For many businesses, financing cash flow for their business can be like riding a continuous roller coaster.Sales are up, then they do down. Margins are good, then they flatten out. Cash flow can swing back and forth like an EKG graph of a heart attack.So how do you go about financing cash flow for these types of businesses?First, you need to accurately know and manage your monthly fixed costs. Regardless of what happens during the year, you need to be on top of what amount of funds will be required to cover off the recurring and scheduled operating costs that will occur whether you make a sale or not. Doing this monthly for a full twelve month cycle provides a basis for cash flow decision making.Second, from where you are at right now, determine the amount of funds available in cash, owners outside capital that could be invested in the business, and other outside sources currently in place.Third, project out your cash flow so that fixed costs, existing accounts payable and accounts receivable are realistically entered into the future weeks and months. If cash is always tight, make sure you do your cash flow on a weekly basis. There is too much variability over the course of a single month to project out only on a monthly basis.Now you have a basis to assess financing your cash flow.Financing cash flow is always going to be somewhat unique to each business due to industry, sector, business model, stage of business, business size, owner resources, and so on.Each business must self assess its sources of financing cash flow, including but not limited to owner investment, trade or payable financing, government remittances, receivable discounts for early payment, deposits on sale, third party financing (line of credit, term loan, factoring, purchase order financing, inventory financing, asset based lending, or whatever else is relevant to you).Ok, so now you have a cash flow bearing and a thorough understanding of your options available for financing cash flow in your specific business model.Now what?Now you are in a position to entertain future sales opportunities that fit into your cash flow.Three points to clarify before we go further.First, financing is not strictly about getting a loan from someone when your cash flow needs more money. Its a process of keeping your cash flow continuously positive at the lowest possible cost.Second, you should only market and sell what you can cash flow. Marketers will measure the ROI of a marketing initiative. But if you can’t cash flow the business to complete the sale and collect the proceeds, there is no ROI to measure. If you have a business with fluctuating sales and margins, you can only enter into transactions that you can finance.Third, marketing needs to focus on customers that you can sell to over and over again in order to maximize your marketing efforts and reduce the unpredictability of the annual sales cycle through regular repeat orders and sales.Marketing works under the premise that if you are providing what the customer wants that the money side of the equation will take care of itself. In many businesses this indeed proves to be true. But in a business with fluctuating sales and margins, financing cash flow has to be another criteria built into sales and marketing activities.Overtime, virtually any business has the potential to smooth out the peaks and valleys through a more robust marketing plan that better lines up with customer needs and the business’s financing limitations or parameters.In addition to linking financing cash flow more closely to marketing and sales, the next most impactful action you can take is expanding your sources of financing.Here are some potential strategies for expanding your sources for financing cash flow.Strategy # 1: Develop strategic relationships with key suppliers that have the ability to extend greater financing in certain situations to take advantage of sales opportunities. This is accomplished with larger suppliers that 1) have the financial means to extend financing, 2) view you as a key customer and value your business, 3) have confidence in the business’s ability to forecast and manage cash flow.Strategy # 2: Make sure where possible that your annual financial statements show a profit capable of servicing debt financing. Accountants may be good at saving you income tax dollars, but if they drive business profitability down to or close to zero through tax planning, they may also effectively destroying your ability to borrow money.Strategy # 3: If possible, only transact with credit worthy customers. Credit worthy customers allow both the business and potential lenders to finance receivables which can increase the amount of external financing available to you.Strategy # 4: Develop a liquidation pathway for your tangible assets. Equipment and inventory are easier to finance if lenders clearly understand how to liquidate the assets in the event of default. In some cases, businesses can get resale option agreements on certain equipment or inventory from prospective buyers assignable to a lender to be used as recourse against a lending facility for financing cash flow.Strategy # 5: Joint venture a sales opportunity with another business to share the risk of a large sales opportunity that may be too risky for you to take on yourself.SummaryThe primary long term objective of a business with fluctuating cash flow and margins is to smooth out the peaks and valleys and create a scalable business with more of a predictable sales cycle.This is best achieved with an approach that including the following steps.Step #1. Micro Manage your fixed costs and cash flow and accurately project out the cash flow requirements of the business on a weekly basis.Step #2. Take a detailed inventory of all the sources you have for financing cash flow.Step #3. Incorporate your financing constraints into your marketing approach.Step #4. If possible, only transact with credit worthy customers to reduce risk and increase financing options.Step #5. Work towards expanding both your financing sources and available source limits for financing cash flow.Business cycle stability and cash flow predictability is an evolutionary step for every business. The industries with longer sales cycles will tend to be the more difficult to tame due to a larger number of variables to manage.A continuous focus on the process for improvement outlined will help create the desired results over time.
