Cash flow management is one of the smartest ways to increase the efficiency of your business. If you want to buy more inventory during the busy season or negotiate bulk purchases, you’ll need free cash flow to leverage.
If you’re not cash flow planning and run an e-commerce store, we’re going to help you understand why you need to begin managing cash flow now.
Cash flow planning is important in every business. Did you know that 90% of e-commerce businesses fail within four months of opening? Some of these companies didn’t understand their market or have a competitive advantage to make them a success.
However, nearly all of them had one thing going against them: poor cash flow.
If you don’t have free cash flow, you won’t be able to:
Taking out a loan or line of credit may be an option. Many businesses seek loans to cover short-term cash flow needs, but you will need to:
If you need to take on debt, the costs to run your business will rise, and you’ll have lower profit margins as a result.
In all cases, it’s better to manage your cash flow, no matter how challenging it may be.
Cash flow management is a problem in every industry, but the difficulties that you face will vary from one industry to another. Some of the problems that you’ll face in the industry are:
If the economic outlook changes or your product doesn’t sell well, it will immediately impact cash flow. One of the biggest challenges with cash flow management is that you can only do so much to budget for the future.
You need to make on-the-go changes to your budget and approach to better manage your cash flow.
Ecommerce cash flow improvements are possible if you follow the appropriate strategies, including:
Cash flow is simple: maintain more inflows than outflows. If you can find strategic ways to get paid faster and reduce your expenses, you’ll have a healthy cash flow that can be used to invest more in your business.
Business cash flow management should incorporate forecasting.
Why?
You can use historical data to better understand how your cash flow will fluctuate over the reporting period and even if sales will decline due to recent trends. Forecasting should also consider:
Cash Flow Frog makes it fast and simple for anyone who wants to manage their cash flow because it integrates with the leading accounting software. You can import data from your accounting software and start running forecasts in minutes.
Real-time cash flow balances and forecasts will help you make smarter business decisions for your e-commerce store.
Cash flow management doesn’t mean that there won’t be a time when you’re spending more money than you’re generating.
Unfortunately, your cash flow will have gaps where you may not know how you’ll:
Taking on debt may be your only option. Even the largest businesses in the world leverage debt because they either have their cash flow in investments or do not want to use their own money for acquisitions or major expenses.
You can bridge cash flow gaps in quite a few ways:
Even P2P lending may be an option to help you better fund your business and keep cash flow at healthy levels.
Technology can help your accounting team with cash flow management immediately. You can use technology, including cloud-based solutions, that will help you:
You can use real-time forecasting software that provides highly accurate data that is extremely difficult to replicate using manual methods. If you want to manage your cash flow, you can run forecasting tools, but also, don’t overlook automating your processes.
For example, you can automate payment reminders, allowing you to waste fewer resources on reminders and improve payment times.
If you want to be paid on time, you may have to send out reminders – it's a part of doing business.
If you don’t know how to manage cash flow in business, you can listen to these insights to better control your free cash flow:
Mastering your cash flow allows you to maximize your e-commerce store’s revenue and profitability. If you run an online store and you’re struggling to keep afloat, your success may rely on your ability to manage cash flow properly.
You can use Cash Flow Frog to help you forecast and manage cash flow.
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