Top Accounting Tips To Ensure Positive Cashflow Before Christmas Break

It’s hard to believe, looking back over the past 12 months, some of things we have done and achieved.

We find this time of year, whilst busy as we head towards our break, is an important time to reflect.

When reflecting, we should always appreciate and celebrate our successes. In our fast-paced world, we all have now become accustomed to, we tend to breeze past the things we have done well, our successes and how we have helped others in our various businesses. And we can’t forget to celebrate our own staff, and their accomplishments for the year. In a dynamic, economic environment like we have right now, all staff are representatives of your business and help your clients and customers.

This leads us to think about our wider economic climate, and what’s in store for all of our business owners in 2024. We all know after the relentless interest rate rises of the last 18 months, that things have become harder for everyone. This seems like it will be the new normal for at least the next 12 months, so rather than sitting back and complaining about what is happening to us all, we need to look at how we can best manage our businesses under the new economic conditions. This may require a pivot on products and services for some, and it may mean a cost review and pricing review for others. Either way, thinking business as usual will rarely work for most of us.

Rather than seeing this as an insurmountable problem, we can change the lens and see this as an opportunity to spend time looking at our businesses, and also deciding if we are getting what we want from it. This can be done by asking questions such as: have we got the right people on the bus, is our strategy still fit for purpose, can we do things differently? Doing this and seeing this as an opportunity, will hopefully fill you full of positive energy and propel you to start the New Year with a fire in your belly, rather than that dread of getting back into things when the holidays are over.

To help you be best prepared for the Christmas break, adequate cash flow is the most important pre-Christmas requirement to allow for a stress-free break. There are many things you can do to make this happen, and we have listed these below. The key part of this, is it all starts NOW, not on the 22nd of December.

• Follow up on any debts outside of your trading terms now, with phone calls and get commitments on payments;
• Send out Debtor follow-up more frequently in the coming weeks.
• Try to organise prepayment for work to be undertaken in January, giving yourself a pipeline of work when staff return to work.
• Contact your bank to ensure you have access to available credit if needed over the break.
• Invoice earlier or part Invoice for work that won’t be completely finished.
• Don’t over order, order just enough to get through the break.
• No additional expenditure on items not required.
• Forecast your cash flow and look at your expected balance to the end of January.

Finally, we would like to wish all of you a very safe and fun-filled Christmas with all of your friends, family and colleagues. Take time to relax, refresh and reset your thoughts for the year ahead, and come back reframed and ready to go.