Monday, October 5, 2009

Financial Control For Small Businesses

Financial controls provide the basis for sound management and allow you to determine how well your business is doing and what you may need to do to improve it's financial viability...

Building a business involves more than just a good business idea. You should also have some understanding of the factors that will spell success and how they interact. Below are just a few of these factors.

Your Financial Pulse

Having your finger on the “financial pulse” of the business is one of the cornerstones of success. Financial controls provide accurate information, which will help you make strategic financial decisions and point the way forward from a financial management point of view. All too often financial controls are left in the hands of junior or inexperienced staff members or. Worse still, given to staff members who are already overextended with their current workload. For example: A receptionist who has to manage a busy switchboard, as well as deal with client A, won't have the time to follow up with debtors who have fallen behind in their payments.

Financial controls imperative in business include a management budget, business expense report, cash flow analysis, profitability report, the debtor and creditor age analysis and stock control systems. It is also important to put guidelines in place for all financial controls. These would include operating procedures, service level agreements, figure variables, etc. The need for financial controls may seem obvious, but all too often small businesses have no checks and balances in place. In the absence of these financial controls, you run the risk of losing tough with the current financial state of your business, which then makes theft or fraud possible. In extreme cases, businesses can be lost when funds are drained from the operation without anyone picking up on it. If you had been on top of things and had put the correct measures in place, the theft could have been detected and action taken. Remember that all employees responsible for the implementation and management of financial controls need to be audited on a regular basis.

Gross Profit And Nett Profit

The importance of keeping an eye on the current profitability of your business can't be emphasized enough. It is the profitability of the business and not the turnover that will determine it's future viability. Gross profit is generally referred to as what is left over after you have subtracted your cost of sales from your turnover. Nett profit is what is left after subtracting your business expenses from gross profit. Business owners often mistakenly either leave out the cost of their stock purchases or cost of their personal expenses (salary)from their gross profit and nett profit calculations. However, if the business owner omitted stock purchases and the personal expenses from their gross profit and nett profit calculations, the picture would look very different. Remember to visit my site and receive more advice http://hop.clickbank.net/?phm42.browser

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