Planning for the Silly Season
- by Rebecca Gray
- November 8, 2019
- Bookkeeping
We find ourselves at that time of year again – planning for the Christmas period and the ‘silly season’.
Does this time of year represent a lull in business for you?
Many businesses find that this time of year is a quiet one for them and therefore need to carefully manage their cash flow to ensure that they do not fall short on their business obligations.
Now is a good time to prepare a budget that will see your business through the next three months – November, December and January.
It is a good time to take stock of what your cash flow is going to look like and to manage stock levels, staffing and money inflows and outflows to ensure that you do not find yourself with a negative bank balance.
A cash budget is the best way to track all of your incomings and outgoings to ensure that you can meet all of your business obligations over this (personally) busy time of year.
A cash budget sets out what you believe the business will make over the period – all incomings from goods and services sold – on a cash basis, so when your business actually receives the cash for the good or service sold.
You will also need to carefully map your outgoings to ensure that you can meet all of your staff, stock, taxation and financial obligations.
It is good to break down the costs too, so you can see where you might save money over the period.
Is it a good idea to close your business over the Christmas/New Year’s period and have staff take some of their annual leave to cover the time off?
This can be cost effective and also sees your staff get a much needed break during a quiet time for the business.
There is the other side of the coin – this time of year can be particularly busy for your business.
Do you have enough staff rostered on to ensure that your clients are well catered for?
Have you got enough stock to ensure that clients’ needs are met quickly and efficiently?
Among all this – you could also need to take into account paying staff on public holidays or overtime should you find yourself overly busy.
Do you have the cash in hand to ensure that you can cover penalty rates, over time etc.?
There is a lot to think about at this time of year!
Lucky for you, we at Think Accountants are happy, willing and able to help you to prepare a proper budget to make sure that you can meet all of your obligations – and charter the difficult waters of business during the ‘silly season’.
