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1. 10 Ways to Improve Cash Flow
10 Ways to improve cash flow

2. 10 Ways to Improve Cash Flow
Turnaround your business with a strategic business plan. Improve cash flow
and revenue, cut business costs and ultimately increase revenue. Click here.
Just about every business would like to improve their cash flow.
Below are ten ways which may help your business achieve that
objective rather quickly:
Bill Promptly; Take Advantage of Payment Terms
The faster you can invoice a client, the quicker the clock starts to
tick for the customer to pay in order to meet the terms of the
contract you both agreed upon at the beginning of the
relationship. Conversely, if you've agreed to terms of Net 30 with
one of your suppliers or vendors, don't pay the bill immediately;
wait a little bit to take advantage of those terms and keep the
cash in your (hopefully) interest bearing account a little longer.
Offer Payment Incentives; Penalize Late Payers
Many times businesses set forth payment terms of Net 15 or Net
30, but they neither offer any incentives to beat those terms nor
penalties if the terms aren't met. Consider adding both to your
invoices to decrease your accounts receivable days outstanding.
Chances are most of your customers will pay promptly if there is
an incentive involved.

3. 10 Ways to Improve Cash Flow
Run Credit Checks on Potential Customers
While this sounds like a no-brainer suggestion, many businesses
today take whatever business they can acquire and run checks
only when problems arise. Often times it is too late to run a check
after issues surface. It's better for your business over the long
haul to reject a customer immediately that slow pays or is
consistently delinquent. Slow payers are frequently troublesome
clients aside from their propensity to get behind on paying you--
they are typically the impossible to please variety that will nitpick
your organization and sap its resources.
Sell off Under Utilized Assets and Fully Depreciated Assets
Once an asset has run through its useful life and is no longer a
depreciable asset, consider selling it off if you can get good value
for it. You'll get an influx of cash that can help you replace that
asset or upgrade to a new technology or model and possibly
reduce your debt in the process. Many assets will last well
beyond their useful life so you may be able to fetch top dollar from
a smaller business looking to improve their operation by adding
used equipment.

4. 10 Ways to Improve Cash Flow
Encourage Partial Payments
If your business is in a bit of a cash crunch, try encouraging your
clients to make partial payments on the front end of projects or
working arrangements. Most will be agreeable to such provided
you make some concessions on your end such as small pricing
incentive or discount to do so. This helps you improve your cash
on hand while helping your client spread payments out so that
everything doesn't hit all at once in one lump sum.
Comparison Shop Suppliers Online
The Internet makes comparison shopping a breeze, and some of
your vendors and suppliers may take you for granted by not
adjusting their pricing to reflect current market and competitive
pricing. By checking the competitive landscape every quarter or
so, you can gain some leverage by knowing how much you
should be paying for particular items especially those that are
more commoditized.
Stick to Budgets
This is another suggestion that may seem rather obvious, but
there are several projects that suffer budget creep throughout a
fiscal year. A couple hundred bucks here or there may not seem

5. 10 Ways to Improve Cash Flow
like much for a particular project, but it will quickly add up if there
are multiple projects going on across an organization.
Spread Out Payments; Don't Pay All at Once
Spreading out payments through a month versus paying
everything on one day can really alleviate a cash crunch due to
the natural flow of business and customers' payment preferences.
All of the money due to you in a given month doesn't come in on
one day so why should all of the money going out? This little tip
can save a lot of headaches even though the temptation to pay
everything on one specific day to get it out of the way may seem
logical at times.
Add a Shift Versus Taking on More Space
A lot of small to medium businesses are quick to add office or
production space when it may be more cost effective to simply
add another shift. If your business is a morning shift only
operation, how much could you save by simply adding a second
shift versus adding production capacity? Chances are you could
save quite a bit of development and rental costs by better utilizing
the space you have today.

6. 10 Ways to Improve Cash Flow
Pay by Credit When Possible
Paying by credit seems to have a stigma attached to it, but it can
buy you some extra time to stockpile more cash to pay things off if
you play the terms correctly. Since there are also some low rate
credit options available, it may be more cost effective to take on a
little interest expense until the cash reserves are built up enough
to pay things completely off.
Cash flow problems don't have to cripple your business if you
take a step back and evaluate your options objectively.
Implementing a few of the tips above can improve things almost
immediately and put you back on the right track to a positive cash
flow.
Turnaround your business with a strategic business plan. Improve cash flow
and revenue, cut business costs and ultimately increase revenue. Click here.

7. 10 Ways to Improve Cash Flow
Roger Bauer is CEO of SMB Consulting, Inc. a nationally recognized small business
consulting firm specializing in business planning, competitive intelligence, marketing,
sales, search engine optimization (SEO), strategic planning, and technology guidance.
To learn more about the firm, please visit http://smbconsultinginc.com
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