Updated 4/7/2023
As a firm owner, it's important to recognize that improving cashflow is a critical focus for any company, but especially so in the A/E and professional services industries.
Your industry is often project-based and can experience fluctuations in revenue due to varying project timelines and the timing of payments. Having a cashflow plan in place is essential for managing these fluctuations and ensuring that your firm has the funds necessary to cover expenses and make strategic investments.
A well-executed cashflow plan can also help firms make informed decisions about growth and expansion opportunities.
Here are five tips to help your firm achieve a more manageable cashflow strategy.
To effectively predict and manage cashflow, it's important to understand the current business climate.
What this means is recognizing the recurrent changes that can occur in business activity, which can be seasonal or based on economic factors facing the community.
Firm owners, and even project managers, need to keep these changes in mind when making decisions about planning and borrowing, making capital upgrades, adding new staff, or considering other spending issues.
By staying on top of these factors, you can better manage your cashflow and make informed decisions that contribute to long-term financial stability.
Since cashflow may frequently change, keeping an eye open to periodic changes in workflow may be necessary to cope with it.
Keeping accurate and up-to-date financials will help you keep an eye out for potential up and downturns, helping you to be prepared for changes, if necessary.
Proactively monitoring cashflow reports can also help when making business growth and other financial plans.
It’s important to have the right reporting tools to ensure you keep an eye on your cashflow at all times. Manual reporting just isn’t quick enough, or accurate enough, when it comes to managing your finances. To better ensure your cashflow is healthy and your firm is profiting, take advantage of automated reporting. Not only does this cut down on a lot of unnecessary time that is wasted on trying to configure manual reports, but it also gives you a real-time view with zero errors.
To try a free demo of BQE CORE’s automated reporting and analytics, click here.
Expenses are an everyday cost of business, but you should review them periodically or negotiate to ensure you aren’t missing out on lower costs or alternate suppliers.
The same goes for payment conditions and even seeking lower APR credit cards or more amenable grace periods.
Credit cards with rewards can also be beneficial in some cases, especially for those with frequent purchasing needs.
You can also avoid costly late fees by using automated bill payment systems.
One of the quickest ways to get cash into your business faster is to make it easier for your customers to pay you.
Surveys have shown that up to 70% of customers will pay or schedule a payment on the same day they receive their invoice, if there are electronic payment options.
Advanced billing and practice management systems, such as BQE CORE, include integrated options for accepting ePayments and ACH payments from customers, as well as the ability to set up recurring automatic payments.
This not only speeds up payment, but also reduces manual processes and the potential for fraud.
BQE ePayments can also help your firm improve your cashflow in the following ways:
BQE CORE ePayments helps you save money on processing fees, as electronic payments typically have lower transaction fees compared to traditional payment methods.
By offering electronic payment options, you can expand the customer base to include those who prefer or exclusively use electronic payment methods.
BQE CORE ePayments offers added security features such as encryption and fraud detection, which can help reduce the risk of payment fraud and protect your firm and customers' financial information.
Electronic payments can help you reduce the amount of time and resources spent on managing payments and invoicing, allowing more time to focus on other important business activities.
Offering electronic payment options can also help your firm appear more modern and tech-savvy, which can be attractive to younger customers and tech-oriented businesses. On the flip side, BQE CORE’s ePayments are so easy to use, anyone will find relief using them as opposed to dealing with manual payment processing.
Implementing an ePayments system can help you stay competitive in your industry and keep up with changing payment trends and preferences.
Retaining clients is critical to improving cashflow, as loyal customers provide a reliable source of revenue and often require less marketing and sales efforts.
To do this, it's important to provide excellent customer service, deliver high-quality work, and develop strong relationships with clients.
Also, consider implementing a customer loyalty program or offering incentives to clients who refer new business to your firm.
By focusing on retaining clients, you can reduce the uncertainty associated with cashflow and establish a more stable revenue stream.
Establishing a cash reserve strategy can help your firm weather unexpected financial challenges.
Set aside a portion of your profits each month or quarter to build up a reserve fund that can be used for emergencies or unforeseen circumstances. This can also help prevent the need to take out loans or other forms of debt in times of financial stress.
A cash reserve strategy can help you stay financially stable and reduce the risk associated with unexpected cashflow disruptions, giving you more peace of mind and allowing you to focus on strategic growth and expansion opportunities.
BQE CORE was designed by an engineer and an architect for the professional services industry. We know how important it is to improve cashflow since we come from the professional services industry where our founders worked on projects every day. They needed a tool that could help them keep an eye on their financials and provide backend operations assistance so they could focus on doing what they loved best- their projects.
BQE CORE’s all-in-one dashboard provides project management, reporting and analytics, time and expense tracking, payment processing, HR, billing and invoicing, and more, so you have everything you need to easily manage all your processes from one location.
Ready to try a free demo of BQE CORE? Contact us today to get scheduled and see just how BQE CORE has helped firms improve their cashflow.