If you’re like some small businesses, you may be under the wrong impression about the tools to maintain and close your books. You might think you have only two choices: spreadsheets or QuickBooks. But that couldn’t be further from the truth. You now have access to an ever-expanding field of cloud-based accounting apps. More importantly, a few accounting apps on the market stand out as strong alternatives to QuickBooks or humdrum Excel spreadsheets.
Businesses are fundamentally about money: making money, managing money, and paying money to employees or other businesses. Every business — even those “billion dollar” startups that don’t make a cent — needs to stay on top of its finances.
You may think your top-performing employees don’t need extra encouragement. After all, they’re already driven, productive and well-compensated, right? Why fix something that’s not broken? That’s a risky mindset that may very well backfire on you.
The average person has 70,000 thoughts each day, and if you don’t learn to organize them, they have the potential to wreak havoc on your productivity. When you succumb to the flurry of thoughts running through your head, your mind becomes disorganized, and the more you ruminate on intrusive thoughts, the more power you give them. Most of our thoughts are just that—thoughts, not facts. When you find yourself believing the negative, distracting, and pessimistic things your inner voice says, it’s very hard to slow down the momentum of your thoughts.
Managing cash flow is the lifeblood of every small business. Your work may reward you in ways that aren’t about money at all, but if the cash flowing in doesn’t exceed the cash flowing out, you’ll probably be in trouble before long. These 12 ways to improve cash flow can help you encourage incoming payments, delay outlays of cash and stay on top of everything in between–like payments, late fees, and billing cyc
To-Do lists should be an invaluable part of any small business person’s day-to-day. They don’t just help you get things down, they help keep you motivated and on track. Now, they seem pretty self-explanatory, right? Write down a task. Then do it. But sometimes they can quickly go from being useful to useless. A to-do list can too easily take a wrong turn and become exhaustive and exhausting. Here are five quick tips to help you get the most from your to-do lists.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re the best florist, hair stylist, party planner or accountant, your business will never grow if you don’t know how to manage employees. Take a look at this list of management traits and ask yourself whether any of them apply to you. Don’t sweat it if you’re guilty of some (or all); the fixes are easy and your reward will be a successful business.
Every small business goes through rough patches where business growth sometimes must take a back seat to “just getting by”. Maybe you lost a key employee, maybe family concerns have eroded your laser focus on your business, or maybe the economy is going through an uncertain time. But growth may be possible even in tough or uncertain times. Actually, down times can also be the perfect time for making positive shifts that will benefit your business later. These 10 tips can help you position your business for future success.
Nobody likes to admit when they’ve made a mistake and risk the embarrassment, reputation-sullying, or potential wrath from the person who was wronged. This is especially true of Millennials, who were raised with participation trophies and parents with a propensity for telling them they were perfect no matter how big a flub they made.
Last year our startup went through a serious downtime. We had a large deal signed that fell through with only 7% of its original commitment. During this time, we went through what every entrepreneur fears – no money. We had already started the wheels turning for future growth plans, and yet we didn’t have the cash to do so.