How To Separate Personal & Business Finances

No matter what industry you’re in, money is the great unifier among small business owners. Whether you’re spending it, trying to keep track of it, or (hopefully) making it, money is always on your mind. And there are a few things every business owner needs to do in order to manage your money the right way—but nothing’s more important than separating your business and personal finances.

Sure, you could keep your business and personal finances together. You couldalso stick your hand in the oven to pull out a tray of brownies without an oven mitt. But, as you know, there’s a big difference between “could” and “should.”

Why should you be concerned about keeping your business and personal finances separate? Legal liability, easy bookkeeping, and good financial hygiene—both for you and your business alike. Establishing a financial firewall between you and your business (even if your business is just you on your own!) is pivotal for your own protection and sanity come tax time. And, above all, seriously important for protecting your personal assets.

How To Write Effective Invoice

An invoice is a commercial document issued by businesses to indicate a transaction, and request payment for the product or service provided. In today’s business world, there are certain expectations around how we talk about money. An invoice is a powerful communication tool that ensures payment in a timely manner, and also makes a good impression on clients, setting the stage for long-term relationships. This invoice template guide will discuss everything you need to know about invoicing, and why it’s important to get it right.

THE POWER OF A PROFESSIONAL INVOICE

Accurate billing is extremely important for anyone running a business. It can be the difference between building trust and doing more business with your customer, and leaving them with a bad impression because a small detail was left out, or misrepresented. Business owners who provide detailed, prompt invoices straight to the customer’s inbox come out way ahead in the credibility stakes. Here’s our tips on creating a professional invoice that builds trust with your customers:

Why Hiring Interns Can Benefit Your Business

Your company will benefit from an internship program if it’s a priority for your business, structured, and provides students with the supervision they need to be successful. By also providing adequate training before the program begins or hosting an intern orientation, you’ll see even better results. The more resources your company is willing to put toward the internship program, the better it will be. The better the internship program, the more competitive it will be. And the more competitive the program, the stronger the applicant pool.

If you have a great program, you’ll attract great students.

Fresh Perspective

Drawing perspective from anyone outside of your industry, team, or day-to-day operations often courts surprising inspiration. Properly-executed internship programs are no exception. Bringing in students who don’t see your company from the inside every day opens up an opportunity for fresh perspectives on your business, strategies, and plans. To maximize these potential benefits, make sure to include interns in brainstorming sessions and encourage them to speak up in meetings. Attending brainstorms is often a favorite among interns, so it’s a win-win for both parties.

What Is UPI & How It Can Benefit Your Business

The Unified Payment Interface (UPI) can be thought of like an email ID for your money. It will be an unique identifier that your bank uses to transfer money and make payments using the IMPS (Immediate Payments Service). IMPS is faster than NEFT and lets you transfer money immediately and unlike NEFT, it works 24×7. This means that the online payments will become much easier without requiring a digital wallet or credit or debit card.

Currently, if you want to make a bank payment online, you have to enter their account number, account type, Bank name and IFSC code. Even if you have all these details, typing it all in, particularly on a phone, is a painful process. Most banks take upto 12 hours to add a new payee and only then you can make the transfer.

The idea behind the UPI is to do away with all of this. The interface will allow account holders across banks to send and receive money from their smartphones using just their Aadhaar unique identity number, mobile phone number or virtual payments address without entering bank account details.

According to NPCI, so far only 29 banks have agreed to start this service. If your bank is UPI-enabled, you can ask it to connect you to the system. To initiate a transaction, you can use two types of address—global or local. Global address includes your mobile, Aadhaar and bank account numbers. A local address can be a virtual address. Let’s say your bank gives you a virtual ID similar to your email ID (for instance, name@companyname). This virtual address will allow you to send and receive money from multiple banks and prepaid payment issuers.

Tip To Manage Healthy Cashflow In Your Business

Trying to run a business without managing cash flow is like trying to paddle a boat without an oar. Even if you succeed, it will be an upstream exercise guaranteed to wear you out.

Cash flow is important for all businesses, but it is critical for early startups. If you cannot manage your cash flow within the first year, you will likely not survive the second year.

The three key elements of your cash flow analysis include:

  • Accounts receivable: What customers and clients owe you.
  • Accounts payable: What you owe your suppliers.
  • Shortfalls: You hope not to have these, but they do happen (see #3).

You must effectively manage all three if you want to navigate your business to success. Of course, the best direction to paddle a canoe is with the current. You’ll go faster and won’t wear yourself out. By the same token, your business will be healthier if you manage your cash flow toward the profit line. Here are a few tips to help you row your cash flow boat successfully:

1. Determine Your Breakeven Point

You should know when your business will become profitable, not because it will affect your cash flow — because it won’t — but because it gives you an early goal to strive for and a ready-made target for projecting future cash flow. Negative cash flow and negative profits make for a grim combination. Focus your efforts on managing your cash flow with an eye toward reaching that moment when you realize your first profits.

