Cash Flow Blog

Are You An Invoice Procrastinator?
September 22, 2006, 4:36 PM
This will sound ridiculous to a number of you. Most will think this is crazy. But some of you need this as a wake-up call. Invoice your customers . One of the simplest ways to increase your cashflow is to invoice your customers on time. On time is whenever the subscription period, delivery, or other agreed terms of payment are met. It´s as simple as it sounds — invoice your customers . I once worked with a company that was habitually late invoicing their clients. They are a good company, provide a great service, and are thoughtful people. They just ...

The Rising Cost Of Fuel And Its Effect On Your Business - Part 1
August 26, 2006, 11:16 AM
This is the first of a two post series on the effects of rising fuel costs and what small businesses can do to minimize the fall-over effects to their cash flow. Unless you´re living in a cave or are in grade school, we´re all too familiar with the rising cost of gasoline. My local station is currently charging $3.24 a gallon and it´s expected to go higher. There are a lot of reasons for rising gasoline prices. And every reason is more confusing than the next. But this post isn´t about the reasons for rising fuel costs, that´s a heady ...

When A Payment Is Due Can Make A Difference To Your Cash Flow
August 16, 2006, 3:26 PM
There´s something that happens each month to most of the bill paying public , we send more money out the last two weeks of the month than the first two. Rent, mortgage, utilities, etc. overwhelmingly fall due at the end of the month. Depending on your product or service, you may not want your invoice competing with mortgages in the fight to receive your customer´s money. A better choice may be to compete for payment earlier in the month, being paid from the first month´s paycheck, not the second. Something I like to do is stagger my receivables, with some ...

An Employee Just Quit. It May Be A Great Opportunity For Your Business
August 11, 2006, 10:49 AM
You can´t be in business for any length of time without having to face a change in personnel. People come and people go. It´s reality. And it´s often opportunity. When faced with filling an open position take a moment and assess your business and its capabilities as compared to customers´ needs and desires. You may find there is an opportunity to add a skill-set to your company, in the form of a replacement hire, which opens new streams of revenue for your company. For example, a web development company may have an engineer that decides to leave to pursue other ...

Settlement Offers, An Option At The End Of The Collection Process
July 12, 2006, 6:12 PM
In my last post I wrote about the collection process. More specific, I wrote about the end of the collection process and the use of collection letters. In that post I mentioned a strategy to settle debt just prior to writing-off the account. Here´s the strategy I referred to. When you get to the end of the collection process and are ready to write the account off, every plan, practice, and policy you´ve had in place to work with your customer has failed. The odds of curing the account are beyond reasonable. So, what are you´re options? Some receivables can ...

Two Critical Elements Of The Collection Letter
June 27, 2006, 3:18 PM
Collections are a reality of business. And collection letters are a reality of an effective collection process. That´s an item we´re now dealing with at Guardian Medical Group — writing the collection letter as part of a multi-step AR collection process. Collection letters come at the end of the process, a last notification and opportunity to service a seriously troubled account. At this point of the process invoices have gone unpaid, phone calls haven´t resolved the issue, and there are little options left to explore. We´re ready to write-off the debt and turn things over to a collection agency. Simply, ...

Cash Flow Program Update - We're Almost There!
June 21, 2006, 1:04 PM
I´m wrapping up a family trip to Mexico and should be back to posting health in a couple days. Thanks to the convenient and inexpensive nature of telecom, even while away I´ve been able to keep pace with Guardian Medical Group and the 6 for ´06 program . We´re at the halfway point of the program and have made some incredible improvements to Guardian´s cash flow. I will tell you all a lot about it, but for now the best person for you to hear from on our progress is Rick Danzey, Guardian´s business manager. Here´s the link to ...

Collections, A Necessary Evil Of Business
June 07, 2006, 12:01 PM
We all hate collections, buts it´s a reality of business life. Not all customers pay or pay on time. Regardless of whether you´re mowing lawns, selling your time or selling multi-million dollar technology solutions, the reality is you´ll encounter AR problems from time-to-time. As a reality, the practical objective is not to eliminate it (AR), but manage it as effectively and small as you possibly can. How do you best manage AR? That´s the problem we´re now addressing with Guardian Medical Group, as part of the 6 for ´06 program . The first part of solving any problem, AR included, ...

Slow Paying Customers
May 24, 2006, 8:36 AM
There´s good news and bad news of winning a big deal from a big company — you won the deal"?¦congratulations, you probably won´t be paid anytime soon. Experian´s survey of 366,633 companies shows businesses of all size are extending the time taken to pay their invoices. Big companies are the worst offenders, taking on average 80.6 days to pay their suppliers - often smaller businesses. Ouch! This isn´t anything new. There are few surprises in this analysis. Except maybe one"?¦the problem is getting worse. Average payment times have lengthened over the last decade. And they aren´t likely to shorten anytime ...

When Do You Pay An Invoice That´s Never Due?
May 19, 2006, 6:28 AM
Most businesses have clear terms of payment, either negotiated terms as part of a formal purchase agreement or a specific date stamped on a mailed invoice. There are many businesses though that have neither — either the billing solution they use doesn´t support date specific payment information or an oversight has been made in preparing the invoice. Looking at a number of business and personal invoices nearby, I see a variety of payment dates — Due Upon Receipt, Net15, May 26, and one that as no date. The most powerful is the date specific payment due date — May 26.