May 22nd, 2014.
5 Ways Creative Agencies Can Increase Cash Flow
Running a creative agency can be difficult enough without having the added troubles of money worries. Financial struggles can demand a lot of your time and attention, often dragging you away from your primary goal of running the business.
Often the biggest downfall for creative agencies is not having a healthy cash flow – luckily there are lots of things you can do to solve this problem, here are a few ideas:
#5 Accept Credit Cards
What’s the fastest way to improve your cash flow? Putting the debt onto your customers by accepting credit cards for payment.
While this may open you up to a couple of legal loopholes it will ensure that you have all the funds you need to operate your business. Depending on the typical cost of your transactions, this could be a very suitable application although it isn’t likely to work for large five figure sums and up.
#4 Make Payments Easy
While it can be all too easy to blame your clients and customers for not paying their bills, if you aren’t making it easy for them to do so then the blame lies with you. Make sure that you make it clear how and when you want the payments to be made and open up a range of different ways for them to make the payments.
Wherever possible make sure that you have a dedicated payment phone line or online page so that your clients can make simple payments.
#3 Use Invoice Factoring
There are times where blaming the clients is perfectly acceptable. That’s when they take ages to pay their invoices or when they try to not pay them at all.
In these circumstances it can pay off to have a back up plan by opting forinvoice finane for your marketing agency. By doing this you will receive a large percentage of the invoice when it is first confirmed, then upon payment of the invoice the rest – minus fee – will be supplied to you.
#2 Give Discounts for Early Repayments
In an ideal world you wouldn’t have to encourage people to make good on their invoices. However, this isn’t an ideal world and if you want to see a quick influx of cash after a transaction then offer discounted early repayments. This can be done in two ways – offering a higher charge for late repayments or lower charges for early repayments: the carrot and stick if you will. You can trial both and stick with the one that works the best, although this may confuse and upset some clients.
#1 Restructure Your Financing
Lastly, the most important thing you can do is take a long hard look at the way in which you are providing finance. If many of your clients are late in their payments or simply don’t pay at all then it may be your finance options that are the problem. A careful restructuring of the way you do business could seriously improve the amount of cash you have coming into the business.
If you are struggling to make your finances work for you then come talk to us at Pure Commercial Finance today. By thinking outside of the box we can help you free up capital and get you the best possible deals on invoice factoring and commercial mortgages. Give us a call today on 02920 766 565 to find out more about how we can help you.