What is Cash Flow? Simple, It's what most of us don't have...Cash Flow is the amount of cash earned after paying all expenses and taxes. Cash flow is calculated by adding: net after-tax income plus any bookkeeping expenses that result in items being deducted but not paid out in cash. Such bookkeeping entries include amounts charged off for depreciation, depletion, amortization, and charges to reserves. Cash flow is a measure of a company's worth and its ability to pay dividends on its stock.
"More and more these days I find myself pondering how to reconcile my net income with my gross habits."
John Nelson.
One of the most common problems that affects businesses is that their customers owe them money. When you've done the work but people are being slow to pay you, you can get behind with bills and be short of money to invest in your business. This is, understandably, an annoying situation -- you're being chased for debts that other people refuse to pay. There are, though, a few ways to improve your customers' payment speed.
When you do work and invoice afterwards you are extending credit to your customers. As such, if the cost is going to be high, you should consider running a credit check on them before you start work. This will show you whether the company you're about to do work for is in trouble, and can help avoid lots of problems later on. You can usually run credit checks onlin for next to nothing.
A mistake many home businesses make is to send invoices that have a fancy layout and say how much the customer owes, but don't contain any direct instruction to pay now. This results in customers receiving the invoice and putting it on their 'unimportant chores' pile -- you know, the one that doesn't get done for months.
Sooner or later, you might end up being owed money by a business that is in financial trouble -- you're just one in a long list of creditors, as everything falls down around them. In this situation, you need to be prepared to settle with them for less than the original invoice price, or you risk getting nothing. It is a bad situation to be in, but it's better to give someone a break and get some money instead of pushing them further towards bankruptcy and getting nothing.
"We didn't actually overspend our budget. The allocation simply fell short of our expenditure."