2. Focus on Cash Flow Management, not Profits

This may sound contradictory to #1, but it’s not. Use your breakeven point as a benchmark. After you reach breakeven and your business is profitable, you still need to manage your cash flow, of course. You have reached another stage of your business’s life.

How To Future-Proof Your Business

Last weekend, I wanted to watch a movie with my family. My wife was constantly asking me if I booked the tickets. I took my phone out from the pocket, opened the BookMyShow app and booked the tickets in few minutes. As I avoid driving during rush hours, I also booked a cab with couple of more clicks. Weekend is also when we need to stock up the grocery. So, opened the BigBasket app and ordered regular household stuff in less than 10 minutes.

What seems to be a normal behaviour today was not even a distant dream just 2 yrs back. Things have changed dramatically and it not only affected my behaviour as a customer, it caused an significant impact on the businesses as well.

Lot of business had to either change the way they work or shut down due to these fast changing environment. This brings us to an important question – Can we future proof our business? Can we increase the chances of business survival?

We can’t predict the future but we can definitely prepare our business to face unforeseen challenges. Here is a list of 8 strategies that can help you to future proof your business.

Why Visionary Leadership Fails

Building the right culture within their team and setting strategic direction that’s aligned to that of the organisation is vital for a leader to ensure the success of their team. However as the research in a recent HBR article (Why Visionary Leadership Fails, Nufer Yasin Ates et al, 28 Feb 2019),  indicates the strategic alignment of leaders at all levels across the organisation cannot and therefore should not be assumed as a given.

All too often we see large organisations going through restructure after restructure. A change is made, it does not work and so we try again. However is it the change itself that is the problem or the commitment to that change? We know that a lack of decision in business can be highly damaging, delaying progress and delivery to our customers, however what’s so often more detrimental is when decisions are made but then there is a lack of commitment to their outcomes. This is more often than not because key players – at all levels – were not involved in those decisions in the first place. Without input from our colleagues we cannot possibly expect commitment. Gone are the days of the top down approach. We must listen to our customer, and leaders must not forget that your customers are those who you lead.

The 5 Things All Great Salespeople Do

Early in my sales career, there was a day when my boss watched me in action. I was a little nervous, but I still felt confident that I wouldn’t disappoint. Unfortunately, that’s not exactly what happened.

Without hesitation, he let me know that he felt I was just “sailing” by. It was enough to survive, but it wouldn’t make me successful.

That struck me to my core. I didn’t want to be good enough to survive. I wanted to be so great at sales that I put my competition to shame.

After that honest conversation, I took the time for some self-reflection to see where I could improve. I also did some research and asked other successful salespeople how they gained their competitive edge. It took some time — along with some trial and error — but I eventually came to the conclusion that great salespeople do the following five things.

I personally feel that this is one of the most important elements of success — whether that’s in sales or launching your own business. When you’re prepared, you’re better suited to handle every question, obstacle, or rejection thrown your way.

Of course, you can’t anticipate literally every setback. But you can start by jotting down a list of every question, obstacle, or rejection that you believe prospects will have. In other words, create a list of every worst-case scenario you can think of. Then, develop a clear, convincing response to every objection or question.

Understanding Inventory Control

Inventory management is a systematic approach to obtaining, storing, and profiting from non-capital assets (raw materials and finished goods). The right stock, at the right levels, in the right place, at the right time, and at the right cost.

Entrepreneurs, founders, and independent brands now live in a native commerce world where small-to-medium businesses compete against global conglomerates.

We’ve put together this definitive guide to inventory management to level the playing field and help you grow your brand with speed, scalability, and smart insights. You’ll find everything you need from inventory control basics to best practices and formulas to advanced automation processes.

Reclaim Your Creative Confidence

Most people are born creative. As children, we revel in imaginary play, ask outlandish questions, draw blobs and call them dinosaurs. But over time, because of socialization and formal education, a lot of us start to stifle those impulses. We learn to be warier of judgment, more cautious, more analytical. The world seems to divide into “creatives” and “noncreatives,” and too many people consciously or unconsciously resign themselves to the latter category.

And yet we know that creativity is essential to success in any discipline or industry. According to a recent IBM survey of chief executives around the world, it’s the most sought-after trait in leaders today. No one can deny that creative thinking has enabled the rise and continued success of countless companies, from start-ups like Facebook and Google to stalwarts like Procter & Gamble and General Electric.

Students often come to Stanford University’s “d.school” (which was founded by one of us—David Kelley—and is formally known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design) to develop their creativity. Clients work with IDEO, our design and innovation consultancy, for the same reason. But along the way, we’ve learned that our job isn’t to teach them creativity. It’s to help them rediscover their creative confidence—the natural ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out. We do this by giving them strategies to get past four fears that hold most of us back: fear of the messy unknown, fear of being judged, fear of the first step, and fear of losing control.