Finances FYI Presented by JPMorgan Chase
It’s easier than ever to start your own small business. The tools are available online, and you don’t need physical retail space to be successful.
But entrepreneurship isn’t just about creative brainstorming and or building the perfect digital marketplace — especially for owners doing it alone. According to the Small Business Administration, almost 30 million small businesses in the United States operate without any additional employees, while another 5.7 million run with fewer than 20 employees.
These business owners have almost the entire operation on their shoulders, from marketing to routine paperwork.
Fortunately, there are plenty of ways to automate or reduce the burden of many tasks that keep small business owners up at night. If you’ve recently started a business or are thinking about one in the near future, consider these easy ways to reduce your financial stress and free up time to enjoy the work you’re doing.
Interactive Budgeting
Budgeting for a small business is tricky, especially in the early days. Even if you enjoy spreadsheets and calculations, interactive budgeting software can give you more peace of mind and control over your business.
Good budgeting software can:·
- Connect to your bank accounts
- Let you customize categories
- Track various metrics based on target goals or trends
- Let you make real-time adjustments
Do yourself another favor and choose software with a mobile-accessible dashboard so you can easily track your finances from any device.
Automatic Savings
In the early days of running your business, it might feel like you don’t have more than a few dollars to put into savings, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore the resource.
Set up automatic deposits into savings accounts for emergencies, taxes, and any other categories that apply to your business (for example, licensing fees or required permits).
By automating these deposits, you’re doing two things: taking the task off your mental plate, and making sure these priorities don’t get lost in the weeds. Choose a high-yield online savings account for an even better financial boost.
Cash Flow Forecasting
It’s great to have a budget, but small businesses can put their owners in unpredictable financial positions any given month. Smart entrepreneurs know that making those predictions on their own (or worse, just guessing) can spell disaster.
Cash flow forecasting apps help aggregate your financial data and give you a glimpse of your financial position at various points in time. You can even simulate different decisions to see what the impact might be.
It might be tempting to forgo these tools early in your business journey, especially when you don’t have much data to input. However, getting in the habit of tracking future finances is one of the best ways to stay on track with less stress.
Task Management
Making smart financial decisions goes beyond simply handling your money well. Every decision you make as a small business owner impacts your bottom line, so the more often you can take mundane tasks off your plate, the better.
Using task management software is a fantastic option, even if you don’t have any employees. Rather than keeping your to-do list and calendars spread across platforms, you can easily track, share, and monitor progress via software that’s designed to be efficient. When you’re not worried about remembering deadlines, you’ll have more time for creative workshopping and making difficult decisions.
This list of the best task management software options for small businesses will help you offload some of the stress that comes from staying on top of every detail.
Smart Outsourcing
When you own a small business, it can be tempting to do everything in-house. After all, won’t you save money by doing it all yourself?
Of course, in many cases, this is true — you don’t need to splurge on office designers or a cleaning crew if you can handle those tasks without much difficulty. However, it’s essential to know when a service should be handled by someone with more experience in a specialized area.
If you try to do more complicated tasks yourself, you run the risk of spending far more money to fix your mistakes down the line. Here are a few of the most common services that you should absolutely outsource if you don’t have personal expertise:·
- Tax preparation and filing
- Large-scale advertising campaigns
- Product storage and shipment
- Legal documentation
By embracing these simple financial habits, you can ease some of the stress that every small business owner feels and focus on the fun instead.
Finances FYI is presented by JPMorgan Chase. JPMorgan Chase is making a $30 billion commitment over the next five years to address some of the largest drivers of the racial wealth divide.
