New Business Direction LLC
As a business coach, one of the fundamental lessons I impart to my customers is the vital importance of cash flow management. Cash flow is the lifeblood of any business, and understanding the primary avenues through which cash is generated can make the difference between thriving and merely surviving. There are essentially three ways to generate cash for your business: through operations, financing, and investing. Let’s delve into each of these in more detail.
1. Cash from Operations: Doing What You Do Best
Generating cash from operations is the most sustainable and preferable method for a business. It involves the day-to-day activities that your business engages in to generate revenue. Your operations cash flow is like the engine room of your enterprise, where the core products or services are created, marketed, and sold.
The key business priorities for generating cash from your operations include the following:
- Generating revenue: This includes sales of goods or services. Consistently increasing sales while managing expenses effectively is crucial.
- Managing expenses: Controlling operating expenses ensures that more of your revenue is converted into profit.
- Improving efficiency: Streamlining operations can reduce costs and improve productivity, in turn boosting cash flow.
Prioritizing operational cash flow is vital to a successful business because it indicates a healthy, self-sustaining enterprise. Managing the above priorities while enhancing customer experience, optimizing pricing strategies, and continuously improving product or service quality will drive your operational cash flow.
2. Cash from Financing: Leveraging Debt and Equity
The second avenue of generating cash flow is financing, which involves borrowing money or raising funds from investors. While less ideal than generating cash from operations, financing is sometimes necessary to support growth, manage working capital, or navigate challenging times.
There are two primary types of financing:
- Debt Financing: This includes taking out loans or issuing bonds. While debt must be repaid with interest, it can provide immediate funds for expansion at a critical time for growth (or other needs).
- Equity Financing: Selling shares of your company to investors in exchange for capital. This doesn’t require repayment but does dilute ownership.
Financing can be a double-edged sword; it can provide the necessary capital to seize growth opportunities, but it also comes with risks, such as interest obligations and potential loss of control. A sound financing strategy should balance these risks, ensuring that debt levels remain manageable and that equity is only diluted when it aligns with long-term goals.
2. Cash from Investments: Selling Assets
The third method is generating cash by liquidating investments you’ve made for your business. This strategy can include selling off assets, such as equipment, real estate, or even entire business units that are no longer core to your business strategy.
Below are three critical considerations for your investing activities:
- Asset Management: Regularly review your asset portfolio to identify non-essential or underperforming assets.
- Strategic Sales: Consider selling non-core assets to free up capital, which can be reinvested in higher-return areas of your business.
- Investment Income: Earning returns from financial investments can also contribute to cash flow.
This method can provide a significant influx of cash but should be approached cautiously. It’s essential to ensure that selling assets aligns with your long-term strategic goals and doesn’t undermine your operational capabilities.
Balancing your Cash Flow Sources
Each of these three sources of revenue has its place in a comprehensive cash flow strategy. Remember, cash from operations is most reliable, and wisely leveraging financing can support growth and stability. At the same time, strategic asset sales can optimize resource allocation. All three avenues can help your business grow and remain stable. Strategically integrating these three methods of generating cash could look like this:
- Optimizing your operations to boost cash flow by improving efficiency and controlling costs.
- Seeking financing to invest in new technology to expand your capacity to produce
- Selling outdated equipment to raise additional funds.
As your business coach, my goal is to help you navigate these avenues effectively, ensuring your business can not only survive but thrive in any economic climate. As always, if you have any questions or want to learn more about cash flow management services for your business, please feel free to contact us anytime.
I’ll never forget my first tax season at a local CPA firm, one customer meeting in particular. We were sitting across the table from a nice young couple expecting their first child. They had started a small construction company that year and did quite well. The purpose of our meeting was to deliver the tax return, tell them the balance due for taxes, and answer any questions they might have about the Federal and state tax returns and future estimated tax payments.
When I shared with them that they owed just shy of $10,000 in income taxes, the young lady burst out in tears! They didn’t have the money. They had profits–but no cash. No one had ever explained the difference to them, and they were not expecting a balance due of that magnitude.
This meeting changed their lives and the course of my career. I never again wanted to sit across the table to deliver unexpected news to a bright-eyed entrepreneur and his expecting wife.
