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Archive for January 8th, 2012

By not committing any of the following 3 business finance mistakes you will, at the very least, have good financial indicators and be able to respond to the businesses financial position in time. The key here is to understand both the causes and significance of each.

Business Financing Mistake # 1 – No Monthly Bookkeeping.

Regardless of the size of your business, inaccurate record keeping creates all sorts of issues relating to cash flow, planning, and business decision making. In a word, your business is doomed if you are not doing monthly bookkeeping.

Bookkeeping services are dirt cheap compared to most other costs a business will incur. Bookkeeping should be done on a monthly basis along with Management Accounts so that your financial records are always up to date and you can view the financial status of the business (Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet etc.) Once a bookkeeping process gets established, the cost and time involved usually goes down.

By itself, this one mistake tends to lead to all the others in one way or another and should be avoided at all costs.

Business Financing Mistakes # 2 – No Projected Cash Flow & Budget

Having no meaningful bookkeeping creates a lack of knowledge on where you are. And having no projected cash flow and budget creates a lack of knowledge about where you’re going. Without keeping score, a business tends to stray further and further away from its targets and, invites a crisis that eventually forces the business to change it monthly spending and cash-management habits. A projected cash flow first and foremost needs to be realistic. You should project both a best-case and worst-case scenario based on projected sales and business expenditures.

It’s a good idea to aim for the best-case scenario but know how the business would respond should the worst-case scenario transpire.

Business Financing Mistakes # 3 – Inadequate Credit Control

There’s nothing worse than making sales, doing the work, sending your customer an invoice and then not getting paid on time…or worse still not getting paid at all! It’s a well-established fact that the longer a debt isn’t collected the less chance it will be collected. Typical credit terms in most established business are 30 days. However, due to a culture amongst some customers of paying late and small business not operating strict credit control, a business can often not get paid on time and fast run out of cash. So how do you avoid this? Well, there are numerous steps you can take but the following 3 steps will help ensure you always get paid…and paid on time.

1. Appoint someone in the business to be in charge of credit control. It’s vital that someone is responsible for sending out invoices and statements; reminding the customer that payment is due, handling queries on invoices etc.
2. Reinforce your payment terms and conditions on your contracts, on your website, on your invoices etc. It’s important that customers are aware of your payment terms and the consequences of late payment (cessation of service, interest charges etc.,)
3. Send your invoices on time and include a statement of the account with each invoice. If you don’t send your invoice out at the end of each month how can you expect to get paid before the end of the following month.

In a world of tightening credit from banks, strict business finance practices are required even more. You can’t expect your bank to extend your overdraft or facilitate a term loan if you are guilty of any of the 3 above financing mistakes.

There’s so much more to business finance and money management than I have covered in this article that I could write a whole book on it! But for the moment if you are starting out or taking over the running of a business and are experiencing working capital or cash-flow difficulties than I would first start investigating these 3 key areas and see that they are being managed diligently.

If you do this, than many of your cash-flow difficulties will begin to disappear and your business finances will improve quickly (assuming your business proposition is sound in the first place and sales are strong). Find out more about business startup, personal finance and wealth creation strategies by signing up NOW at Millionaire Mindset Secrets.com

A subprime mortgage seemed like a good idea for many aspiring homeowners just a few short years ago. It was the most touted real estate loan by most lenders. Unfortunately, after taking out the loans, many borrowers realized just a bit too late, that they were not able to meet their loan’s requirements. Thankfully, there are ways to get out of the predicament now.

Subprime Mortgages – What Are They?
To give you a brief background, subprime mortgages are usually offered to people with a poor or bad credit history. Since low credit scores did not prevent folks from getting approved, these mortgages were often the last resort. Of course, the terms often included high interest rate, loan application fees as well as balloon payments and prepayment penalties.

Refinancing A Mortgage
Here are five quick steps to help you refinance your subprime mortgage.

Step 1: Timing is important when refinancing a mortgage.
It is vital that you take action when the timing is just right, especially if your existing mortgage comes with an adjustable interest rate.

The right time to refinance a mortgage would be:
Just before the interest rate adjusts to a higher rate,
Before your pre-payment penalty is activated and
Before the required balloon payment is called.

If you don’t have those key pieces of information about your mortgage, you can always contact your lender and ask for it.

Step 2: Re-evaluate and assess your credit rating.
Have you made any improvements to your credit score since it was last reviewed? There are several things you can work on right now, to repair your credit.

You can close revolving credit accounts that only put you in more debt.
Paying all your bills on time can also help.
Be Advised: By taking this step lightly, you might not be eligible for the best mortgage refinance rates. If you think it would be impossible to repair your credit, think again.

You are entitled to one free annual credit report from each of the three major credit bureaus, Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion, so take advantage of that opportunity.

Step 3: Have a steady source of income.
Creditors always want to be reassured that their borrowers have a steady sources of income. That steady job ensures that you will always have enough money to at least cover the interest payments of the loan.

