A successful business takes more than just a good idea. As an entrepreneur, managing money is commonly one of the most difficult aspects of the job. Fortunately, these five tips, from a virtual financial assistant, are here to give you a playbook for success.
1. Plan for taxes
Nothing is worse than getting a huge tax bill at the end of the year. What’s worse is not having the funds to pay it off. Because of this, it’s essential to plan for taxes. Many entrepreneurs use platforms, such as Fresh Books or Evernote. These platforms are effective to photograph and itemize receipts, which is great for staying organized.
However, our virtual financial assistants suggest that you also have QuickBooks Intuit software as another option to help you to account for your financial obligations. To cover your back, though, be sure to keep a paper copy, as well. It’s easy to file these in a manila folder. Doing so could also save your business if you need to provide additional proof of expenses when audited at the end of the year.
Perhaps you have invested the time into organizing your financial records, but don’t have the time to sort it all out. You can send images of your documents to your virtual financial assistant who can upload them into the system for you. To ensure you have time to attend these important meetings, to close those important deals, your virtual office assistant can organize your bookkeeping tasks.
At VA Staffer, we pride ourselves in utilizing virtual assistant tools and software which are a definite MUST when managing successful virtual teams. These are the tools which allow our virtual financial assistants to efficiently assist in achieving your goals.
2. Get Serious About Your Retirement
Hopefully, you have already separated your business expenses and personal expenses. Separating your business from your personal expenses ensures that you exert minimal effort to track your money. With this in mind, your financial virtual assistant can help you to set up personal and business accounts. Also, this would help you track the inflow and outflow of each.
Furthermore, doing so will streamline things when tax time rolls around. Thus, your virtual office assistant can help you to gather information to map the growth and progress of your business. They can get the research, you don’t have the time to conduct, done for you. Thus affording you the much-needed opportunity to source revenue and further investment for your business.
3. Boost Your Cash Flow through Innovation
The ability to maintain your money is a good start. But what do you do in times when business is slow? What you need to do is find innovative ways to boost your cash flow. For example, you can consider:
- providing discount incentives to customers.
- developing a rewards program to encourage customers to pay early.
- creating additional services to broaden your products appeal to customers within your industry.
- offering affiliate links within your content for other people’s products. This provides a market for the product of such investors. Also, you receive exposure for your site as well.
- asking your clients for a deposit before you provide any service.
We don’t need to tell you that you need a personal emergency fund. Are you saving toward a business emergency fund as well? Profit fluctuations are common for small businesses, and being prepared for lean months can keep you from going under.
4. Develop Effective Methods to Collect Debts
At some point, entrepreneurs may have to deal with clients who will not pay the full price or may be late on paying their bill. You need to anticipate this and put measures in place to successfully gain your revenue from debtors. Here are a few things you could do:
- Consider pre-paying as an option for maintaining a positive line of credit
- Consider also, automatic billing to help reduce delinquency
- Ensure you maintain open communication between you and the client
- Equip yourself with a knowledge of the laws. Be mindful of these laws and know the how and when you can communicate with delinquent clients.
- Hire a collection agency to do this work for you.
- If all else fails to take the delinquent client to small-claims court.
5. Hire a Virtual Financial Assistant/ Team
It happens. You get caught up in running your business and you forget to plan for your financial future. Hiring our virtual assistant team or a virtual financial assistant will help you to make important financial steps to secure your future. While we handle the virtual end of your business concerns you can seek the advice of a financial consultant.
Follow these steps and you will be taking strides to financial security. To learn more about managing your money effectively, check out our other conversion marketing posts for ideas for generating revenue.
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