4 tips to make your business stronger in 2023

1  Keep financial score

Few small businesses have an accurate idea of the daily, weekly and monthly numbers and financial trends taking place within the organization. It’s vital that you spend the necessary time keeping current on cash flow. If you lack the financial skills, hire an accountant, but still stay very much in the loop. The risks posed by COVID-19 persist. Although at the time of writing, vaccine trials are delivering promising results, 2021 and beyond will demand cautious navigation of the challenges and impact of the crisis. Our key advice for operating during a pandemic, what issues companies need to look at, and how to keep the lights on, will remain as valuable in the coming months as it was when the crisis first emerged.

2  Set goals

Similar to keeping score, setting goals and objectives is an essential part of your business success. Use the goals you set as an ongoing planning tool to ensure that you continue to move forward with your business. For instance, try to increase traffic by a certain amount on your business website or blog. More web traffic can translate into added sales or customer loyalty. Operating in the era of COVID-19 hasn’t just meant the quick deployment of survival mechanisms, like getting work from home capabilities in place. It has required taking steps to ensure true, long-term business continuity. We identified nine key areas of concern for companies looking to establish business continuity – ranging from employee health and wellbeing to insurance and legal disputes – and developed a convenient tool to help you understand the resilience of your enterprise and prioritize your actions.

3  Monitor trends

No business operates in a vacuum. Events and changes in the global landscape have an effect on your business. Stay current on trends and issues happening in your industry and local community. Even things that don’t seem relevant on the surface might have an impact on what you do, so consider all possibilities. Of course, there’s no such thing as digital transformation for its own sake. Transformation needs to be driven by people, and needs to ultimately serve people – whether they’re employees, consumers, or the inhabitants of the wider communities in which businesses operate. It’s your people who will help you recover and grow in the coming months and years, and your human stakeholders who will impact your decisions and success.

4  Find best practices

Keeping everything transparent is an important underpinning. That means breaking down silos, communicating effectively, testing and monitoring, and approving your processes in order to keep everything running smoothly. Another example is documenting your processes to avoid any miscommunication.

3 pieces of financial advice for any size business

1  Go paperless, or at least "paper-light"

Ditching paper isn’t just green; it saves you time, money and grief when it comes time to do taxes or work with an auditor. And, with the proliferation of cloud-based business tools and remote work, it’s become both easier and more important to adopt mobile access and paperless (or less-paper) practices.

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Of course, we’ve been talking about the end of paper for decades. But 2020 might just be the year we finally stop rifling through reams of paper in search of invoices, if only because we’re not in the office to access those wood-pulp stockpiles. And, we’re looking at a dramatic decrease in the use of paper money. 82% of respondents to a recent Mastercard survey said that contactless is a“cleaner way to pay”in the age of COVID because it offers faster checkouts, more control over physical proximity and no contact with shared public devices. For retailers and those tracking employee expenses, cashless also means a more complete electronic trail.

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To summarize the benefits of a concerted effort to cut paper use: Better access to data—with electronic documents, finding what you need is a matter of a simple search. You can expedite payments and avoid costly late fees. It makes record keeping easier, especially come tax season. It gives you green cred with employees. You can get rid of that bulky copier. What’s not to like?

2  Make and manage agains a budget

The adage, “If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail” is especially true when it comes to your budget. For any business, a budget—fixed if you must, flexible if you possibly can—stands as the road map as you navigate business decisions and even plot expansion routes.

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At minimum, a budget will include the money you expect to take in and the amount you expect to pay out in expenses. With those figures mapped out, you can branch out into forecasting, review any variances between projected and actual figures and make changes accordingly.

3  Automate your bill payments

Paying bills manually takes time away from things like customer acquisition and product development. There’s also the real danger of missing deadlines and incurring late fees. Refine your process by embracing online banking and automating those payments. You’ll benefit from increased productivity and reduced penalties.

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And, this gives you a solid foundation to expand to full-blown accounts payable automation as the business grows. AP automation buys you better accuracy with less processing time, accurate data capture, invoice matching and coding, fast approvals and less potential for fraud.