Capital Solutions Bancorp Blog

The Wall Street Journal highlights a problem we've seen in our business for years—businesses struggling to make payments due to waiting on their own customers to pay them first.

What do you need cash flow for? It would make things easier not to worry about the cash. Of course, this means not caring if your business crashes and burns. Let's see what we can do to make sure that happens:

While businesses can always get a line of credit from financial organizations other than banks or sell their accounts receivables, they might consider looking for ways to cut costs without tightening the belt.

The Wall Street Journal shares examples of how companies found ways to cut costs.

You don't have to take my word for it that cash flow planning helps businesses through tough economical times. The Vancouver Sun says that cash flow planning is key especially during difficult times.

When your business needs financing, go for it. Don't let the economy stop you. We've had clients who came to us for financing in the worst of times and they would've never grown without our help.

Article after article about the small business' struggle to get a bank loan appears in newspapers like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Business Week. We know how bad the economy is and the subprime mortgage mess has left many banks tightening their loan processes (read: longer, less likely to qualify, and more paperwork).

If you look back at any of this blog's entries, you'll see we talk about the importance of keeping your business' cash flow balanced. A quick review of cash flow—it's the cash your company actually has available (not the cash you're waiting on from clients) to pay expenses, salaries, rent, equipment, and payables.

Three key things about having cash:

You can find scores of templates, web sites, applications, and resources to help you with things finance. The internet offers a wonderful place to find all of this... but the problem comes in weeding out the good from the bad.

You might decide to grow your business by buying a competitor or another business that complements yours. While buying a competitor may look like a smart move, it may not always be. Other than taking over the competitor’s products, you have to contend with:

Successful business owners don't just focus on the cash flowing in and out of the business. They don't just focus on buying the right equipment, hiring the right people, and managing finances. They also have well-rounded backgrounds in organization skills, time management, growing knowledge, creativity, and more.

As a small business or even a one-person business, it's tempting to have one credit card for everything. Limiting credit cards is a wise thing to do. However, purchases for business need to be separate from personal purchases. When doing accounting for your business, you don't want to dredge up your personal purchases.