While the first few months of the year are known for holidays and summer, it’s also a particularly busy time for small trades businesses. Tradespeople often find themselves swamped with jobs as homeowners rush to refresh their homes. However, once the rush subsides, the inevitable slowdown sets in.
Even as customers relish their holiday break, it’s a prime time for business management to actively engage in crucial behind-the-scenes tasks, such as meticulously planning and establishing a solid foundation for a year marked by growth and stability. Besides ensuring there’s enough cash for next months expenses, it’s important to review the past year, identify successful strategies, and address any shortcomings to boost revenue.
By planning now, businesses can avoid financial stress later.
As autumn looms, here are five tips to help small trade businesses prepare for the quiet period and gear up for a successful rest of 2024:
Tip 1: Consider requesting upfront payments, ideally 50 per cent of the job cost. This way, the business is cushioned against the quieter months and ready for whatever the year brings. It’s smart, practical, and keeps the business ticking along nicely.
Tip 2: With the holiday season’s high expenses, flexibility in payment methods—like cards, direct transfers, or instalments—can be a relief for clients. This approach caters to client convenience and can enhance a business’s reputation as a customer-centric company, potentially increasing customer loyalty and expanding the clientele.
Tip 3: Prompt invoicing is vital for maintaining a healthy business cashflow. This ensures small businesses are at the top of their clients’ payment lists before the holiday expenses hit their budget. Quick invoicing reflects a business’s efficiency and professionalism, and, more importantly, helps in securing timely payments.
Tip 4: Leveraging an automated platform that matches invoices and costs with jobs can save significant time and minimise the likelihood of errors. It also streamlines the process of managing job costs and invoicing, letting tradies focus more on their work and less on paperwork.
Tip 5: Digitise your business with tools to help you get a healthy work-life balance in 2024. Too many business owners spend their free time at the computer in order to keep up with the large amount of paperwork each job generates. Software can help to create efficiencies to reduce the amount of paperwork and free owners up to spend that time with family instead.
Dealing with the new year swing is always a challenging time for small trade businesses. Often, they get too caught up in the hands-on work during this time that, sometimes, the admin side of things doesn’t get the attention it needs. By adopting comprehensive job management software, tradies can simplify their payment processes and daily tasks, letting them devote more energy to the jobs they’re passionate about.
This software, complete with tools for quoting, scheduling, job tracking, invoicing, and reporting, streamlines business operations and keeps tradies at the forefront of efficiency. This way, they’re perfectly positioned to embrace new challenges and opportunities as soon as business picks up, ensuring a smoother transition into busier times.
