If your business is currently experiencing a cash crunch, here are some ideas to boost your short-term cash flow without credit cards or other debt.

Solving Your Immediate Cash Flow Crunch

• Be aggressive to collect receivable payments. You can’t pay your vendors if your customers don’t pay you. Look at your receivables aging report to identify customers who have an outstanding balance. Focus on getting payments from these customers, or set up a payment plan. If a customer begins to have a history of paying late, ensure you are being paid for being their bank with adjusted pricing, interest and late fees.
• Review accounts payable procedures. Review your accounts payable procedures with your team, making sure that bills aren’t getting paid early without prior approval. Discuss whether it makes sense to take the offered discount or not. If you have to pay slow, be very strategic about who it is and how you communicated with them.
• Adjust your payments with vendors. Proactively work with your vendors to see if there’s any wiggle room to adjust your payment schedule. Be willing to pay a little bit for this flexibility, but remember that the extra cost you incur to adjust when you can pay is likely cheaper than borrowing money. For example, negotiate ahead of time to pay your bill in 60 or 90 days, understanding you may have to pay a little interest for the flexibility.
• Convert noncash items into cash. Consider whether you have assets on your balance sheet that you can turn into cash, for example sell slightly-aged inventory or provide discounts to encourage customers to stock up on items. Go through your entire balance sheet to identify assets that fit this criteria.

Planning Ahead

Once you get through your current cash flow crunch, try to identify what contributed to your cash shortfall in the first place, and put a plan in place going forward. A cash forecast such as a 12-month rolling forecast is one great way to identify your needs over the next year before you actually need the cash.

Please call to get your 12-month cash forecast started or if you have any other questions about boosting your business’s cash flow.

When identity thieves trick employees, businesses pay a steep price.

Workers spend months cleaning up the mess. Companies face potential penalties, fines, and lawsuits. Customers and business partners lose confidence in your company's ability to manage data. Your brand and reputation take a hit, creating a perfect storm for competitors to take full advantage of the problem.

One way to lower your risk is the introduction of an employee training program to be vigilant about the following identity theft schemes.

• Phishing emails. Consider this example: An employee receives an email or text message purporting to come from company management or a trusted vendor. He or she is duped into opening the message and clicking on a malicious link. When the victim lands on a bogus page requesting both new and existing passwords, the attacker hijacks the original password to gain access to the network.
  
  Action items. Beat this problem by training employees to recognize phishing schemes. Look for subtle mistakes such as spelling errors or domain name anomalies. Teach employees to hover their mouse over links to ensure they are legitimate. Above all, staff should routinely ask, “Why am I receiving this email?” A simple verification may be all that’s needed to stop a phishing attempt. Not sure if you could be a victim? Consider hiring a reputable firm to test your security in this area. You might be surprised at what you find.
  
• Ransomware. Ransomware is malicious software that infects a computer, locks it and then demands a ransom. In effect, the system’s critical data is held hostage until fees are paid. Like phishing, ransomware relies on victims to download software.
  
  Action items. Train employees to confirm that senders are, in fact, trusted contacts. Teach them to avoid clicking on links from questionable sources. They should be particularly skeptical if an attachment asks them to enable macros, which is a common way ransomware is spread. Your best defense to ransomware is active, secure backups of all systems.
• Social media postings. Cyber crooks use social media to gather enough information to appear legitimate to company employees. After all, if a worker receives an email from a well-known vendor who asks about his recent trip to Florida, the message must be legitimate.
  
  Action items. Train employees to protect both themselves (and your business) when connecting or sharing on social media. Create a policy that limits social media use during the work day and prohibits access to personal accounts using company computers or networks.
• Internet access. Workers who access company networks from coffee shops, airports, or other unsecured access points may allow identity thieves to exploit vulnerabilities.
  
  Action items. Limit personal access to your company wifi. Explore creating a separate access for employees to use during the day. Develop VPN protocols for remote workers, as this limits access to your network. Require strong password, encryption, time-out locking and theft protocols within written policies. Prohibit access to your network using public wifi. Hire or create an accountable person to constantly monitor company security.

Security is now a complex but critical success factor for all small businesses. Take it seriously by developing a security plan, including disaster recovery and hiring experts to constantly training your employees to be vigilant.