With a new financial year comes a new financial leaf. As a small-business owner, your business is your bread and butter, and if the cash isn’t flowing quite the way you’d like it to, things could get stale. Why not sit down and make new financial year resolutions to revitalise your business?
As a company that helps over 250,000 businesses track their work and get paid, we’ve gained valuable insight into how best to build your financial goals for the year ahead. This can be achieved in three measurable steps that rely on simple digital tools to both secure repeat customers and keep cashflow flowing.
Step #1 – Master the basics
Start-ups are able to act nimbly and efficiently when using affordable, powerful digital tools. Take the paperless plunge and learn to leverage simple tech platforms to streamline basic administrative tasks.
The utilisation of tech tools is guaranteed to improve the daily running of your business. Evernote, Trello and Wunderlist will take care of your project management and note-taking needs, so that you can focus on your strategy. Mobile apps like Invoice2go allow you to send paperless invoices to clients via your mobile to get paid quickly and take more control of your cashflow. For storing files or creating documents, try Google Drive and Dropbox. Ensure your team operates via a remote work infrastructure as the more your business is able to work flexibly, the more productive you’ll be.
Remember, these tools are a means to an end. By facilitating collaboration and productivity, you can get more done in less time. Without tech platforms, you’re restricting your business’ ability to grow and change at a speed that will allow it to remain competitive.
Basics – mastered.
Step #2 – Evaluate and ideate
Having solid foundations in place will allow you to think about how you want to direct your business for the next year. Asking whether you have achieved your goals will reveal areas that you may want to capitalise on and expand, or those that might need attention.
A new financial year is an opportunity for growth, and with the basics of your business in place, you can pick a direction that evolves your offering and places your business ahead of the competitive pack in your industry.
Think about the direction that you want the business to follow for the first year, and then for the next three. Cast specific goals to set your business up and consider what can be realistically achieved within the time frames that you allow yourself.
Step #3 – Value add
With the basics masters and your direction evaluated, its time to revitalise your business offering by looking for ways to value add. A good place to start is by looking at your customers’ experience and how you can make doing business with you as smooth as possible.
A great example of this is to offer more than one way to pay. Accepting a range of payments gives clients more options. Research shows that 65 per cent of people would rather pay by debit or credit card than any other form of payment.*
If your business doesn’t currently offer multiple methods of payment you might want to consider doing so, as not only does this make payments simple and efficient for you but also gives customers other options to suit their different needs.
Step #4 …and action
With your basics in place and your direction defined, you’re ready to tackle whatever the new financial year throws at you.
Armed with these steps at the start of a new financial year will save you from the winter slump, and allow you to revitalise your business from the bottom up. And while your solid business model will organically attract new customers, it’s only half the battle. Keeping them coming back will address the need for consistent cashflow over time, which will take ongoing research, experimentation and willingness to adapt to new technologies to keep profits coming in.
Embrace a new financial leaf, where your business will need to think smarter instead of harder for your plans to succeed.
* Federal Reserve’s Cash Products Office, 2014
Chris Strode, Founder, www.invoice.2go.com
