Make 2013 a golden year for your business by setting some solid financial resolutions. Here are eight great strategies to consider:
Mission control. Get a simple mission statement or tagline to drive you in 2013. It sharpens the mind and ensures you focus on the right things. Then set your budget allocations to match things that meet this mission statement, and get rid of those things that don’t. Focus your money into the right places.
Financial goal. Set a financial target for the end of 2013 and where you want to be. Helps focus on how to get there.
Simplify your focus. Out with the not working, and focus on your core winners. You can’t do everything, start choosing. Invest your money accordingly.
Research & Development. There’s new regulation this year. Get across it and apply for the tax break, it can be massive. There are experts that can help you do the admin side and know it all backwards. Make sure you negotiate to pay them after you receive the refund cheque from the tax office. That way there’s no cash outlay at all for going through it.
High interest savings accounts. Run two accounts, one with day to day spend needs which you keep to the minimum level of funds needed, and a second high interest one for the rest of your cash. Set up so easy to switch between the two. Can cherry pick by using a different bank for the high interest account.
Payment terms. Xero research found that if you want to be paid within 30 days, set payment terms at less than 14 days, because people tend to pay two weeks late. Mozo has gone with 10 days as standard now.
Cut costs with cloud. Accounting, documents, tracking solutions, analytics, technology servers, can all be done this way now. There’s no need to own any physical hardware or software any more. It’s cheaper. More scalable. More reliable. More updatable.
Finding funds. Do you have enough money to do what you want to do in 2013? If not, start a plan immediately to get that money. It takes longer than you think. There’s plenty of options to get this depending on what stage your business is at: private investors, incubators, venture capital firms, and if you have solid earnings flow already, perhaps banks and other financing companies.
