Planning for the Financial Future of Your Business

Editor's Note: Take a look at our featured best practice, Comprehensive Guide to Financial Statement Analysis (89-slide PowerPoint presentation). This document provides a detailed step-by-step guide on how to analyse financial statements. Designed for anyone who wants to understand how to review financial data and interpret the findings, the document is split into the following sections: Introduction to financial statements 1. Income [read more]

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Once you have set up your business, you may be looking at what the next steps are to ensure that your business continues to grow and has a stable financial future. When considering the future of your business, there are a number of steps that you can take to ensure that your business is able to grow efficiently and securely through its financial stability.

Use Comparison and Advice Websites

Many small and large businesses are over-spending when it comes to their energy and utility bills such as electricity and gas. This expenditure can be better utilized in reinvestment in your business and can help to destabilize the finances of your business. To check whether you are spending too much on your utilities, you need to take action by generating quotes from other suppliers. The best way in which you can do this is through a comparison website such as Utility Bidder. Not only is their comparison serviceable to find you quotes in a matter of minutes, but their advisory team can help you to make the right decisions about your businesses’ future when it comes to your utility bills.

Create a Financial Model

Financial models are virtual representations of real-life business situations that help to predict the growth and financial stability of your business in the future. These predictions are based on the history of your company and what you expect from the future, and you can fill these in by gathering statements on your cash flow, balance, and income. These can help you to plan your business’s future by understanding the likelihood of certain outcomes and using these to make changes that can help to grow your business, budget and allocate capital to certain areas. You can get documentation of sample models from Flevy that can help to form the base of your valuation.

Write a Business Plan

It is also vital that you start to create a business plan before opening your business as this is crucial to the expansion of your company. Business plans can help you to draw out your expectations in terms of funds, cash flow and growth as well as plan for changes and improvements that can help you to meet the goals that are stated in your plan.

Find Funding

Funding can help to grow your business and maintain financial stability by giving you extra money to reinvest into your business. If you are not able to provide the extra funding yourself, you should seek a mentor or apply for government funding and company schemes. Applying for these is time-consuming, but the benefits are incredible, with extra wealth to input into your staffing arrangements, training or the facilities that you need for your business to run smoothly.

Invest Your Business

Investing in other businesses can also be a key financial decision when it comes to raising extra capital for your business. Although you need to already have some financial stability whilst you wait for a return on your investments, if you have the correct knowledge at hand to make smart decisions about your investments. This can then help to fund the expansion of your business.

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