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Knowing exactly how much you’re spending and how much you should be earning is vital for any business. Without monitoring your cashflow, you could end up with huge debts. Here are just five ways to keep on top of your company’s finances.

Organise outgoing payments to come out on the same date

If possible, learn with Skill Success and try to arrange all outgoing payments to go out around the same time. This can make it easier to keep track of when money is going out. Most suppliers and creditors will be willing to change the payment date for you if you ring them up and ask them. You may even be able to schedule your employee’s wages to go out on the same day.

Set reminders of incoming payments

It’s important to check that your clients are paying you on time. If people pay you on a monthly subscription basis, check that there money is going into your account each time so that you can chase up late paying customers. When cashing in cheques, you may also want to set a reminder in a few days’ time to check that it has not bounced. You don’t want to get into debt due to being too lax at chasing up payments.

Outsource supply chain management

If you’ve got a long list of suppliers, you could find that it’s taking up a huge amount of your time paying each one individually. Consider outsourcing a supply chain management company such as McKinsey & Company who can collect all your bills for you and relay it all too you as one invoice. You can then pay this invoice and the supply chain management company will distribute the money amongst all your suppliers for you, saving you a lot of time and effort.

Make use of data analytics

Data analytics (sometimes called ‘data science’) is a means of using computers to pull apart huge swathes of data in order to help find useful trends that could help you to improve the running of your company. Analytics can be used in finance as a way of helping you to trim your expenses and increase your earnings by spotting trends. If you’re a retailer, it could help you to order in the exact amount of each product to ensure maximum sales whilst spending the least amount of money. There are companies such as Cloudstream Partners that can help you with this analytics work. There are also programmes that you can download to help collect analytic data of your finances.

Automate bill payments and invoices

It’s possible to use software to automatically generate bills and invoices rather than having to individually complete each one. This can help to save you a lot of time, whilst reducing errors made in the billing/invoicing process. You should also automate any outgoing payments to suppliers who you have a steady contract with – this could be done through a standing order or direct debit.