Spring has arrived in Edinburgh this week in line with the new tax year. If you don’t feel like doing a traditional spring clean, why not look to spring clean your finances instead. Here are 3 simple steps we encourage all business owners to think about now to lay the foundations for the year ahead.
- Set business goals; what do you want to achieve this year and how are you going to do it? Revisiting these regularly makes them integral to what you want to do every day.
- Complete (or update) a budget. Going through this process will give you some clarity and a chance to review income and costs in the last year. It is so easy to forget to cancel that extra subscription, or wonder why you haven’t met a certain profit level. A budget allows you to track this as you go through the year and take action quickly when budget and actual results don’t align.
A budget is also a useful tool if you need to make business decisions. For example if you need to know whether you can afford to hire a new team member, or if you are trying to establish which area of your business is most profitable. - Review your internal processes for credit control. Do you have a system in place to manage customer payments? Have you thought about going onto an automated system like Go Cardless to collect payments? If you don’t want to implement software, there are simple steps you can take to assist with payment collection. This might be a database refresh to check you have the correct contact details for customers, set up automatic reminders for payments or adding interest to late payments.
If you implement these habits now you may notice a positive change in the coming weeks and months.
If you want to grow and improve your business but don’t know where to start, we can help with a variety of project work. This includes finance director consultancy days, budgets, forecasts and cash flows.
If you are interested and want to find out more, please contact us today on info@oneaccounting.co.uk.
Or, if you are a current client of One Accounting please contact your client manager.
