Using a spreadsheet to track income and expenses may seem like an easy task but there are even simpler and more efficient ways to track your small business’ financials. Excel is great, but there are plenty of other low-cost tools that you can use to not only track your finances easily but also to do it so that you’re gaining the insight you need. Small Business Cash Flow Money comes in, and money goes out. At its core, your small business’ ability to create value for stakeholders and potential investors is determined by your ability to generate a positive cash flow, or more specifically, maximize long-term free cash flow. Cash flow is critical to measure your business’ health. But how do you monitor it? You might be thinking—track sales on one hand and expenses on the other, and then compare the two. However, a whopping 65% of failed businesses reported that they closed down because of financial mismanagement. What was one of the major issues? Lack of cash flow visibility. These businesses didn’t know (couldn’t see) if they were making more than they were spending. Why is it so easy to lose sight of cash flow? It’s hard to understand why businesses would dip into the negatives, especially when ensuring you never lose sight of cash flow seems to be common sense. However, until you are in business yourself, you won’t realize that tracking small business cash flow really isn’t as easy it as seems. For example, you have to: Keep track of all your expense receipts—which gets extremely tricky if there is more than one person making purchases. Record all your sales revenue—including taking into account for any discounts you might have given. Enter everything into your cash flow Excel spreadsheet or Google Sheet—including double-checking to confirm all your data is entered correctly. Often times, you might have to turn to employees or business partners to supply this information, which means more hours spent on follow up phone calls and “chasing paper”. This can take a huge chunk of time, patience, and energy before you’re even ready to punch the numbers into a spreadsheet. Data Entry Slows You Down As your small business grows, so does the number of columns and rows on your Excel spreadsheet. Plus the busier you get running the “business” side of things, it’s easy to find yourself scrambling for time out of your day to manage your financials too. Unfortunately, it’s not a job you can rush because your spreadsheet needs to be as accurate as possible. Do these two common issues sound familiar? The task gets pushed back repeatedly until you find yourself going through long periods without knowing your cash flow Because there are gaps in your data, you aren’t able to really see how your business performs on a day-to-day basis Luckily, with Kashoo, you can easily: Keep track of all expense receipts digitally and on-the-go through our accounting app that’s compatible with your mobile phone. Record all your sales revenue by tracking all your invoices at a glance. Connect your bank feed to directly import your transactions into Kashoo On top of that, our software collects all the data for you in the cloud and you can export these numbers into Excel, CSV, or Google directly from your Workspace Dashboard! Blind Spots Creep In No matter how diligent you are, there’s always going to be a lag between when you make a sale or expense and when you actually enter it into your cash flow Excel spreadsheet. Plus, you won’t even “see” this lag until you interpret the data from your spreadsheet into charts or graphs. As business picks up with more sales and expenses happening every day, this lack of visibility or “blind spots” will become much more significant. With Kashoo, you can eliminate these blind spots as you run your business on a day-to-day basis by simply logging your income and expense on-the go. A workspace that’s compatible with both your laptop and phone means easy access to logging all your data—as you make that sale or spend that cash. Another handy way to close the blind spots in your accounting is to create invoices for recurring clients directly from Kashoo on a weekly basis, for example. Once these invoices are created on the date of your choosing, it’s an easy way to remind you that there are invoices ready to send to your clients. Better yet, with Kashoo you have the option to customize your invoices or add a payment link to send out to your clients so that they can pay directly with their credit card online. Not only do these options create more visibility and reduce “blind spots” in your bookkeeping and overall business financials, it also helps you save time and gets you paid that much faster. What are you waiting for? Try Kashoo for free today using our 14-Day Free Trial and see how you can manage your small business cash flow more productively without spreadsheets!
