Search Results for: blog cash checks or credit for a home business

Evaluating Cash Flow

Over a year ago, I wrote an article here in the Home Business blog about “Managing Cash Flow.” I thought it was time to revisit that important issue and talk about ways to look over your business operations and figure out what is going on with your cash flow and ways to make adjustments and/or improvements. Just to share, my home business in 2 1/5 years old and I am just now getting my cash flow to an (almost) comfortable place. Managing the influx and out flux of revenue is a challenge for any business—whether it is a start-up or … Continue reading →

Credit for Your Home Business?

Credit can be both a help and a hindrance. When you need a boost to your cash flow or to make a major purchase that you don’t have the cash for, then credit can help keep your home business humming without a glitch. But, taking on credit and debt is a financial obligation that many fledgling businesses just aren’t ready for. Getting credit in your business name (as opposed to personal credit) can be tough. You will need to have all your ducks in a row and be able to demonstrate stability and viability for your home business. Some people … Continue reading →

Cash, Checks, or Credit for a Home Business

Just like your personal, family budget and expenses, your home business requires you to make choices and decisions about how to manage cash flow. You will need to decide if you are going to have a separate business bank account and whether you will pay for expenses using checks, purchase orders, or a corporate credit card account (or a line of credit with your financial institution.) While some of these choices might not be available to you, you’ll still need to decide how you’re going to manage your cash flow and it will likely be one of the first decisions … Continue reading →

Should You Offer Credit and Payment Plans?

One of the main concerns and considerations for anyone starting and running a business is how to manage payments. Whether we take cash, checks, money orders, Pay pal, credit cards or other types of payments is a major decision (and one that often has to be revisited) to be made. Depending on the type of business you operate, whether or not to take credit payments or arrange payment plans with your clients or customers may be an issue that comes up. If you decide to take credit card payments, you will likely want to do some research as to what … Continue reading →

Five Tips to Paying off Credit Cards

Paying off a credit card can be a real pain. It seems to take forever! You make the payments every month like clockwork, yet somehow the balance doesn’t seem to decrease – or if it does, it’s only pennies at a time. Maybe the interest rate on your card is way too high, and it feels like you’ll be paying off the card for years to come. Here are five tips to help you pay the card off faster: 1. Call your credit card company and ask them for a lower interest rate. Depending upon your credit rating, you may … Continue reading →

A Little Saving Can Go a Long Way

Most people can’t afford to place 20 to 25 percent of their paychecks into a high interest savings account like money experts suggest. However, there are a slew of other ways you can help your financial situation. The following simple ideas can add up to big savings over time if you are consistent about executing them: Food: You can save money on produce by planting a garden with items you and your family eat on a regular basis. If you have a hearty harvest, you can also trade fruits and vegetables with neighbors. Clothing: Stretch your dollar by repairing worn … Continue reading →

Should You Offer Flexible Payment Options?

If you own your own home-based business, you are responsible for every detail of how your business is run. While this can be overwhelming at times, at other times is it wonderfully empowering – especially when you find ways to differentiate yourself from your competitors by doing things a little bit differently. In today’s economy, consumers are very conscious of all things money-related. As a business owner, you can win major points with your customers by structuring your payment options in a budget-friendly way. I’m certainly not suggesting that you let your customers walk all over you when it comes … Continue reading →

I Just Made $250 by Paying My Bills

Perhaps I should start this post with a disclaimer. I am going to talk about credit cards. Personally, I have a love – hate relationship with the convenient little pieces of plastic. If you are able to pay the balance on your credit card (in full) each month…continue reading. If not, this is not the post for you. Around this time last year I made a decision to pay all of my bills with my credit card. This included my auto insurance, my utility bills, my cable, internet, phone…etc…). In fact, I used my card to buy everything – groceries, … Continue reading →

What You Should Know About Receipts

Sometimes, it’s not enough just to “keep track” of business expenses in a spread sheet or log, it is normally a good idea to keep evidence for your business expenses and this usually means receipts. Here is some basic information that you should know about saving receipts for your home business– Many banks no longer send out your actual cancelled checks. Even though this is no longer the norm, you should still save copies or records of checks that you write. Many banks now send out a photo copied record of “mini-checks” and this should be part of the receipts … Continue reading →

Should You Have a Written Payment Policy?

Isn’t life interesting? When everything is going along fine, we are hesitant to make any changes that might upset the apple cart–it’s only once we run into a problem that we wish we would have prepared! Running a home business is very much like that–at first, we’re just happy to start getting those first checks and payments–but as time goes on and we run into difficulties and issues, we wish we would have had something in place to help us avoid and deal with these problems. I thought I would write this morning about exploring whether or not your business … Continue reading →