5 Ways To Stay On Top Of Your Business’ Finances

For many small business owners, keeping track of the financial side of their business can be time-consuming and a distraction from what they really need to do. A healthy business is one that isn’t threatened by unexpected financial events and handles them if they do occur.

Every aspect of the way you run your business matters when it comes down to the bottom line, and financial planning is one of the most important things you need to do on a regular basis.

Below are few ways to stay on top of your business finances.

Focus on expenditures but also ROI

In this financially complex day and age, making sure your business is staying on top of its finances isn’t always easy. But instead of fretting over the intricacies of accounting and financial planning, take a closer look at your expenditures to be sure they’re serving the needs of your business. 

By rolling up your sleeves and doing some research into ways you can cut costs without sacrificing performance, you might discover that your business is ready for an upgrade before it needs drastic accounting measures.

Use your allowable expenses

Make sure you are always claiming any and all allowable business expenses as this is going to help you keep your business finances balanced, as well as lowering the amount of tax you pay.

Allowable expenses are claimable on anything that is deemed to be a legitimate business expense—for example, stationery, travel, building costs, technology etc.

Use the right software and study up

Using the right software and studying up are easy ways to keep ahead of your business finances. You need a good system for organising your business receipts, invoices, tax data, etc. Keeping it organised will save you time and money on accounting fees and errors down the road. 

Make sure you set aside sometime every week to go through your financial documents, file them away in an organised manner, and don’t forget to back up your computer files in case of a computer crash.

Have a good billing strategy

A high-quality approach to billing is critical for success. Whether you are trying to get paid or receive follow-ups, having a solid strategy can make all the difference.

Credit card processing billing lets you bill customers, whether they’re paying online or offline, and also allows you to set up reminders for the customer.

Conclusion

In the end, running a business isn’t about finding the easiest way to make money. Instead, it’s about how much you keep and having control over your finances. And if you return to these tips above, you will be more successful in the long run.

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7 Essential Tools for Business Success Today

Starting a business is one thing. Growing the business is another, while keeping operations from becoming unwieldy is a different ballgame.

Business owners must build systems and explore how to operate them more efficiently. There are tools to help budding businesses focus on what matters most. We look at a few here, which we use in our own operations at HomeBusinessWiz.

  1. Organisation

A business can easily become overwhelmed with meetings and deadlines. Google Calendar makes it easy to schedule meetings and share events. It is excellent for internal and external appointments. It also provides a way to monitor your people, so booking team meetings doesn’t get to be a hassle.

  1. A comprehensive business plan

Doing business without a plan is akin to going to war without a strategy. You need to pull away from the competition. Your business plan sets the focus and tone of your operations.

It is self-defeating to toy with your operations even if your business is a hobby. Many home-based business owners show this inclination. It is a path to frustration and failure. Get a business plan right away.

  1. Education

You do not need a PhD to run a successful business, but you must be thoroughly versed in your chosen niche. There are numerous online courses available online. You can audit (take for free) many of these.

The insight will help you rethink many aspects of your business and inject ideas that customers will yearn for. MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) from the world’s top universities are available. The most popular MOOC sites are Coursera, edX, and Udacity. You won’t get a certificate but the content is priceless.

Other avenues for continuous learning include video outlets, Youtube and Vimeo.

  1. Project Management

As a budding business, reliability should be your watchword. Do this enough times and the word goes around. But, how do you manage all the madness in the face of changing project requirements? Use Trello, the famed project management tool.

Trello is adaptable to teams and one-man operations. You can keep track of marketing or promotions using this nifty tool. Everyone on our team, for instance, can log in and check our blog’s progress. They can also tag other staff for their opinion.

Trello does not cost you a penny–it is free with premium pricing plans for teams, but you’ll likely do great with the free option. Find Trello here.

  1. Networking with Social Media

You probably have an account on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook. These social media platforms have tools and features to cater to business needs. You can chat with and pitch old acquaintances, join common-interest groups and engage industry thought leaders. If you are active enough, you will grow a large following.

An up-to-date profile is important on social media. Regular post updates or tweets tells your audience what you are up to and has been effective for product launches and press releases.

Social media is also an excellent outlet for repurposed content. The fun aspect of social media remains attractive to millennials, who are likely your target audience.

  1. External and Internal Communication

You typically want to explore every avenue that makes it easy for clients to stay in touch with you. You also want to have robust internal communication systems.

Zoom can be used to engage clients and prospects and has seen plenty of adoption in enterprise and small businesses. It has greater utility than phone calls and email because you are face-to-face with the client or associate. With Zoom, you can share schematics with them without the risk of ambiguity.

Internal communications can also use Zoom, but since many things are on-the-fly, rather than resort to email, the workspace tool, Slack, excels at offering an instant messaging service for teams. File sharing in Slack is a breeze, and there’s room for plenty of fun while at it.

  1. Payment Systems

Doing business online has become the new normal. But how do you receive payments? There are services you can incorporate on your website for low fees per transaction to ensure you get paid even before you deliver the service. Two of the most popular ones are Stripe and PayPal. Many existing banks have their own financial apps to make the payment process easier as well.

