What to Do If Your Company is Dealing with Financial Challenges

by Ronald Wolf Business Consultant

What to Do If Your Company is Dealing with Financial Challenges

There are many different ways for your company to be in a financial thought spot, even without doing anything wrong. The global market may shift or encounter problems and many unexpected problems could land you in a problem. Still, getting out of these problems is a fairly simple matter. All you have to do is find the right way to cope with some of these financial challenges the right way around. With that in mind and without further ado, here are several key points to keep in mind.

Reduce the overhead

The first stop on recovering your business lies in improving your company’s profitability. As long as your business is profitable, you won’t be in that desperate of a situation. Still, profitable vs. non-profitable are two ends of a spectrum, which is why there are numerous degrees in between to consider. The pace at which you’re losing money may determine how quickly you will have to close down. By reducing the overhead, you will find yourself in the scenario where you are making more profit (or losing less money) even with the same income.

Don’t skim on your staff

In the previous section, we’ve talked about the importance of reducing your expenses but there’s also the matter of burning cash to make cash. You can’t skim on bonuses, even if you do decide to lay off some people and there are all sorts of investments that need to be made for things to speed things up. Remember, laying off some may seem cruel but the effects on productivity are definitely lower than pay cuts for everyone. Regardless of how strong the collective spirit is around the office; self-interest is often the key to the determiner of one’s intrinsic motivation.

Improve the cash flow

There is one thing that you need to understand about your income – there are two types of it. There’s a difference between account receivables and hard cash. With your account receivables, you have the money (in theory) but you still have to wait until you collect it. The problem is that you have financial obligations that need to be covered right now. One of the ways to transform account receivables into cash is to sell these invoices to a factoring company. Sure, you get a lower net value out of these invoices but you get money right away. Other than this, you can also encourage instant payment.

Consider some situation-specific options

Getting a specialized advisor for your scenario is incredibly important. If it’s the taxes that you’re struggling with, find an accountant with a past in this field. On the other hand, if you’re currently looking for advice and insolvency solutions, you need to opt for a professional service in this field. The key thing to keep in mind is the importance of devising the long-term strategy that can get you out of this problem quite effortlessly.

Don’t forgo your debts

The next thing that you need to keep in mind is the fact that you may have debtors of your own. This puts a lot of entrepreneurs in a bit of a tough spot. On the one hand, you don’t want a potential return customer to feel like you’re strong-arming them. Second, you may lack the tools to get your money back, to begin with. On the other hand, you have so many financial obligations yourself and you simply can’t afford to be too tolerant regarding the money that you are owed. Instead, it might be a good idea to hire a debt-collecting agency to help you out.

Explore your tax options

Tax deductions can help you find a way out of many different scenarios. You see, you may have so much money in potential tax deductions. One example is the fact that you can even deduct dry cleaning while on a business trip as a business expense. Moreover, for all those who are working from home, there’s a chance to deduct a part of the utility bill as a cost of running a business. This way, you can skim a bit by bit until you make a big enough financial difference. Depreciation is another field where you could skim quite a bit.

In conclusion

In the end, you need to understand that Rome wasn’t built in a day. You see, the financial problem that you’ve gotten yourself into is probably not a result of a single mistake. It’s probably a result of a flaw in your long-term business plan. Since it took a while to escalate to the status of a full-blown financial crisis, it would be unrealistic to expect that it can be fixed in a matter of days. So, arm yourself with patience before you proceed.