is your business leaking cash?

"Cash is King" goes the saying, but how do you know if your business is leaking that liquid gold?
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Here are some ideas to help you stem the flow.

1. ​Approved suppliers. Can your staff buy what they like, when they like from where they like? They might not be getting the best deal when they buy from a range of different places. Implement an approved suppliers list and work with those suppliers to get consistent pricing to help you manage your money.
2. Easy access to money. Do you let your staff have credit cards or debit cards on the business? If you do, how closely do you guide their spending? After all, once it's spent, it's too late to stop the purchase. Implement a policy of what can be spent using these cards, and watch those small purchases here and there, they can add up.
3. Doing jobs on the cheap. Do you give away work at low or no pay? Do you add those little extras because they are little? Make sure you manage and monitor those low paid jobs so that you still recover enough money to pay your own bills and costs. You can still do those jobs, just be mindful of the effect on the rest of your business.
4. Scope creep. Similar to #3, scope creep is when an arranged job or piece of work starts to slip. Maybe it's additional time, maybe it's unexpected costs, maybe it's extra tweaks or amendments. Manage and monitor your jobs, and if the scope starts to creep, put contingency plans in place and make sure it doesn't damage your business.
5. Recover your overheads. It's easy to forget the overheads when planning or quoting for a job. Time is money and the back-office time does cost, so make sure you allow enough in your quotes to cover them.
6. Budget well, monitor well. Budgets are a line in the sand and they can move and change, so strictly sticking to them may not be the best thing, but ignoring them, or not tracking them, could leave you open to lost income or extra expenses. If you overspend in one area, balance it up by underspending on another area. 

I hope that gives you some ideas of places to look so you don't leak money. 

If you need any help identifying leaks in your financial process, do contact me. I might surprise you!