Updated 26/01/2022
Discover how to keep your business finances under control. Stay organised, get paid on time, every time and monitor client performance to locate any issues. Ensuring that you get paid for all the work that you do is vital to maintaining your cash flow and keeping your business on the right track.
Creating a great product or service that helps people is a noble aim for any company.
However, the bottom line is if you do not look after your finances, then you will not have a business for very long. Keeping a handle on your profit and loss, as well as your cash at hand is essential. Ensuring that you get paid for all the work that you do is vital to maintaining your cash flow and keeping your business on the right track. Creating a great product or service that helps people is a noble aim for any company.
Invoices: Keep your business finances organised
Ensuring that you get paid for all the work that you do is vital to maintaining your cash flow and keeping your business on the right track. If you lose that scrap of paper that you wrote down the figures while you were on the phone to a new client or a project scope grew while in progress, but you did not update the quotation or track the time spent, then you might find yourself working for free.
SwiftCase allows you to track your time spent, assign costs and materials on a task by task basis. Invoices are generated automatically from this information in a professionally formatted document that SwiftCase can send automatically to your client at the right point in your business process.
Chasing payment to keep business finances on track
Chasing payments from your customers is a time-consuming but unfortunately necessary part of running a business. A consistent process is crucial to make sure that everything that is due is received and in good time. Sending statements of account to your customers, or payment chase letters, are processes that can and should be automated.
SwiftCase allows you to set up professional template letters for your statements, as well as your chase letters to make getting payments in much smoother. By using custom criteria, it is possible to target specific customer groups like poor payers, with strongly worded letters to encourage prompt payment.
Monitor the performance of your clients
When you first start a business, you want to get as many clients as you can. As you grow, you want to please your existing customers and find new customers to introduce your products and services to. However, have you ever noticed that you make most of your profit from only a few customers? This phenomenon is often called the Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule, that you get 80% of your profit for 20% of your work, or your customer base.
Something that is often never considered though is, do you have customers that are costing you money? They make unreasonable demands, do not pay on time, keep changing their minds, or insist on substantial discounts. You have a finite amount of resources, staff, time, budget, and ensuring that you get the most out means guaranteeing that you are picking the right customers with which to do business. Dropping that problem customer may seem counterintuitive but keeping customers that drain your resources, or lower staff morale is harming your business.
SwiftCase lets you rank your customers, so, that you can see who are your best and worst clients, and you can target your resources in the most productive direction.