Managing your cash flow

One thing that many people don't seem to realize is that your cash flow can actually make or break your business. And usually what happens is that a company gets into a cash crunch that they can't handle and they end up going out of business, even though the business was profitable they just got into a spot where they didn't have enough cash to handle their expenses. But the thing about managing your cash flow is if you do it right you can hopefully avoid getting into the problem of not having enough cash to pay your bills, but even if you run into that problem you can still have the tools that can help you solve that problem and get you over that hump.

Here are some tips to think about when it comes to managing your cash flow.

Tip one:
One thing that you should do is called prevention. Basically this concept is pretty simple all you need to do is look far enough ahead to see if you can spot any potential problems and then try your best to prevent them from happening. Basically this is going to require you to take a good look at your company on a regular basis to make sure that everything is running smoothly and that nothing just suddenly pops up to set things off course, its called preventing things before they happen.

Tip two:
The next thing that you can do to help manage your cash flow is called cure, this is basically a concept where as soon as you are aware of a problem instead of ignoring it and hoping it will go away you will actually take care of the problem. This concept actually requires you to deal with things as they happen, this way the problem is fixed in as short of a period as possible so that no further damage is made on the company.

Tip three:
Something else that you can do to help manage your cash flow is to use a spreadsheet that can help you predict what kind of expenses you are going to have each month and what kind of a revenue you are going to be bringing in each month. This can actually give you a fairly good look at what kind of a cash flow you are going to have because of the fact it is like taking a look at a bank account to make sure that you are going to have enough money at the end of the month to pay all of the bills that are coming due next month.

Tip four:
Another thing that you can do to help manage your cash flow is to develop a good relationship with your banker. The key to doing this is to keep your banker up to date about what is going on in your business, don't leave them out in the dark. The reason for this is that the more the banker knows about your business and how well it is being run and with this information they will have more confidence in your business. And the more confidence they have in your business the more they might be willing to help you out if you ever get into a cash problem that you can't fix on your own, also known as a cash crunch.

Tip five:
But something else that you can do to help manage your cash flow is to get a line of credit from your bank and keep in mind that just because you have this open line of credit it doesn't mean that you have to use it, in fact you should only use it as a last resort. What this means is it should be used like an overdraft protection for your checking account but this time it's for your business. But this is a great tool to have just in case your bills come due and your customers are a little slow to pay, you can still pay your bills and then replace that money as soon as your invoices come in.