This is merely a small round-up of tools you need to get your business running until other tools become essential.

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Motivation: 4 myths that you shouldn’t buy into

Once upon a time it was unheard of; motivation wasn’t really talked about by business leaders. Now, it’s one of the first words off the tip of their tongue and for a business to be successful in the modern-day world, they generally need to have a team whose motivation levels are up there with the best.

It is one of the reasons why online MBA degree programs have evolved and changed so much in content over the years. Previously, they may have focused on so-called “traditional” elements of leadership, with autocratic business styles historically preferred. Now, we have almost changed to an employee-first situation, where the views and opinions of workers are held in very high regard.

However, while there has been a change in culture when it comes to motivation in a lot of industries, there are still a lot of inaccuracies that are published about it. Through today’s post, we will hone in on some of these myths and tackle them for good.

“All employees are motivated primarily by money”

For a long time, this was the opinion held by a lot of business leaders. It was felt that the only way to motivate workers was to increase their salary.

However, over time, it was found that this only had short-term effects. Employees would be given a pay rise and might be motivated for a short period of time following this. As time progressed, these motivation levels relapsed, and they were back to square one. It might be regarded as an easy win for management, but it is not going to yield long-term results.

“All employees are motivated in the same way”

Hopefully, you already know that this is completely untrue. What works for one employee certainly isn’t guaranteed to do the same for another, and this is why a degree of personalization is required when dealing with your workers. One person might place a lot of emphasis on flexible working, while another might want a clear path to career riches. Finding out what makes your employees tick is crucial to your business.

“Employees aren’t bothered about recognition”

Next on the list is the recognition-factor. For a long time, it was speculated that employees didn’t really consider this a motivational factor. After all, they were enlisted to do a job, and that was the end of the matter.

However, various studies have concluded that being recognized by your employer is significant for a lot of workers. Whether this is simply verbally, or by a tangible reward, it can go a long way in making employees feel valued.

“Time wasting activities should be stamped out”

This final myth is still apparent in a lot of workplaces, with many businesses having a strict policy in relation to so-called timewasting activities such as surfing the internet during working hours.

From a motivational standpoint, it can work wonders though. It was found through studies at some high-profile institutes, including the University of Melbourne, that these sort of activities improve your workers’ concentration levels (and thus motivation).

Should it take up half of their day? Of course not. However, for say 20% of their working day, it can actually help out significantly.

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Winners do know what is important to be successful 

If you look into a person’s behavior, his or her confidence level will be visible to yourself. If he or she is a decent person and have a good sense of reality, that person is good at his or her work. On the other hand, an unsuccessful person will act totally different than a successful one. Lack of experience and sense will be visible in that person’s head. So, it can be easily distinguishable between a winner and a loser. If you want to be a winner in any kind of profession, you have to think like a winner. In every step of the working process, you have to act like a winner. In this article, we are going to talk about thinking like a winner in the trading business.

The realistic expectation from trades

In the trading business, there is no chance of living in the imagination. The more you can come back to the reality is better for the health of trading. Because the markets are consistently changing and you cannot know about the future condition at any certain time, you have to approach a trade with a solid strategy. And when you have placed a trade, it may not bring any good outcome too. Because when your trades remain to live the price trends can change radically. So, if you live in imagination too much this kind of phenomenon will bother your confidence in trading business. And having good confidence and dedication to your business is really important for learning it properly. So, have the most amount of realistic thoughts about your trades and trading edge possible.

Keeping things organized

No matter which profession you chose, you must stay organized. All the successful people in Australia have a very organized lifestyle. They know how to give proper value to their time. Similarly, you must focus on discipline and keep things organized. Forex trading is a very sophisticated profession but once you understand the basic concept of trading, you can easily secure financial freedom. There is nothing to rush, the market will be always present. So trade with a stable mindset.

Management of risks per trade

If you have learned about the possible fate, it will be easy for you to tolerate this business. But, now you have to trade to make profits. Otherwise, what is the reason for being here? Speaking of making profits, you have to control your investment. For those people who don’t understand the relationship between making profits and controlling risks, let us explain it to you. If you invest in a trade with a good amount of money, the expectation of it will be big. So, you will keep your trade open for a longer time. But, in that long timeframe, the condition of the market can go against your side. And eventually, you may end up losing the trade. And when the investment is big and you have kept it open for a long time, the losing amount will also be higher. In this case, the ‘stop-loss’ will also have a higher limit set by yourself.

Dealing properly with the environment

In this business, there will be a lot of roadblocks in your way to success. Even when you are running your profession with a decent speed, you may not experience good vibes from it. That is because you are not doing the right thing for being consistent in this business. You may be getting too much emotion in the working process. This is a common incident, traders fall in emotionally attached with trades they are making. That is because they have put money into those. And expecting some returns to come back from those. For that reason, traders get emotionally harassed with negative results and even with positive ones. For being a good trader you should avoid this mentality and concentrate on the real work.

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