What Are The Greatest Changes In Shopping In Your Lifetime
What are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime? So asked my 9 year old grandson.
As I thought of the question the local Green Grocer came to mind. Because that is what the greatest change in shopping in my lifetime is.
That was the first place to start with the question of what are the greatest changes in shopping in your lifetime.
Our local green grocer was the most important change in shopping in my lifetime. Beside him was our butcher, a hairdresser and a chemist.
Looking back, we were well catered for as we had quite a few in our suburb. And yes, the greatest changes in shopping in my lifetime were with the small family owned businesses.
Entertainment While Shopping Has Changed
Buying butter was an entertainment in itself.
My sister and I often had to go to a favourite family grocer close by. We were always polite as we asked for a pound or two of butter and other small items.
Out came a big block of wet butter wrapped in grease-proof paper. Brought from the back of the shop, placed on a huge counter top and included two grooved pates.
That was a big change in our shopping in my lifetime… you don’t come across butter bashing nowadays.
Our old friendly Mr. Mahon with the moustache, would cut a square of butter. Lift it to another piece of greaseproof paper with his pates. On it went to the weighing scales, a bit sliced off or added here and there.
Our old grocer would then bash it with gusto, turning it over and over. Upside down and sideways it went, so that it had grooves from the pates, splashes going everywhere, including our faces.
My sister and I thought this was great fun and it always cracked us up. We loved it, as we loved Mahon’s, on the corner, our very favourite grocery shop.
Grocery Shopping
Further afield, we often had to go to another of my mother’s favourite, not so local, green grocer’s. Mr. McKessie, ( spelt phonetically) would take our list, gather the groceries and put them all in a big cardboard box.
And because we were good customers he always delivered them to our house free of charge. But he wasn’t nearly as much fun as old Mr. Mahon. Even so, he was a nice man.
All Things Fresh
So there were very many common services such as home deliveries like:
• Farm eggs
• Fresh vegetables
• Cow’s milk
• Freshly baked bread
• Coal for our open fires
Delivery Services
A man used to come to our house a couple of times a week with farm fresh eggs.
Another used to come every day with fresh vegetables, although my father loved growing his own.
Our milk, topped with beautiful cream, was delivered to our doorstep every single morning.
Unbelievably, come think of it now, our bread came to us in a huge van driven by our “bread-man” named Jerry who became a family friend.
My parents always invited Jerry and his wife to their parties, and there were many during the summer months. Kids and adults all thoroughly enjoyed these times. Alcohol was never included, my parents were teetotallers. Lemonade was a treat, with home made sandwiches and cakes.
The coal-man was another who delivered bags of coal for our open fires. I can still see his sooty face under his tweed cap but I can’t remember his name. We knew them all by name but most of them escape me now.
Mr. Higgins, a service man from the Hoover Company always came to our house to replace our old vacuum cleaner with an updated model.
Our insurance company even sent a man to collect the weekly premium.
People then only paid for their shopping with cash. This in itself has been a huge change in shopping in my lifetime.
In some department stores there was a system whereby the money from the cash registers was transported in a small cylinder on a moving wire track to the central office.
Some Of The Bigger Changes
Some of the bigger changes in shopping were the opening of supermarkets.
