1. Why Your Company Should Own Credit Accounts

Have you considered what happens when you sell your contracts to an outside financing company? The reason that outside finance companies want your contracts is the same reason you may want to keep them. They take on some risk, do the paperwork and make money! However, you can lose up to half of your profit when you sell your contracts.

Consider the investment that you already have in your contracts. You do all the work required to produce the contract, then you give it away to a finance company. The financing company will screen them and choose only those contracts that meet their requirements and charge you a fee to purchase them. Their only cost is a credit bureau report. If your accounts are good enough for others to buy, they surely are good enough for you too. The only reason that they buy your contracts is because they are profitable. You already have the personnel, a desk and a computer. Add good specialized software, a supply of stationary and you are in the business. One client informed us that it takes an average of 2 hours a day, 6 days a week, or 12 hours a week to work 480 accounts.

Financing is a business that earns money every day of the year. If your business is closed for a weekend or holiday, the interest is still being earned on a daily basis. Interest has no days off or vacations. Payments can come in every day of the month and that gives you cash flow even without making a sale. Here are some other reasons you want to own finance contracts:

2. Save the Discount Percentage:

Most finance organizations require a discount to buy your contract. You would save that amount plus make the interest and fees as additional profit on the sale.

3. Customer Loyalty:

When customers need your products or services, customer loyalty is much greater when they already have good established credit with you. A customer will come back to you rather than open another account somewhere else. This is especially true if they are concerned that they cannot establish another credit account.

With your monthly statements you communicate with your customer 12 times a year. You can place advertising into the statement envelopes and the cost is only time to stuff them.

An added bonus is that you are the one who calls your customer when they pay late.

You may have a great relationship with your finance company, and they may handle your customers just as you wish, but many retailers find that they lose customers that have been poorly treated by other outside financing companies.

You can develop much better customer relationships when your own personnel call for collections because you have a vested interest in them. Outside finance companies do not always care about your customer relationship.

Usually they do very little to help or accommodate your customer. It is very advisable to know the financial condition of your customers. Because you control the accounts you know when a customer is late paying. That gives an early warning to watch the account very closely.

Budgets Don’t Work

I don’t believe budgets work for the long run. We have our unique and different ways of doing budgets. Some of us allocate certain amounts for each expense category. Some go by envelop ideas such as putting money in different envelops for different expense categories, and spend money from these envelops based on circumstances. The problem with budgeting is that we usually stick to it for a couple of months and then get bored and get rid of it. Although I don’t believe in budgeting, I do believe in tracking expenses. Why and how you should track your expenses? Let’s talk about it.

Track Your Expenses

Tracking expenses gives you a visualization of where your money is exactly going. You need to know this to cut unnecessary expenses and increase your savings. You can do all sorts of calculations and thinking in your mind to figure out where your money is going – but the real picture may not be the same as your mind tries to depict. Don’t be surprised if you see a very different picture than what you had in your mind. Spending just a few dollars here and there daily can add up to a large amount at month’s end and tracking expenses will show you how powerful it can be to cut once-daily visit to your coffee shop. Tracking expenses will gradually help you make better decisions.

How long should you track your expenses?

How long should you track your expenses? It all depends. You can do it for three months, one year or for good. If you are looking to take immediate action on cutting unnecessary expenses, three months of tracking will give you a fair idea. If you want an in-depth financial picture, I would recommend tracking for four to six months. If you want to keep track of your changing patterns of spending behaviour and make adjustments accordingly to meet your financial goals, I would recommend tracking your expenses on a continuous basis.

Personal Finance Software

Now, here comes the main question – What financial software you should use to track your expenses? Personal finance software programs like Quicken and Microsoft Money are able to keep track of your spending. However, I recommend a simple and easy to use web-based program called Expensr. Expensr keeps track of your income and expenses and tells you where your money goes. It is very simple to use and let me describe some basics you need to know.

Sign up for a free account. On the main page, on the top left, you will see five tabs. These tabs are Home, Accounts, Analysis, Budget and Community. Accounts and Analysis tabs are the ones you will be using most. Enter all your income and spending daily under Account tab. You can create multiple categories to categorize you entries. Entering an item is easy, and you should be able to do it in a snap. Analysis tab shows how much you are spending in each category. You can view this either in a pie chart or in a bar graph. Charts or graphs show spending trends. Trends can be used to see how your spending behaviour has changed over time, and you make adjustments accordingly.

Expensr has many other features. I mainly use it to keep track of my spending and income, and to plot graphs to visualize my trends. If you are looking for simple, easy-to-use but powerful personal finance software, expensr is your answer.

NB – Expensr is now Moneystrands. Read my Personal Finance Software Review to find out more about financial software.

With competition at its peak in the market and the ever increasing amount of work pressure, outsourcing has secured its special position in the world of business. Several companies are now adapting the strategy of taking assistance from outsourcing. The purpose of hiring an outsourcing firm is sharing your workload and responsibilities. Now in almost every arena such as software, accounting and bookkeeping, the provision of outsourcing has largely simplified the entire work mechanism. Nobody neglect the fact that handling finance of any company irrespective of its size is a very crucial aspect.Maintenance of the accounts is a difficult job that demands proper attention and sincere commitment. And finance accounting outsourcing can be a powerful business tool.

The finance accounting outsourcing services are in great demand these days as most of the business houses are eager to make use of this strategy for better work efficiency and quick results. Growth rate shows considerable augmentation when a company takes the assistance from an outsourcing firm to manage their finances. Even a company running in loss can have the possibility of turning itself into a profitable firm with the appropriate guidance from the expert accounts of the finance accounting outsourcing organizations. Not only this helps you in managing your accounting in a more easy way but also allows you to take out time and concentrate on other important aspects of your business. This leads to a better execution and functioning of your entire organization.