Therein began my career of teaching small business owners the difference between profits and cash, along with many other nuances of business ownership that no one ever tells you (including the fact that approximately 40% of your profits will go to pay income taxes). It’s a harsh reality, and knowledge is power. These outflows of cash can be planned when you have advanced notice. This type of planning is usually called tax planning, business planning, revenue planning, and/or profit planning. But knowing the difference between profit and cash is a good place to start — let’s dive in.
Here is the short and sweet on the difference between profits and cash. Profit is revenue minus expenses. Cash is money in minus money out. There is a fancy, seldom understood financial report called a Statement of Cash Flows that reconciles your profit to your cash, and is part of a comprehensive financial statement package which will also include your Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss Statements.
Most small business owners only look at the profit and loss, pay little (if any) attention to the balance sheet, and have never heard of the Statement of Cash Flows.
However, I would argue that the Statement of Cash Flows is the single most important financial report. It will tell you how much profit you made, where the money went, and what’s left of your profit.
There are certain things that you spend money on that are not tax deductible: some are not deductible at all, and some not immediately. They use cash, deplete your bank account, and do not reduce profits.
Let’s discuss a few common examples:
Equipment – you buy a new piece of equipment for your business. This might look like a walk-in cooler for a restaurant, a forklift for a warehouse, a work van for a construction company, a new stitcher for a manufacturing facility, or a company truck for the business owner. These items are Assets with a useful life extending beyond a one-year operating cycle and are reported on the balance sheet. They affect cash and do not affect profit until they are depreciated. When you make an investment in a piece of equipment like this, it is not immediately deductible. You’re out the cash and do not have an expense deduction–yet.
Loan Payments – Let’s say you buy that forklift and take a loan for it because the interest rate is better than what you’re making on your savings, or you don’t actually have the cash to pay for it outright. While the interest paid on the loan will be tax deductible, the loan payments themselves are not. The principal portion of the loan payment reduces the loan Liability account on the balance sheet. It affects cash, but never profits.
It is important to reconcile profits to cash, to find out where the money came from and where the money went. You never want to be caught short at the end of the year without enough cash to pay the taxes on the profits generated by your business. And hey, those federal income taxes you pay? Those are not tax deductible either.
While New Business Directions doesn’t prepare tax returns, our clients can benefit from the types of planning we mentioned above. Having a CPA in your corner throughout the year can make or break you at tax time–we can consult with you on the best time to make a capital expenditure decision, keep you informed about the speed at which cash is entering and leaving your business, and more. If you’d like to discuss cash vs. profit within your company, complete our intake form to get started.
The Critical Link Between Time Tracking and Labor Costs
Keeping track of how you and your workers spend time is one of the most important things you can do in your business. Labor costs can be a large portion of expenses, and understanding how time is spent can help you manage your business better in a multitude of ways. We touched on labor costs in our recent article, “Breaking Down Direct and Indirect Costs,” and wanted to share more on the topic. Keep reading to learn more.
Benefits of Time Tracking
There are plenty of reasons to track time, some of which we’ve listed below:
- When pricing by the hour, time tracking is mandatory; without it, you won’t be able to invoice your clients accurately.
- Documenting time spent on specific projects helps managers understand how long a task should take, when employees could benefit from training, and where processes and procedures may need improving.
- Project management systems allow users to import detailed time reports, which allows businesses to create more accurate fixed-fee pricing estimates on future jobs and customer proposals.
- For construction companies, time tracking feeds into job costing.
- For manufacturing businesses, time tracking feeds into labor reports.
- For hourly workers, time tracking is used in payroll systems so they can be paid accurately.
- Time tracking can increase accountability among team members as they become more aware of how they spend their working time.
- When time is budgeted in advance, actual hours worked can be compared to see how the budget is used and whether it was too much or too little.
- Time tracking allows managers and business owners to determine when they need to hire additional staff because the backlog has become too large.
What Is Time Tracking?
Time tracking is the recording of how you spend your time. You can use paper, a spreadsheet, or time tracking software like QuickBooks Time (formerly TSheets) to log the task you are working on and the length of time you worked on it. For example, here’s a simplistic example of a spreadsheet time log, aka timesheet, for one day:
Employees may be required to complete timesheets on a daily or weekly basis, which are then turned into their managers and payroll administrators.