• Supermarkets replaced many individual smaller grocery shops. Cash and bank cheques have given way to credit and key cards.
• Internet shopping… the latest trend, but in many minds, doing more harm, to book shops.
• Not many written shopping lists, because mobile phones have taken over.
On a more optimistic note, I hear that book shops are popular again after a decline.
Personal Service Has Most Definitely Changed
So, no one really has to leave home, to purchase almost anything, technology makes it so easy to do online.
And we have a much bigger range of products now, to choose from, and credit cards have given us the greatest ease of payment.
We have longer shopping hours, and weekend shopping. But we have lost the personal service that we oldies had taken for granted and also appreciated.
Because of their frenetic lifestyles, I have heard people say they find shopping very stressful, that is grocery shopping. I’m sure it is when you have to dash home and cook dinner after a days work. I often think there has to be a better, less stressful way.
My mother had the best of both worlds, in the services she had at her disposal. With a full time job looking after 9 people, 7 children plus her and my dad, she was very lucky. Lucky too that she did not have 2 jobs.
What Happens If You Don’t Pay a Payday Loan Back on Time – Help and Advice
Payday loans can be a lifesaver when you have a sudden emergency and need a cash advance fast, but there can be a serious downside to this type of borrowing if you are not careful about who you borrow money from. The danger comes from excessive penalties that are charged on late payments by some of the less scrupulous payday lenders.Payday loans are quite different to any other type of borrowing. They are a way of accessing extra cash extremely quickly and usually without any kind of credit check. The reason credit checks are not necessary is that payday loans are always for very short periods of time and for relatively small amounts of money. Provided you can demonstrate that you have a job and a bank account, the lender can be pretty sure of getting their money back.The cost of a payday loan is usually a fixed amount, which will vary with the size of the loan. This charge in itself is perhaps not unreasonable for the service provided, but it is only appropriate as a one-off fee over that short time period. If you were to work out what that charge represented as an annual percentage rate (APR), you would see that it then became astronomical, perhaps a hundred times higher than a typical personal loan. This is because that charge is not meant to be applied over a period of time like the interest on a personal loan would be.If you don’t pay a payday loan back on the due date, you are leaving it open for the lender to apply extra interest or penalty charges. It has to be said that this is what happens all too frequently, and this is where many payday lenders really make their money, and is what they hope for and depend on. Once this process starts, the extra charges can very quickly amount to more than the original amount you borrowed. This leads to a cycle that is impossible to break out of, because the debt is for more that you are ever going to have spare in any month.It must be said that there are still plenty of responsible lenders that have fair and reasonable systems, so if you don’t pay a payday loan back when you are meant to, you can extend the period of borrowing without ridiculous charges. The important thing is to check this kind of information before entering into a loan agreement with a company. Many people focus too much on who can give the money the fastest at the expense of who is the fairest lender who will be reasonable if you are unable to stick to your original agreement.If you don’t pay a payday loan back and you do find yourself in a situation where you have mounting debts from extra charges, there are some important things to bear in mind with regard to how you get out of that situation. First and foremost, do not take out any more payday loans. They are strictly for covering exceptional expenditure, which can be paid back the following month. They are never, ever a suitable way to deal with a debt problem or ongoing shortage of cash.As debts mount up extremely quickly with payday loans, you need to seek help quickly. Once you know you have a problem that you cannot see a way out of, do not delay in taking action. A debt management company will be a good place to start and you can apply quickly and easily online. What happens next is that they will contact you to go through your finances and advise you on your best course of action.You can avoid the nightmare of a payday loan debt cycle by choosing your lender carefully in the first place. You should avoid any bad situations if you stick to well established and reputable companies that have a long record of successful business, and lots of satisfied customers who have already used them. It is perfectly possible to find lenders who are both responsible and trustworthy as well as having fast and simple application processes.The best approach is to use payday loan companies that are recommended following research and reviews, to come up with a list of a few that you know to be reputable and well established. You then have a few safe ones to apply to in case any reject your application