New Business Direction LLCIf you grant credit to customers, then you have a balance in accounts receivable. DSO stands for Days Sales Outstanding, and this helps you measure how fast your receivables are being converted to cash.
Here’s how to calculate it:
DSO = Accounts receivable balance / Annual net credit sales * 365.
DSO is measured in days and it represents how many days it takes to collect the customer invoice balance and convert it to cash.
Whether the DSO measure is “good” or not varies by industry as well as the terms you’ve set for your clients. If you’ve set your invoices to be due in 30 days and your DSO is 45 days or less, that’s pretty good. If you’ve set your invoices to be due in 10 days and your DSO is 60 days, then you might want to consider a more aggressive collection policy to speed up your cash flow.
Here are some tips to reduce DSO:
1. Invoice clarity.
Make sure your invoices are accurate and clear. Make it clear whom to make the check out to, where to mail it, the due date, and the amount due. All of these features should be easy to find on the invoice.
2. Consider discounts.
A common discount term is 2/10, net 30. This means the customer can take two percent off their invoice if they pay in 10 days; otherwise they owe the whole amount in 30 days. If you have customers from large companies, discounts are often required by policy to be taken and this can speed up your payments from them.
3. Consider electronic payments.
Going paperless with your invoicing as well as your payment process can speed up the entire billing cycle. Customers getting their bills earlier will also pay earlier.
What’s your DSO? If you need help calculating it, give us a call.
Are you interested in being known for your extraordinary customer service? Or perhaps you just want your customers to feel like it’s easy to work with you or purchase from you. If so, try these five tips for five-star client service.
1. A good old-fashioned handwritten thank you note.
Almost extinct, this customer pleaser shows you are willing to go the extra mile for a personal touch and connection with your client. You can purchase boxes of thank you notes from any stationery store or order them with your company logo from a local printer.
2. Remember your customer’s preferences.
High-end hotels are good at remembering what you like, and almost any business can add this idea by using a CRM – customer relationship management system – that stores customer preferences, order history, last conversations, and any notes you want to remember about the client. The trick is keeping the system notes updated and using them when it counts.
3. Deliver an unexpected extra.
When your customer least expects it, give them more than what they paid for. This manifests itself in many ways, depending on your business type. Here are some examples:
- Restaurants: Give an appetizer, dessert, or coffee at no charge or pick up the bill of a regular once in a while.
- Retail or offices: Offer an unexpected beverage and fruit tray or snacks like you would find at a spa or country club.
- Real estate: Provide a list of local phone numbers, a fancy map or GPS app, or coupons to restaurants you partner with.
- Construction: Offer a tool, a warranty, a list of reliable repairmen, or a full set of replacement lightbulbs.
- Landscaping: Offer a birdfeeder, a fertilizer schedule, or a lawn tool.
- Any office: Partner with a business that has your same client base and exchange coupons so that you have a book of them to give to all your clients.
4. Give clients your cell number.
Giving clients your personal or business cell number is not as risky as you might think. Very few clients will actually call you. Surprisingly, the goodwill you gain by sharing your personal number far outweighs any disruption. But here’s a warning – don’t share your number with sales reps of vendors; you’ll get relentless calls every day from them.
5. Offer a VIP membership.
Some customers care about and are willing to pay more for excellent service, and others don’t. Separate your customer base by offering a VIP membership. By paying a nominal fee each year, these members get priority access to your appointment time, sales, overnight shipping, or whatever else you can distinguish. The good news is it’s a new revenue stream as well.
Choose one of these ideas and implement it to increase your customer service to five stars.
I know that many of you are wondering if you should upgrade to the new Windows 10 operating system. It has been hard to ignore the constant reminders of this FREE upgrade. Every time we turn on our computers, there it is, asking us to Upgrade Now. Some of us have even had a surprise automatic installation of the newest operating system while we were sleeping!
Microsoft is offering this software for free until the end of July 2016, after which they are going to charge a fee – currently starting at $149 per system for the Home Edition – they have not yet released any pricing for the Professional versions of the software. If you are currently running Windows 8/8.1, then you may wish to consider the update to Windows 10, but please read further.
At New Business Directions, LLC, we have decided to stay with the Windows 7 platform and not to upgrade to Windows 10. Microsoft will still be issuing updates for Windows 7 until 2021 but will not offer any phone or online support for the product.
There have been many issues with the installation of Windows 10 especially in a networked environment and the software needs a lot of tweaking to network correctly and play with other devices – such as printers. We see no real advantage to updating to Windows 10 and we have found it to actually hinder some programs from running properly, specifically QuickBooks and Point of Sale.
Effective December 1, 2016, federal overtime regulations will change and may affect how you are paying your employees. These overtime updates will affect 4.2 million workers across the country.
The new rules will raise the salary overtime-eligibility threshold from $455/week to $913 ($47,476 per year). This new threshold will increase every three years. Salaried workers already entitled to overtime will get increased protection.
Employers have a choice of three actions they can take to employees who become eligible for overtime that weren’t before.
- Pay time-and-a-half for overtime work.
- Raise worker’s salaries above the new threshold.
- Limit worker’s hours to 40 per week.
Let’s say you have an employee that earns $500 per week and works 50 hours a week. Previously, you didn’t pay overtime, but beginning December 1, 2016, you will need to. At $12.50 per hour, you would owe them the regular $500 plus 10 hours of overtime at $187.50.
Let’s say you have an employee earning $800 per week and they work 50 hours. Previously, you didn’t pay overtime, but now you will need to consider it. You could pay them overtime, which works out to a weekly pay of $1100. Or you can choose to give them a raise to $913 per week – the new threshold – and continue to exempt them from overtime. The latter is the lowest cost alternative.
In both cases above, it may be cheaper to hire an additional part-time worker to work the 10 extra hours per week.
You can find more about the new overtime law here:
https://www.dol.gov/featured/overtime/
And if you have any questions about your payroll, feel free to reach out anytime.
The New Business Directions Team is bringing the #1 employee-rated and requested Time Tracking Software to you. Sondra Love, Wayne Kukuruza, and Rhonda Rosand, CPA have recently joined the 6000+ TSheets PRO community by participating in an exclusive TSheets PRO certification course accredited by CPAacademy.org.So what exactly is TSheets? TSheets is a time tracking and scheduling software designed for businesses that track, manage, and report time. TSheets provides the alternative to paper timesheets and/or punch cards to simplify human resource and data processing roles for companies of all sizes.
But here’s the best part, TSheets fully integrates with QuickBooks by syncing accurate timesheets to your QuickBooks file and eliminating manual, duplicate time entries. Tracked and approved time can now be easily exported to either QuickBooks® Online or Desktop with just one click. Management can then use their favorite tools within QuickBooks to process payroll, calculate job costing, and create invoices in a more simplified work flow.
TSheets is also a scheduling software making it faster and easier to build and share schedules with employees, assign jobs, and alert shifts while increasing profitability and improving communication. In other words, we want to keep your workforce running like a well-oiled machine.
Oh, and have I mentioned their amazing customer service department? The TSheets team who’s behind the product is just as amazing as the software itself. Customer service team is passionate about their customers and provides exceptional support in times of need. They make your entire TSheets experience FUN and might even give you a smile or two.
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