FastUpFront Small Business Blog

One of the most important steps in attempting to calculate cash flow is breaking your business down into cycles.  Some examples of business cycles are:  inventory cycle, accounts payable cycle, sales cycle, and accounts receivable cycle.  The key to smooth cash flow is to coordinate these cycles as much as possible with one another. Unfortunately for [...]

For all those female entrepreneurs out there, here are some great resources that I found compiled on the SBA’s Office of Women’s Business Ownership site.  Some, like the library and courses, are good for all you entrepreneurs, regardless of gender.  Many of these organizations are great ways to network, in addition to the specific benefits [...]

The most frustrating thing about running a small business is EVERYTHING that is out of your control.  One of these things is when your customers don’t pay you.  Here are some tips on collecting that money which is owed you already, and which you need NOW.  While you are waiting for your money, if you [...]

Growing a hair / beauty salon business requires financing! Lenders know that these business can really struggle with varying receivables and high overhead. A successful salon needs time to develop a loyal customer base. A salon’s success is based on a local following and until that business has established it’s “regulars” overtime, revenue can be very [...]

During my morning surf, I found some directories of Business Planning Freeware and I thought I’d put links up.  I haven’t checked these programs out, so use your own judgement.  Some of them look rather old, but a formula is a formula and it looks like many of these programs could be very useful. Many [...]

By using online finance/accounting calculators and other online tools, you are able to bypass hiring someone to calculate for you AND you are able to recalculate quickly and easily for various situations, projections, and ‘what if’s’.   Bank Rate has the following free calculators for Small Business Owners: • Calculate payments on any loan (incl. [...]

Our customers come to us when they are in a cash flow crunch.  Many of them are running very successful businesses, only the timing of their payables and Receivables is simply a bit out of sync.  Here are 8 things you can do to shorten the time between when your customer wants something, and when [...]

Working Capital = Current Assets–Current Liabilities Just like the human body needs calories to survive, a business needs working capital to continue operations.  Working capital is the money that is on hand for normal business operations. If you have a solid business plan, and business is going well, then you should generally have enough income [...]

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Here is a reasonably good, apparantly unbiased article with pros and cons of accounts receivable financing from About.com.  I will post more articles as I find them.