The most beneficial aspect of hiring a finance accounting outsourcing services is one gets to save a lot on the financial expenditure as well as the time. It is highly recommended to opt for an outsourcing firm than employing the huge staff of accountants as you can avoid the heavy expenses of their salary and other allowances. However, you must follow certain rules and features before handling over your project to any outsourcing fir. A detailed inquiry about the firm’s reputation and credibility along with its performance can give you a clear picture about their work ideology. Secondly, be assured about the authenticity of the firm because you may need to share your private and confidential documents with the service providers.

The finance accounting outsourcing is not only responsible for maintaining the records of the transactions but also performs other finance related activities. Right from back-office services, general ledger, bookkeeping to tax computation and filing, data entry, spreadsheet and what not. Finance accounting outsourcing service providers assure you of receiving the best level of professionalism, accurateness, perfect sense of timing, and the most importantly the quality work. All the outsourcing companies are well recruited with qualified accountants who have witnessed years of experience in serving the best possible ways to ensure the upliftment of their clients. Hence, now you have a way to escape through your treacherous work schedule. These finance accounting firms are highly efficient and reliable enough to offer you a tension free environment. The experts completely understand the value of your confidential data and provide sincere level of security to avoid any sort of misuse.

I’m not an Economics Major! What do I need to know about Small Business Finance?


No, you don’t need to be an economics major, but you do need to understand the basics of small business finance and good financial management. And if you are an economics major, Great! You have a big head start.

Do you need a bunch of spreadsheets? Not today, but as you plan your business and it begins to grow, you’ll know how to use these! When you’re starting out, there are five basics areas where you need to learn as much as you can:

Bookkeeping:

In very simple terms you need to keep track of the money that comes in and the money that goes out. It may sound a simple, and it might be in the beginning, but you’re not starting this business to run for a month. Hopefully you’re starting this business to last for a long time.

It’s a very good idea to put a smart small business finance accounting system into place from the beginning, and get it set up to grow with your business. You will find a resource page below with some very good basic accounting systems that are affordable and easy to use for small business finance.

Credit and Collections:

You need to make sure you get paid for your product or service. How this happens can vary greatly based on the type of business you run. If you’re just starting out, you will probably not offer your customers credit terms, more likely it will be cash on delivery.

For this you need a payment tool that your customers trust (always look at your customer’s point of view first) and one that will allow you immediate access to your cash. There are many online payment tools and gateways, like PayPal.

One important note, it is an extremely smart idea to use a payment tool or gateway that also offers you the ability to download transaction details into your accounting package. This saves you loads of time manually entering information into your small business finance software package, and has many additional upside advantages.

Cash Flow:

This is where most people have problems with small business finance, and the largest reason for business failures. Let me explain it this way.

Can a profitable business fail? … YES, and many do! Always Remember – Cash is KING!

You must have enough cash coming in to pay your expenses. In the beginning this will be from your own pocket or from your small business finance loan or credit facilities. But eventually, and in most cases sooner rather than later, the start-up funding will run out. You need to be focusing on cash flow from Day ZERO, and eventually when the business is running on its own income you can focus more and more on profitability.

Purchasing:

You will need to buy things for your business. In the beginning it’s important to focus on how you pay for these items. If you’re using your credit card, no problem, but watch the finance charges. Try and keep the outstanding balance on your card down to a minimum.

If your making most of your purchases online, then find a good payment tool or gateway that you can use to pay for purchases while at the same time collecting money from your customers.

Financial Analysis:

Don’t worry, this is not a huge issue in the beginning, because if you’re like most new businesses there will be very little to analyze.

But keep in mind; this will become more and more important as your business begins to grow and you have less and less time to dedicate to finance. You will need to again select an accounting package that can grow and expand with your business giving you easy reports to understand.

In the beginning you really just need the ability to watch your finances and do short range forecasts of your cash flow. Most accounting packages have this as a basic part of the package, if not; keep looking for a system that offers this from the beginning.

Get the Small Business Finance Basics right, and the rest will follow with much greater ease. Ignore the basics, or do them wrong, and you’re asking for problems later on that will distract you from your main function as a business owner which is finding and keeping customers!

While most American are aware of the existence of womens business grants, what few are privy to, is the fact that small grants for women are also available to qualifying female applicants. Not every gal who is in need of financial assistance is required to be a person who is active in the business world. There are numerous free government money programs designed for women who possess monetary needs that are smaller and of a more personal nature.

There are small grants for women who need immediate cash assistance available everyday…

For ladies, particularly mothers, who are suffering from the immediate dangers of homelessness, hunger, lack of medical care fro themselves or their children, there are government financial aid programs that can be of immediate assistance to them. There are small grants for women who need immediate cash for rent, utilities, food and medical care that can be received within just a few hours of completing the application process.

Small grants for women who need day care funding are also readily available…

Even if you are not quite in the position to need emergency financial assistance, and are for the most part economically stable in your household finances, every working woman with children is in need of day care services. The United States government will also provide ladies with children with generous cash awards to help them afford quality child care services in the facilities of their choice.

Whether the cash award is large or small, grants for women are free money that you never pay back…

These are only a few of the fabulous free grant opportunities available to American women today. There are many more, and all of them require no repayment. This is free money that is allocated by the United States government yearly, to American taxpayers who need it. A free cash gift that qualified applicants will never be responsible for repaying.

All of the American female population is encouraged to explore their opportunities in free government money. Small grants, for women, can make a great difference in your quality of life, and your children’s.