MANAGE CASH FLOW AND YOUR DEBTORS

WITH BIZ SKILLS BUSINESS BASICS COURSES

Cash is King for many successful businesses. Therefore, your business needs effective systems in place to deal with outstanding customer debt and cash flow. Managing your debtors is one of the important ways to regulate cash flow. By improving the efficiency of turning receivables into cash you will stay ahead of the game. Biz Skills Business Basics will help you achieve that goal.

Is your ledger balance too high?

If your debtors ledger is carrying 2, 3 or more times your average monthly sales then you need to watch this 5 minute video

You could reduce your ledger balance by over 50% and this video demonstrates how it can happen

The result you will get:

• decrease the outstanding customer debt
• boost business profit
• lessen the risk of unpaid customer invoices
• lower the risk of writing off a sale
• cut the time spent in collection activities
• reduce your stress levels
• increase cash receipt recovery

 14 Things you can do to Reduce the Risk of a Customer not Paying

1.  Give no more customer credit than your business can afford.

2.  Don’t give credit by default – if they don’t ask for it, don’t give it.

3.  Don’t give ‘one-off sale’ customers credit.   

4.  Be alert for customers who have no intentions of paying in the first place. 

5.  Ask for a deposit before buying appliances or equipment, particularly if the goods are non-returnable or need to be paid by COD.  

6.  Give all customers who ask for customer credit an application and assess it thoroughly for creditworthiness.

7.  Don’t just rely on a credit agency report to monitor outstanding customer debt. 

8.  Follow an Overdue Invoice Strategy and train your customers to pay by due date.

9.  Phone within a couple of days after invoice-due-date to identify customers with cash flow problems.

10. Place a customer with cash flow problems on stop credit, don’t make the problem any worse for you or the customer.

11. Make sure the customer is advised, understands and acknowledges your terms of trade of their customer credit before you open an account for them. 

12. Constantly monitor credit account customers for cash flow problems. 

13. Follow up overdue accounts consistently, preferably weekly.  

14. Set up a proactive Debtor’s Ledger Management system to control customer debt.