Managers can take time tracking to the next level by adding hourly payroll costs as well as the employee’s hourly billing rate to gain insight into further time-tracking financial metrics.
Time Tracking Software
There are many different types of time-tracking software:
- A time clock allows employees to “punch in” when they arrive for work and “punch out” when they leave. This type of machine is mostly used for payroll in a manufacturing setting.
- Time tracking applications like QuickBooks Time allow workers with computers and smartphones to enter their time via the application. Features like biometric time clocks (i.e., requiring a thumbprint to verify the correct individual is clocking in) and geofencing (allowing employees to only clock in from certain locations) can reduce employee time theft.
- Some companies will have their time tracking function embedded into their project management, job costing, or billing system. Employees would then enter their time via those applications.
Getting Employees on Board with Time Tracking
Reporting your hours in a time-tracking system is one of the least favorite tasks of employees and requires managers to spend more time shaping their mindsets and attitudes than any software training. It’s important that employees feel that your policies don’t resemble “Big Brother” when using their time data.
For best results, let employees know how the timesheet data will be used. Allay their fears that they will not get fired or in trouble if they feel something “took too long,” which can often translate into an employee “fudging” their hours on a task where they might have made a mistake. Make sure they know they won’t be penalized in any way for what they report. In other words, remove the risk of penalty for recording their time data accurately.
Communication is key in getting employees to report their time accurately so that managers and owners can receive meaningful information. Have managers tie time tracking to an employee’s personal career goals to increase adoption and reduce resistance.
Personal Time Tracking
Time is our most precious commodity, and tracking your personal time can give you insights into how you are investing in yourself. Some really interesting questions can be considered when you have some time data for yourself.
- How much “downtime” do you need each day in order to live a productive and healthy life?
- How much time are you spending on your goals?
- Are you spending time on what you consider to be important?
Getting Started with Time Tracking
If you’re considering time tracking or would like to take your current time-tracking function to the next level, please contact us [here]. We may be able to help with integration, implementation, the accounting aspect of time-tracking, and financial metrics and reports.
Many small business owners focus on generating more revenue every year, and that’s a wonderful goal. But not all revenue is created equally since some items are more profitable than others. If you sell more than one product or service in your business, then you may benefit from looking at your revenue mix.
While it’s fun to watch revenues grow, your business profit is what really matters. If your expenses grow faster than your profits, then you have a lot of activity going on, but you don’t get to keep as much of what you make.
An insightful exercise to try is to take a look at your revenue mix. Then you can ask “what if?” to optimize your profits.
Your Revenue Mix
Let’s say you offer three different services: Services J, K, and L. Your revenue pie looks like this:
J: $700K or 70% of the total
K: $150K or 15% of the total
L: $150K or 15% of the total
Total: $1.0 million
In this example, Service J is clearly the service making you the most revenue in your business. But is it making you the most profits?
The profit you receive from each of these service lines is as follows:
J: $80K
K: $10K loss
L: $30K
Total: $100K
While Service J is generating the most profit volume for your business, it’s actually Service L that’s the most profitable. Earning $80K on $700K yields an 11.4% return on Service J, but earning $30K on $150K yields nearly double the return at 20%. Service L generates the most return. And if possible, Service K may need to be discontinued or turned around.
Optimizing Profits
Your strategy for a more optimum revenue mix might be to sell as much of Service L as possible while eliminating or fixing the problem around Service K.
It’s fun to experiment with different revenue mixes. And of course, there are many more variables besides profit, such as:
- What services/products do you prefer to work on/sell?
- Are you able to sell more of the most profitable service or are there marketing limitations?
- Is one service a loss leader for the others?
- Are you able to adjust the price on the lower margin services to increase your profits?
There are many more questions to ask and strategies to consider to make you more money, which is why we love being accountants.
A New Mix
We hope you’ll spend some time analyzing your revenue mix and having fun asking yourself “what if?” If we can help you expedite the process or add our perspective, please reach out anytime.
