prosperity.
An effective financial plan utilizes budgeting and accounting tools to assist in managing the finances of your business, from assets, liabilities, equity assessment through comprehensive time tracking tools to identify savings opportunities or risks.
Identifying Financial Needs
Be it employee salaries or raw materials for production, your financial plan should clearly demonstrate where and why your funds are going – which can be particularly useful if explaining it to investors or lenders.
Your business has multiple sources of capital: personal savings, grants and loans are among them. Traditional sources include equity financing (selling part ownership or future profits for an upfront payment), debt financing which requires repayment of interest payments over time (and debt restructuring in some cases) as well as grants or donations from various donors.
An effective financial plan will allow you to assess both your current cash flow and capital needs for growth, helping you prioritize expenses and manage them responsibly while potentially avoiding overpaying taxes or spending unnecessary funds on unnecessary items.
Creating a Budget
Small business owners have many responsibilities on their plate; sometimes this means leaving tasks such as creating a budget to the wayside while you focus on selling more product or finding suppliers.
Begin by gathering all available information. This could include bank statements, loan paperwork, invoices, sales numbers, inventory costs and anything else related to the current financial state of your business.
Once you have all this data in hand, tally up your total income. While this may be challenging since some businesses receive payments over time, try to come up with an accurate figure which gives an idea of your operating expenses and their related costs. Once this step has been accomplished, subtract fixed costs from total income to determine what the net profit is.
Prioritizing Expenses
Budgeting and prioritizing expenses are two essential components of financial management for small businesses. By matching expenses with revenues (real or anticipated), small business can avoid spending more than they take in, failing to invest enough for growth and competition, or failing to create an emergency fund. Without one, small business risk overspending money they take in, overspending on non-essentials like advertising costs, or overspending on capital spending without saving enough for emergencies.
A well-drafted budget helps a small business identify areas for cost cutting measures. These may include reducing payroll expenses, cutting marketing expenditures or finding cheaper suppliers of raw materials. A comprehensive budget also assists a company in securing financing from investors or lenders; having accurate financial records also increases chances of receiving such loans or investors and can result in increased profits and growth of its business in future years.
Monitoring Expenses
No matter if it is a large corporation or small business, conserving resources through prioritizing expenditures is crucial for financial security. This may be achieved through financial forecasting and/or expense tracking.
expenses are expenses paid out from your company to fund things necessary for operation, like office supplies, internet access or space rentals. Utilizing software that automatically records expenses saves both time and accuracy when tracking this expenditure.
Tracking expenses on a regular (ideally daily) basis provides valuable insight into where your money is being spent, which allows for smarter procurement decisions in the future. Tracking allows you to compare actual results against projections in your financial plan and identify issues that need addressing; it should be revisited on an ongoing basis for best results.
Managing Cash Flow
Cash flow management is one of the key skills necessary for running any small business successfully. It involves keeping track of both when an organization receives payment and when bills or payroll must be paid.
An effective way of managing cash flow is creating a budget that details expected income during a given time period, along with anticipated expenses in that same period. A company that manages its costs effectively will enjoy positive cash flow.
Monitoring inventory levels and using technology to speed the payment process and minimize mistakes is also highly beneficial to helping a company avoid overstocking and save cash flow.