11 Tips to Manage Your Small Business Finance

Published in

The Startup

6 min readOct 31, 2018

Starting a new business in the competitive business world is an exhilarating experience, but it is also risky. You need to deal with an endless stream of complex problems and administrative tasks, which require a lot of attention. Managing small business finances is one of them.

While launching up a new business, you are not only required to save up sufficient capital to cover your expenses, but you are also required to find proper startup funding before turning a profit. Take your time to prepare for your company finances to ensure your leap into entrepreneurship is realistic as well as secure. Once you are sure that you have enough finances for your business entity, you can maximize your chances for success.

Here are 11 financial tips that would help entrepreneurs in managing small business finances.

1. Avoid Expensive Credit

In order to build a successful portfolio that benefits you now and later, the first and foremost tip for managing small business finances is to establish financial goals. Whether you have an established business in the competitive market or turning up an idea into setting up a startup, optimum use of funds is the key to success.

In the growing period of the business, the cost of credit plays a critical role. Set up your interest core at a bare minimum price and reduce cost and attain profitability earlier.

2. Expenses

In the early stages of starting a business, it is smart to keep your fixed expenses as low as possible. Expenses are everything that maintains your gross revenue from going straight into your piggy bank.

Planning a year in advance for large expenses such as rent, payrolls, taxes, interest, cost materials for goods and products, debts, utilities, and other operating expenses can help you in reducing the financial burden. They would also aid you in ensuring your cash flow position stays strong even in the tightest months.

3. Maintain a Borderline Between Personal and Business Finances

Once you are done with the selection of your business name and registration, you need to open a commercial bank account. Personal and business bank accounts should be kept separate.

Holding a borderline between these two finances will provide you a more straightforward accounting at the end of the financial year for tax ascertainment purposes. It would also eliminate the situations of the cash crunch in business caused due to withdrawals for personal expenditure. Adhere to separate the loans and credit cards for your business strictly, and don’t use it for your personal finances and vice versa.

4. Start Considering For Insurance

As an entrepreneur, insurance is one of the things that you hate paying for your business entity, but in the end, you may actually need it. In order to build a profitable portfolio and managing small business finances, you are required to spend some time researching about what’s right for your business, and your personal needs.

Insurance provides you with the much needed financial security for your dependents, who could be your children or aging parents. With time, you should also increase their insurance to cover all their dependents.

5. Set Up a Retirement Account

As a small-business owner in the competitive business world, you’re probably used to taking care of a lot of responsibility, such as from drawing up detailed business plans to creating a budget to the success of your company. So it should come as no surprise that funding your retirement will likely fall on your shoulders too.

The retirement plan will not only help you with your future plans, but it will also attract talented customers. Start by investing some part of your income to fund your retirement and save your time.

6. Invest in Technology

The next thing for managing small business finances is to invest in technology and understand all the terms related to your business in order to maintain the number 1 position in the business market. Sometimes, it is better to use online software for keeping the records of your finances and accounts and establish an online presence in order to attract more customers.

To be precise, you can also use bookkeeping software for paying taxes and for understanding the financial position of your business and developing budgets. As a matter of fact, large-scaled businesses usually have accountants who can utilize professional software.

However, with the advancement of technology and network opportunity, anyone can master the basics of bookkeeping and ensure their records are in order. You just need to purchase a high-quality bookkeeping program.

7. Keep Track on Your Money Movements

No matter how small your company is, you are required to have your payment terms outlined concisely and efficiently for managing small business finances. Even though it is challenging in today’s business world, you need to take into account both the financial and legal side of your monetary transactions and trace all the movements of your capital regularly.

Keeping track on how your company is faring will help you in figuring out which areas perform most efficiently and in which sector you need to control your funds. You also need to study this data to develop a reasonable budget and track your progress to see if you fit within its limits.

8. Negotiate with Vendors Before Confirming a Contract

It is always better to negotiate with the vendors before signing a contract and ask for a good bargain. Successful negotiators know before they begin negotiating what they want to achieve during the negotiation. Examine purchase terms like late payment penalties and grace periods for negotiating for a great deal. Sometimes being given an extra 30 days to pay can save you more than a 5% discount off the top.

9. Design an Emergency Fund

Once you understand the importance of negotiating the prices from vendors in order to manage your small business finances, the next thing you need to do is design an emergency fund for the success of your business entity. Companies don’t give consistent sales month on month.

That’s why it is smart to plan for off-season funds for your companies to create a steady flow of income. For designing an emergency fund, all successful entrepreneurs are required to develop a proportion of income in months of high sales that would help to pay for expenses in the off-months.

10. Lease The Business Equipment

Starting a small business can be challenging, and one of the most important decisions is whether to lease or purchase equipment for your business entity. But you cannot deny the fact that renting equipment instead of buying would help you in keeping the cost low and saving the finances for your future plans. The saved investments can be utilized in other areas to make the business more productive.

11. Debt Reduction

And last but not least, for the tips of managing small business finances, is to make the debt reduction a priority. Bad debts can cause stress and damage your credit rating and can make you struggle to make payments. So, businesspeople should not carry these bad debts into their financials year after year. Instead, it should be written off in the next year so that a healthy financial position can be portrayed to potential stakeholders.

Conclusion

While running your own startup can be exciting, it can also create challenges, especially when productively comes to managing small business finances. So, if you are facing the same issues of how to manage your finances, and want to stand outside of the crowd, then keep the above tips in mind and give your venture a bright future.

The more you pay attention to your cash flow and business finances, the better prepared you’ll be to make smart money management decisions.