While you want your business to take off and with prominence, the main factor for starting a business and keeping it afloat is money. As the saying goes, you have to spend money to make money.
An important step in financing your business is establishing a business bank account to easily keep track of your business expenses and cash flow, see our list below on getting a little help.
You may have some funds saved up to start your business, but there are factors like the start-up and ongoing costs as well as trying to make ends meet that may leave you in a financial struggle, and tarnish your finances in the long run.
Firstly, you need to determine your business’s immediate costs; while different businesses have different set-up costs, we can point you in the general direction to start getting some costs ticked off your list.
Determine your major expenses
By reviewing your business plan it can help you identify the cost items and major expenses – if you’re unsure about what they are, talk to your mentor or others who have started a similar business to you, and conduct further research on the costs in your industry.
Estimate your start-up and running costs
Determining your start-up costs will depend on what industry your business is in: you need certain permits and licenses to run a food truck or beauty parlour for example. Necessities like insurance, capital expenses and purchases such as equipment or tools needed for operating the business.
In some cases, reverse engineering your budget can work – this means you need to dissect the flow of money throughout your business. You need to think about costs like your stock and supplies, ongoing costs such as bills and staff fees, your marketing and website budget, and sundry costs like uniforms, office supplies, maintenance of equipment/tools, updating licences and so on.
Time to finance
You’re on the way to starting your business, and while you could have a golden-ticket idea, it can be difficult to get it up and running without financial backing.
Getting a little help:
Take control of your finances
So you’re on the way to getting your finances to help build your business, but you need to know how to control, record, and declare your cash flow, especially when it comes to tax time.
Below is a list that can help you find out more from accounting to GST, from budgeting to invoicing, and where to find professionals can be found below: