Here are 4 tips to get invoices paid faster – some simple changes you can make to your invoice so it is easier for your customers to pay you

Make sure you include a reference number

Often customers will provide the business with a purchase order.  Or you and the customer have another reference number like a job reference, agreement number, booking number etc.

But quite frequently this reference number is not quoted on your invoice because your accounting / sales system does not handle this

Leaving this reference number off your invoice will slow down the payment process, especially when you are dealing with big business and government departments.  They rely on that number to track down who approved the product / service in the first place.  Without it, the whole payment approval process slows down.

To get paid quicker, make sure the agreed reference number is quoted on all your invoices.

Make sure your invoice is in a format that helps the customer pay

Sometimes this is as simple as the product / service name.  The customer has ordered a “widget” but your accounting / sales system calls it a “wodget”.  Or even worse, your system calls it “14538X34ZT” with a meaningless description.  The customer gets the invoice and the payment process slows down whilst someone confirms the “wodget” or the “14538X34ZT” on your invoice is the same as the “widget” they wanted.

Other times it is a bit more complicated.  You are dealing with a big business and your product goes to multiple departments.  If you send one total invoice, no one is going to approve it as they do not know what the other departments received.  Rather than having one big invoice, create an invoice for each department.  That way if someone is on leave, only their payment is slowed down, not the whole payment.

Often it pays to ask the customer, especially on major sales, what they want to see on their invoice.  And if your accounting / sales system can’t do, pay someone to prepare an invoice outside the system with all the right information.

Don’t send out wrong invoices

I have lost count of how many times I have seen an invoice and the details are wrong.  Wrong company name is the most common.

You need to get the basic details right, otherwise they start questioning the whole invoice.  Or they just return it to you to fix it and this slows down the payment of your invoice.

Put an actual due date

I often see invoiced with payment terms “Due 30 Days” and there is no due date.  Let’s take the example of where the manager sits on the invoice for 25 days and finally approves it.  It goes to the accounts payable person who sees due date 30 days and they start the count from the day they get it.

Instead put an actual due date.  That way when the accounts payable person gets it on day 25 and it has been approved, they generally are not going to wait another 30 days to pay it.

The message here is if you want invoices paid faster, make it easier for your customer to get the invoice approved and in front of the accounts payable person so they can process the payment.

Contact Wayne on wayne@arealcfo.com.au or 0412 227 052.

Click on the below buttons to access free Resources developed by Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO to help your business scale and grow profitably

Want a confidential discussion on your business situation, help with your grant application or to learn more about my Outsourced CFO Services, simply email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052

Today I want to talk about the benefits of forecasting for your business.

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working with many businesses helping them put down on paper their business projections for the new financial year.

From the business owner’s ideas of revenue for the next 12 months, I help them formulate resource plans to deliver that revenue. 

The benefits to the business owner of doing this include:

• They are starting to plan now for future resource requirements such as staffing.
• They can see any cash pinch points early, allowing them to start to formulate action plans now before any cash pinch point adversely impacts the business.
• They can evaluate different scenarios to see if there are other ways to achieve the same (or better) business result.
• They can formulate back up plans if revenue and resource assumptions are proved to wrong (and we all know you never guess the future 100% accurately).

Effectively the business owner is now on the front foot and can start to pro-actively plan for their future.

If you want help to be on the front foot and pro-actively plan for the future of your business, reach out to me. 

Wayne Wanders is an experienced Business Advisor and Outsourced CFO who can help to scale and grow your business profitably. Wayne may also be able to assist you in preparing your budget or forecast 

Contact Wayne on wayne@arealcfo.com.au or 0412 227 052.

Click on the below buttons to access other free Resources developed by Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO to help your business scale and grow profitably

And Wayne is always posting about new grants, funding options and other resources on LinkedIn that can help your business scale and grow profitably.  Click on the below links and connect with Wayne or follow A Real CFO on LinkedIn.

Want a confidential discussion on your business situation, help with your grant application or to learn more about my Outsourced CFO Services, simply email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052

Welcome to my series on how successful businesses scale and grow profitably.

This video is around How fast can your business afford to grow. It looks at your cash conversion cycle and how this could be adversely impacting your business growth

There are a number of other videos in this series on how successful businesses scale and grow profitably.  Click here to see the other videos

Wayne Wanders is an experienced Business Advisor and Outsourced CFO who can help to scale and grow your business profitably. Wayne may also be able to assist you in preparing any grant application. 

Contact Wayne on wayne@arealcfo.com.au or 0412 227 052.

Click on the below buttons to access other free Resources developed by Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO to help your business scale and grow profitably

And Wayne is always posting about new grants, funding options and other resources on LinkedIn that can help your business scale and grow profitably.  Click on the below links and connect with Wayne or follow A Real CFO on LinkedIn.

Want a confidential discussion on your business situation, help with your grant application or to learn more about my Outsourced CFO Services, simply email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052

Let me ask you a question.  Think back to the last time you got a product or service that was not 100% of what you ordered, or was delivered / provided late.

What did you do when it came time to pay for that?  Did you rush and pay the supplier, or did you drag your heels and pay the supplier later?

If you are like many people I talk too, you delayed paying the supplier.

And what if that supplier was you? 

Your cash flow is being adversely impacted because of mistakes your business is making.

And the typical mistake I see business make is that what they promised or sold is not what they delivered.

Maybe you sold an apple and delivered an orange.  Maybe your customer thought they were getting a green granny smith apple and you delivered a red delicious apple.  Or maybe you delivered an apple with a worm in it.

And what compounds this, is that rarely does the business know it is making a mistake.  It just assumes that the customer is a slow payer and no one asks the customer why they are paying late.

What you need to do is ask the customer why they are paying late.  They may have genuine cash flow issues, but maybe they are paying late because of a problem in your sales / delivery process.

And if they had a problem, maybe other customers are experiencing the same problem.

Imagine the change you could make in your business, if you knew about the problem and took steps to fix it.

Not only would your customers pay you faster, improving your cash flow, but more importantly, satisfied customers are more likely to buy again from you.  Therefore, increasing both revenue and cash flow in the future.

That leaves me with one last question for you.  Are you missing out on cash because of mistakes in your sales / delivery processes that you don’t know about?

Wayne Wanders is an experienced Business Advisor skilled in analysing business financial performance and cash flow.  Contact Wayne below for a free no obligation session.

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Contact Wayne Wanders for your FREE Business Survival Session

To ensure I help your business specifically, the best approach I have found is to have an obligation free session with you. In this session we will review your current business in a factual and objective manner, to better understand the challenges that you face. And this session does not need to be face to face.

At the end of this session, you will have multiple ideas on how your business can survive and thrive in these uncertain times.

Simply fill in the contact form below or email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052 to organise one of these obligation free sessions.

To get help you successfully navigate your way through your financial challenges so your business can survive and thrive in these uncertain times, simply use the contact form on the left to email Wayne or call him on 0412 227 052.

We promise to keep your email address safe.

Let Wayne Wanders, the Wealth Navigator, a fully qualified and experienced CFO, help you successfully navigate your way through your financial challenges to grow your business profitably faster.

Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO

The Wealth Navigator

wayne@aRealCFO.com.au

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I see many businesses that just take the invoice that their accounting / sales system produces and send these out to their customers.

But often this is not the best thing to do as it can make it hard for the customer to pay you quickly. 

Here are 4 changes I recommend that you make to your invoices to help your business get paid quicker.

Make sure you include a reference number

Often customers will provide the business with a purchase order.  Or you and the customer have another reference number like a job reference, agreement number, booking number etc.

But quite frequently this reference number is not quoted on your invoice because your accounting / sales system does not handle this.

Leaving this reference number off your invoice will slow down the payment process, especially when you are dealing with big business and government departments.  They rely on that number to track down who approved the product / service in the first place.  Without it, the whole payment approval process slows down.

To get paid quicker, make sure the agreed reference number is quoted on all your invoices.

Make sure your invoice is in a format that helps the customer pay

Sometimes this is as simple as the product / service name.  The customer has ordered a “widget” but your accounting / sales system calls it a “wodget”.  Or even worse, your system calls it “14538X34ZT” with a meaningless description.  The customer gets the invoice and the payment process slows down whilst someone confirms the “wodget” or the “14538X34ZT” on your invoice is the same as the “widget” they wanted.

Other times it is a bit more complicated.  You are dealing with a big business and your product goes to multiple departments.  If you send one total invoice, no one is going to approve it as they do not know what the other departments received.  Rather than having one big invoice, create an invoice for each department.  That way if someone is on leave, only their payment is slowed down, not the whole payment.

Often it pays to ask the customer, especially on major sales, what they want to see on their invoice.  And if your accounting / sales system can’t do, pay someone to prepare an invoice outside the system with all the right information.

Don’t send out wrong invoices

I have lost count of how many times I have seen an invoice and the details are wrong.  Wrong company name is the most common.

You need to get the basic details right, otherwise they start questioning the whole invoice.  Or they just return it to you to fix it and this slows down the payment of your invoice.

Put an actual due date

I often see invoiced with payment terms “Due 30 Days” and there is no due date.  Let’s take the example of where the manager sits on the invoice for 25 days and finally approves it.  It goes to the accounts payable person who sees due date 30 days and they start the count from the day they get it.

Instead put an actual due date.  That way when the accounts payable person gets it on day 25 and it has been approved, they generally are not going to wait another 30 days to pay it.

The message here is if you want to get paid quicker, make it easier for your customer to get the invoice approved and in front of the accounts payable person so they can process the payment.

If you like this, why not share this with a friend, simply click on one of the icons to the left or below

If you want to see how Wayne can help you successfully navigate your way through your financial challenges to grow your business profitably faster,

Contact Wayne and arrange a free, no obligation Discovery Session.  At the end of this Discovery Session, you will have multiple ideas on how to grow your business profitably faster.

To get Wayne to help you successfully navigate your way through your financial challenges to grow your business profitably faster, simply use the contact form on the left to email Wayne or call him on 0412 227 052.

We promise to keep your email address safe.

Let Wayne Wanders, the Wealth Navigator, a fully qualified and experienced CFO, help you successfully navigate your way through your financial challenges to grow your business profitably faster.

Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO

The Wealth Navigator

wayne@aRealCFO.com.au

If you like this, why not share this with a friend, simply click on one of the icons to the left or below

To me, the balance sheet allows you to work out one of the key pieces of information about your business.  This is what I call your Free Cash.

Free Cash is your bank balance plus debtors / accounts receivable, less money you owe including:

• creditors / accounts payable,
• unpaid superannuation,
• unpaid PAYG staff income tax,
• unpaid GST
• unpaid income tax.

If your free cash is negative, this means that to pay your bills, in the absence of any debt facilities, you effectively need next week sales to pay for last week’s bills.  So, if your sales drops next week for any reason, you may struggle to pay last week’s bills.  If this is your business, you need to implement a strategy of how to improve your Free Cash balance.

If you free cash is positive, this is an indication that there may be more cash that you can take out of the business.

And to me, understanding your Free Cash is one of the key reasons to look at your balance sheet.  And if your balance sheet is not accurate, you can not accurately determine your free cash.

If you want a confidential discussion on your business situation, or help to increase your free cash me below.

Contact Wayne Wanders for your FREE Business Survival Session

This Thursday 10 February 2022 at 12.00pm I am presenting a webinar for business owners on “Why you keep running out of cash”

If you are interested click here to be taken to the registration page.

If you want some help to manage your business cash flow, contact me below.

Contact Wayne Wanders for your FREE Business Survival Session

At the end of this session, you will have multiple ideas on how your business can survive and thrive in these uncertain times.

Simply fill in the contact form below or email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052 to organise one of these obligation free sessions.

Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO

wayne@aRealCFO.com.au

Business owners often ask me about how to understand where their cash is going.  And today I am going to show you a quick and simple cash flow report you can run in Xero to see exactly what is happening with your cash.

If you want help with your cash flow, contact me below

Contact Wayne Wanders for your FREE Business Survival Session

At the end of this session, you will have multiple ideas on how your business can survive and thrive in these uncertain times.

Simply fill in the contact form below or email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052 to organise one of these obligation free sessions.

Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO

wayne@aRealCFO.com.au

Today I want to talk about the benefits of forecasting for your business.

Transcript

Over the past couple of weeks, I have been working with many businesses helping them put down on paper their business projections for the new financial year.

From the business owner’s ideas of revenue for the next 12 months, I help them formulate resource plans to deliver that revenue.

The benefits to the business owner of doing this include:

• They are starting to plan now for future resource requirements such as staffing.
• They can see any cash pinch points early, allowing them to start to formulate action plans now before any cash pinch point adversely impacts the business.
• They can evaluate different scenarios to see if there are other ways to achieve the same (or better) business result.
• They can formulate back up plans if revenue and resource assumptions are proved to wrong (and we all know you never guess the future 100% accurately).

Effectively the business owner is now on the front foot and can start to pro-actively plan for their future.

If you want help to be on the front foot and pro-actively plan for the future of your business, contact me below.

Contact Wayne Wanders for your FREE Business Survival Session

At the end of this session, you will have multiple ideas on how your business can survive and thrive in these uncertain times.

Simply fill in the contact form below or email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052 to organise one of these obligation free sessions.

Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO

wayne@aRealCFO.com.au

If you do have a ATO debt, now is a great time to negotiate a repayment plan over this debt. 

Why?

Firstly, the ATO is currently willing to agree to some long repayment plans.  Recently, I heard of a payment plan extending for over 4 years.   This allows you to spread your repayments over an extended time frame.  If you leave this too long, these longer time frames may not be available.

Secondly, the ATO is usually the biggest creditor of a small business.  Having a written repayment plan with the ATO reduces the risk you could be trading insolvent on 1 January 2021, when the temporary insolvent trading protection expires.

Thirdly, compliance with a written repayment plan with the ATO, usually means that the ATO will not take action against the company or the directors to recover the debt. 

What should you do before you enter into a repayment plan over your ATO Debt?

Clearly, the best outcome is for the business to meet its payment obligations under the repayment plan. 

So, before you agree to a repayment plan over your ATO debt, you need to understand what you can afford to pay over what time frame.  And the only way to do this is by having a cashflow forecast. 

Without a cashflow forecast you are flying blind and may have set yourself up for continued breaches of the repayment plan.  And these breaches may result the ATO taking recovery action against the company or against the directors personally by issuing a director penalty notice.

This director penalty notice may mean, you, as a director are now personally responsible for the debts of the business.  And it gets worse.  The ATO has no obligation to recover money under a director penalty notice evenly across all directors.  For example, if there are four directors of a company that owes the ATO $100,000.  Three rent and the other owns a house.  The ATO can chase the director who owns the house and attempt to recover all of the $100,000 from them and nothing from the other directors.

How can I help you with your cashflow forecast and the potential ATO debt repayment plan?

I have developed, reviewed and updated thousands of cash flow forecasts over the past 20 years.  This has included cashflow forecasts that allowed businesses to successfully meet extended payment plans to the ATO from tax debts incurred during the GFC.

I am happy to spend an hour of my time at no cost to you, to learn more about your business and its current circumstances.  From this I can give you a fixed price quote to develop or review a cash flow forecast and the associated potential ATO repayment plan.

If you want to take up this offer, just contact me below.

Contact Wayne Wanders for your FREE Business Survival Session

At the end of this session, you will have multiple ideas on how your business can survive and thrive in these uncertain times.

Simply fill in the contact form below or email me at wayne@aRealCFO.com.au or call me on 0412 227 052 to organise one of these obligation free sessions.

Wayne Wanders, A Real CFO

wayne@aRealCFO.com.au