Do you ever find yourself thinking that for the amount of time and effort you’re devoting to your business, there should be more cash in the bank on any given day? There could be multiple and varied reasons for this situation, such as pricing issues, underlying cost structures, or the existence of too many non-revenue generating activities, but one culprit is often cash flow management.

Cash flow management requires the same diligence and pro-active approach as managing other aspects of your business, such as monitoring, adjusting and predictive planning.

Monitoring can be as simple as visiting your business bank account online on a daily basis. Review for any automatic transfers that are set to occur, whether they are deposits or withdrawals. It may be helpful to prepare a printed list of the monthly transfers you have set up, and then simply check them off as they pass through your account.

Adjusting would involve contacting customers whose accounts are past due; or paying your suppliers on their due dates rather than your current method of paying them 10 days before the due date. You may as well have that little bit of bank interest…

Planning can involve one of my favorite tools – spreadsheets! The trick with cash flow planning spreadsheets is to make them as easy as possible to manage so that you don’t get drawn into a non-revenue generating activity. For example:



Keeners can assign days of the month to the columns to add more precision in to the process.

Do you have any cash flow techniques that you’ve found useful? If so, we’d love to hear them!

Posted by Angela Hilland at 10:15 AM 0 Comments

Tags cash management  cash planning  cash monitoring  women entrepreneurs  woman owned business