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Businesses take a lot of management. You need to manage your time to ensure that all of your tasks are completed on schedule. You need to manage your workflow to make sure you don’t miss anything off your to-do list. You need to manage freelancers and agencies you’re collaborating with to guarantee you’re getting what you pay for and see good results. You need to manage your employees to maximise their productivity and maintain their staff satisfaction and retention levels. The list goes on. But one key area of your business that you need to focus on to ensure that everything stays afloat and can tick over is your business’ finances. At the end of the day, in business, money does make the world go around. It’s what allows you to operate. It’s what allows you to maintain your staff base. It’s what allows you to produce the goods and services you provide. It’s what lands your income in your pocket at the end of each month, providing you with a good quality of life. But money management isn’t always that simple and straightforward. You may find that you need some guidance to keep everything running as it should, especially when you’re first starting out. Here are some tips that can help with this.

Use an Accountant

Accountants play an integral role to your business’ operations, as they ensure that everything is running legally from a financial perspective. They can help you to estimate the amount of tax you will owe at the end of the fiscal year based on sales, outgoings, expenses, and more. Additionally, you should take help from compliance services to ensure assistance during attestation and certification with external auditors. A lot of small business owners try to avoid paying for an accountant to start with, taking the bulk of the work on their own shoulders, but the truth is, they often end up spending more, because they don’t know the ins and outs of the tax system, so can’t make the right decisions that will allow them to pay their owed taxes properly without overpaying anything they don’t absolutely have to. If you do your own taxes and find that you’ve made mistakes, you should reach out to a tax litigation lawyer, who will be able to guide your decision-making from this point on.

Understand Cash Flow

You need to make sure that you understand cash flow to keep your business afloat, ensuring you always have access to the money that you need to complete your operations and pay what you owe. There are two forms of cash flow, positive cash flow, and negative cash flow. “Positive cash flow” is what you are aiming for. When you have positive cash flow, it means that you receive more income than you pay out in expenditure. This will allow you to pay your bills when they are due, as well as be able to meet any unexpected costs without experiencing major operational disruption. “Negative cashflow” is when you fall out of this cycle. Your company is spending more money than it has readily available. This can happen when customers don’t pay on time, clients don’t pay invoices, you buy an expensive piece of equipment or machinery, and various other situations you may face. To manage this, you will need to rely on a bank overdraft, loans, or credit cards to get by. This isn’t ideal, as these forms of lending commonly incur interest, which sees you pay back more than you actually used.

These are just a couple of areas of focus to consider when managing your business’ finances. It’s important to understand their basics to keep in the black!