Efficient financial management is essential to ensure the long-term viability of your craft business. Fortunately, the latest generation of banking services now offers a wide range of features tailored to the needs of small businesses. Online business accounts are packed with tools to help and simplify cash management for small craftsmen. With this approach, you gain in efficiency, freeing up time to concentrate on what's essential: your business.
What is the purpose of cash flow in your craft business?
The cash position of your craft business is made up of all available financial resources, whether in cash or in a bank account. These liquid assets are constantly being moved in and out. Inflows and outflows represent cash flow. The balance between income and expenditure is essential to ensure the economic viability of your business.
Good cash flow means sufficient liquidity to cover working capital requirements, current expenses and financial obligations.
That's why it's vital to get cash management organized. These tasks are not part of the basic know-how of the craft trades. Fortunately, once you know how to manage your cash flow, you can find solutions to help you manage your budget efficiently and without wasting time.
Best practices for managing your cash flow as a craftsman
Cash management can be difficult, as it depends on unstable parameters linked to fluctuations in receipts due to economic trends, seasons, purchasing behavior, late payments...
This is why a number of actions are required, including :
- Regularly monitor cash flows, i.e. cash inflows and outflows
- Establish a forecasting plan to anticipate peak periods and expected downturns
- Monitor payment deadlines to avoid penalties, whether for supplier invoices or social security and tax charges.
- Build cash reserves to avoid liquidity problems
- Optimize collection procedures by proposing rapid payment methods and automating reminders to avoid late payment and non-payment.
- Control disbursements by negotiating longer supplier payment terms or adjusting variable expenses to the minimum.
Using cash management tools not only saves you time tracking financial flows, but also enables you to automate certain operations. Online business accounts feature innovative functionalities that enable you to combine different services within a single management interface.
5 pro account tools and features that make day-to-day cash management easier
Professional banking services for small craft businesses are much more developed today than they were a few years ago. The digitization of offerings in the digital age has enabled the emergence of online business accounts, offering much more economical formulas than traditional banks.
In addition to this competitive advantage, these packages also include numerous features that simplify day-to-day cash management for craft businesses.
1. An invoicing tool to optimize your collection procedure
Good cash flow management is essential to maintain the financial stability of your business. But before you can keep track of incoming payments, it all starts with issuing quotations, which are then transformed into invoices. To simplify the procedure and centralize your efforts, you can find an invoicing tool in your online pro account.
Customize the layout to suit your corporate identity. Insert your logo and a payment link to speed up transactions. The billing tool also manages the sending of automatic reminders at a frequency predefined by you.
2. An expense management interface to simplify your accounting
Expense claims are one of the disbursements you need to keep a close eye on for good cash management. To avoid wasting time on receipts and filing, you can opt for a digital interface with probative value archiving.
A simple photo of the receipt is all you need to justify the expense from an accounting point of view. And to keep variable expenses to a minimum, our online pro account formulas offer you bank cards that can be configured in real time: payment limits, authorization or blocking of cash withdrawals...
3. A tax dashboard so you never miss an important deadline
Online pro accounts for small and micro-businesses keep you informed of your transactions in real time. To make sure you don't miss any important deadlines, you can also set up a tax dashboard.
Thanks to these reminders, your company doesn't have to pay any additional fees or late payment penalties for sales tax or VAT. This regulatory compliance not only ensures financial transparency, it also saves you money.
4. Automatic load calculation to reduce errors
To remove any doubts about the amounts you need to set aside to pay your expenses, your pro account management interface can automatically calculate the amounts to be allocated.
You can preview the benefits of sales in an instant. This intuitive categorization can display, for example, the calculation of VAT if your company is subject to it.
5. Sub-accounts for cash reserves
By creating sub-accounts attached to your online business account, you can create separate budget envelopes.
These piggy banks act as cash reserves that you can allocate to provisions for your fixed expenses and social security contributions, as well as to your investment projects. Rules can be defined to automate transfers and enable direct debits via a dedicated RIB.