A great way to start 2021 is to take a fresh look at your business finances. Many things changed in 2020, and if you are in the habit of spending on the same items year after year, it’s the perfect time to decide what is essential and what can go.
There are only a few ways to increase profits when you think about it in black and white terms. You can either raise revenues or cut costs. Let’s take a look at where we can potentially cut costs.
Publications
These expenses tend to be monthly or yearly, and we tend to just let them automatically renew time after time. But do we really need them? Take a look in your Dues and Subscriptions account to evaluate what you really need to stay informed, and cancel the rest.
Memberships
If you are a member of an organization or two, what benefits are you getting from your investment? Does it raise revenue for you? Do you use everything the membership offers? If not, it might need to go on the chopping block.
Memberships are especially tricky if the organization provides a local meeting component as a benefit and your state or county has been shut down. There’s a tradeoff right now between supporting the organization so that it’s still there when we can freely meet again and being responsible about your own business costs.
Office/Store Rent
With many employees working from home, the question has come up in many businesses about how much space they really need. As leases expire, consider how much space you really need. Some employees may love to work from home permanently, which frees up space.
Retail stores that have moved their business online may be able to cut back on customer-facing space but might need more inventory storage space. A restaurant that has successfully transitioned to pickup and delivery orders might be able to get by with a smaller seating area.
Software Apps
Are you paying for any technology applications that you are simply not using? This is a good place to look for cuts.
Some applications charge by number of contacts. Keeping your lists clean inside these apps will avoid increases and cut costs in some cases.
Office Supplies
Do you really still need things like staplers and scissors on everyone’s desk? If your business is going paperless, you can save a lot on office supplies.
Printing
Do you need to spend money on printing, or can the printed item be delivered electronically?
Shipping/Postage
While information can be delivered electronically, physical goods still need to be shipped. Make sure you have the best deal with your shipping vendors based on your volume. You may also need to consider building your shipping costs into the price of the product or add a shipping fee to the bill if you don’t already.
Marketing
A great way to increase profits is to become more intentional about your marketing costs. Are you able to measure what’s working and what isn’t? Or are you doing the same thing year after year?
Marketing has changed so much, even in the last few years. It might be time to implement digital marketing methods, which can be more cost-effective than older, outdated methods.
Labor
Make sure employees manage their time effectively by providing the right training and supervision. This should help to reduce labor expenses.
Telephone/Internet
Has your business changed? Do you need all those extra features you are paying for? Could you do without those extra lines? Would another phone plan save you money on long distance or international calls? Many telecommunication companies will often bargain with you or offer you a new deal just for checking in with them.
This gives you ten places to look to cut costs and correspondingly increase profits for 2021. If you need help reviewing your income statement, please reach out.
The 13-Week Cash Flow Forecast
If you’re having ups and downs in your cash balance, the 13-week cash flow forecast is the perfect tool to help gain clarity around your cash needs. It will help a business owner predict what their cash balance will be 13 weeks (one calendar quarter) in the future.
The forecast calculations start with entering cash receipts and cash disbursements into a spreadsheet. Start with actual spending and receipts for the first week, then use estimates for the remaining weeks. Include planned expenditures such as overhead, payroll, and loan payments. Add in inventory purchases. Project your receipts based on history or recent changes in your business.
Once you’ve completed your forecast, you can make changes and do what-if scenario planning. For example, if the forecast shows that you will run out of cash in week seven, you have some time to decide what you need to do to remedy the shortfall. Options might be:
- Accelerate the collection of your receivables.
- Dip into your line of credit to cover a portion the shortfall.
- Furlough some of your workers.
Plug your selected scenario into the forecast to see how much that relieves your shortfall.
The benefits of creating a 13-week cash flow forecast are many. You can see what actions need to be taken and when to take them well ahead of time. You can also see how much of an action you need to take. For example, instead of furloughing 50 percent of your staff, you may only need to furlough 25 percent. Or instead of borrowing $50,000, you might only need $20,000.
The cash flow forecast can also save time when developing your annual budget. Budgets are especially useful when business conditions are volatile or when business owners need all the clarity they can get.
Try your hand creating a 13-week cash flow forecast for your business, or reach out to us for help any time.
