Five financial tools to keep the finances of your small business running efficiently

Managing a small business is a complex endeavor that only passionate people can dare to undertake. A small business owner has to wear many hats, especially in managing sales, customers, workers, partners, and personal life at the same time. Keeping the finances of a small business running efficiently is one task that business owners cannot afford to outsource or delegate completely because finances is the lifeblood of the business.

However, managing the finances of a small business is fundamentally complex because there are so many balls that you must juggle at the same time. Nonetheless, the right tools can help you manage your business finances more efficiently without ignoring other important parts of the business. This article offers brief insights on some tools you can utilize to manage your business finances more efficiently.

1. Accounting tools

Keeping proper accounts is an important part of managing a small business, but the accounts of a small business can become confusing pretty fast if you don’t have a background in finances. In fact, many small business owners need help knowing where their personal finances end and where their business finances begin. Accounting solution such as QuickBooks have proven invaluable for small business accounting. If you need something leaner and flexible, you may want to try an online solution such a Xero to manage your accounting.

2. Payroll management tools

Once you moved up from being a sole proprietorship to become a small business owner, you’ll start having to manage other people other than yourself alone. However, many small business owners who don’t have a background in HR tend to see payroll management as a time consuming process. Tools such as Zenefits and ZenPayroll can help you make your payroll system more efficient so that you stress less time sweating the details. It would also be nice to find a payroll management tool that can calculate necessary payroll taxes.

3. Access to financing

All small businesses need periodic cash injections in order to stay afloat in times of cash crunch and take advantages of opportunities that surface in their markets. Unfortunately, traditional financial institutions tend to move too slow in processing financing applications such that you don’t get the funds in good time. Small business owners might want to consider building up business relationships and credit histories with online lending platforms such as ondeck or other similar offerings. However, reading one of multiple ondeck reviews can help you evaluate the service of such companies so you can find it easier to make educated decisions.

4. Proactive billing

Many small businesses suffer regular cash crunches because their billing process is messed up. You can activate speed in your billing by starting with proactive quoting software that ingrates with your CRM. Using billing tools instead of sending manual invoices makes it easy to know how far each new client is in your billing cycle so that you can make accurate financial projections. An efficient billing process is the process makes it easy for customers to pay and process your invoices. You may want to ensure that your billing product is readily accessible, maybe cloud-based so that you can shorten your billing process and improve cash cycles significantly.

5. Tracking expenses

Expenses are an important part of running a small business, you’ll have a number of core operational expenses and an even higher number of non-core but important expenses. You’ll spend money on cabs, gas, coffee with potential clients, and sending holiday gifts. Those seemingly minor expenses can pile up and leave a big hole in your finances.  Expense reporting tools such as Xpenditure can be useful to noting expenses especially if your employees make expenses on behalf of your business.Bottom of Form