To qualify for a second mortgage or eliminate your existing loan, you must prove that you have a stable job and steady paycheck. If your income is strictly cash, provide documentation certifying that your cash income is constant and steady.

Step 4: Evaluate the equity in your home.
How much home equity do you have left? If the equity is 10% or less of the value of the property, chances are you might not be eligible for the best refinancing rates at the moment. Start reducing the size of your existing mortgage before applying for a second mortgage.

Step 5: Shop, Compare, and Apply
Once you have lined up all the details and are ready, the only thing left to do is shop for best mortgage rates, make comparisons, and submit your application.

Being one of the newest forms of marketing, E-marketing provides many chances to keep in touch with your existing customers and find new potential ones. It is also opens a new channel for improving sales through the internet. So what is e-marketing? E-marketing can be defined as the use of internet technology to build close relationships with customers, suppliers and staff, improving productivity and finding new ways to add value to those you do business with.

 

Customers


Not only can you communicate and interact with your customers but you can send specific messages that target their issues. This more personalised method of communicating what you are offering and the benefits of doing business with you helps to increase customer retention and customer satisfaction.

 

Prospects


By the use of opt in lists you can target specific offers to groups of prospects.

By tightly focusing specific messages to these groups a more cost effective campaign can bring significant savings and improved return.

 

Suppliers


Online suppliers can be significantly cheaper than their offline rivals. It is usually simpler to deal with these suppliers and more information on products, services and process and delivery is available at the touch of a button. This exemplary level of service ensures quality customer relationships.

 

Staff and Partners


Many companies have third party sales and distribution channels.

Communication between these parties has always been difficult but e-marketing allows them to become a key part of the business. These channels receive more information about you, your business and what you want of them. This in turn improves morale and performances of both staff and channels are significantly improved.

 

Many SMEs think that e-marketing is only about having a website and possibly having some form of shopping cart enabled. However while this is part of e-marketing it is certainly not the whole picture. As with all marketing it is the balance of the different elements of the marketing mix that any campaign needs. So using emailed newsletters to drive visitors to the site to purchase, that site having been optimised for the right keywords is a much better approach. None of this is expensive and the results can be extremely good.

 

Typical e-marketing programmes are designed to do the following

 

Manage your e-marketing campaign
Improve marketing response rates
Capture website visitors email details for inclusion on your database
Develop tailored offers to your customers
Design and write newsletters or e-zines
Build opt-in lists
Integrate email with other marketing
Monitor and report on performance including click throughs
Keep you abreast of the latest data protection and anti-spam legislation and trends
Drive traffic to your website.
Supply lists of contacts for your target markets.

Using the latest techniques highly practical, cost effective and relevant campaigns which could include a series of newsletters and announcements designed to get your customers doing business with you can be achieved increasing your sales and profitability.

 

“Balanced budget requirements seem more likely to produce accounting ingenuity than genuinely balanced budgets.” Thomas Sowell

 

Financial resources precede the idea of initiating business. Ideas remain ideas until they are implemented. For the implementation of business decisions, the financial resources are to be allocated where needed. If a person does not have enough financial resources he cannot implement a plan or decision of a business. I think that explains the important of finance for a business. While initiating a new business following three need to be planned:

Budget and accounts planning
proper functioning
Scrutinizing and examining the function.

If these steps are not followed it can badly affect the sustenance of a company. A minor mistake can lead to complete failure.

This is why proper planning is necessary for an accounting system. Manually handled records tell us that it there are a lot of expected errors. New businesses specially the ones that are on a small scale cannot afford to hire an accountant for managing the books of accounts. Even the accounting and tax consultants in the market are available to help but they charge quite high. Therefore people prefer to take the help of online accounting services that charge them low and they are more reliable as they offer an error free functioning and management of books of accounts. This is what an online accounting service can do for you:
Planning accounting resources in a way that output can be maximized.
It is an error free management of accounts.
It saves the time of the company that would be wasted in manual preparation of accounts.
It is a cost effective method of management of accounts.
It is a convenient way to assistance on functioning of accounts.
It is an easy way to monitor the flow of finances.
It gives you a 100% accuracy rate. This is not possible in manual handling of book of accounts.
It helps you in day to day accounting transaction.
It helps in strategic financial planning.
It is easily accessible.
It does not need and detailed technological knowledge.
It not only saves capital but also saves man power and time resources.
Online accounting services offer you a support round the clock.
Online accounting services help in filing for tax returns.
You can save a lot on tax preparation with the help of online tax accountants.
By the time, money and human resources that you save you can now increase your productivity.

Most of the small and medium sized businesses think that they can save a lot if they do it themselves but when it comes to legal and IRS filling they are not aware of the law. So they end up in paying more then they would pay to online accounting services – hiring an accountant is not cost effective for these businesses; specially the ones who are new in the market. As they can’t and won’t spend an extra penny they have. They should initiate the business in a properly planed way to get desired result. For this purpose we have already discussed the importance of planning financial resources and no one can do it better then a qualified, experienced professional.

For Online Accounting, Tax & Payroll Services, visit: https://www.avicennaaccounting.com/.