What are the 10 strategies to better control your finances?
This is a process that varies greatly from business to business. It depends on your type of offer, its size, your number of employees.
But there are some strategies that are universal. We’ve separated the top 10 to help you better control your finances.
1. Invest in technology
Having technological control solutions today is essential for those who want to undertake e-commerce. You probably already use a platform for order management and customer relations, but do you have tools to control your finances?
Automated management systems, or ERP, are usually very competent in this regard. Another interesting idea is to have payment intermediaries and specific control systems for your billing and cash flow.
2. Control fixed expenses
Every business has fixed expenses: office supplies, electricity, water. These are those inevitable bills for anyone who wants to keep a business running.
Controlling them means monitoring the amounts month by month and relating expenses to your routine needs. Also break down costs to understand what types of costs can be adjusted or cut with more optimized processes.
This control allows for the efficiency mentioned above, a source of competitiveness in the final price of your products.
3. Project variable expenses
In addition to fixed expenses, every business has variable expenses: maintenance customs, specific campaigns to sell a new product, exchange rate changes for international purchases, among other examples.
Although not as constant, these expenses are almost always projectable. In other words, predicting these expenses helps you prepare for them and avoid headaches. Therefore, try to look further into the future and identify points of attention for unexpected expenses.
4. Keep an eye on the calendar
Speaking of looking to the future, e-commerce has a very important characteristic of retail: its sales are almost never stable throughout the entire year.
Every online business lives with this — there are months when sales are weaker and periods when demand has a sudden spike. So why not prepare your year with this in mind?
Map the times when consumers most seek out your product mix. Plan special promotions and campaigns for these times and set aside a reserve to cover the months when sales are weaker. This way, you reduce cash flow fluctuations and have better financial control.
5. Evaluate the cost-benefit
If you already have an e-commerce or are still thinking about building your online store, you need to evaluate the cost-benefit of online sales platforms.
This must be taken into consideration for your financial management. Cost-benefit assessment needs to be involved in greater planning.
So, before adopting management systems, first analyze your business needs. Then, research the market options well.
This way, you have more elements to decide which platforms are best for your company.
If you have already implemented some solutions in your e-commerce, it is time to evaluate whether they are bringing the expected results and whether your team is taking advantage of all the benefits they offer.
Checking this can help you cut unnecessary expenses, reassess the need for these platforms or even better qualify your team to take advantage of the solutions.
Thinking about the financial management of the business, it may be worth adopting specialized systems, which help with the entire online purchasing and payment process , bringing important insights to your business.
6. Balance shipping
Even though a physical store and an online store have some similar expenses, there are particularities in each situation.
In the case of e-commerce, for example, you need to calculate the best shipping for you and your customer.
For the consumer, the less they have to pay to receive the product at home, the better. But e-commerce is not always able to offer such competitive prices.
To help with this process, you can negotiate with suppliers or look for other business partners to reduce costs and offer competitive shipping to your customers.
7. Invest in publicity
Thinking about your financial planning , it is important to reserve resources to invest in advertising, that is, for paid traffic strategies , which bring more people to your online store, increasing the number of visitors and, consequently, sales.
So, talk to the Marketing team to decide how much will be allocated on this front. Increasing traffic to your website is a great way to improve your sales performance in e-commerce.
To do this, you need to create creative ads that spark people’s interest and make them visit your online store. If you want to get better results at a reduced cost, you need to know your audience well and segment the audience for your ads.
8. Calculate ROI
ROI is the acronym for Return on Investment. This metric indicates how positively your investments are performing, that is, how much return they bring to your business.
ROI can be calculated as follows:
(Gain – Investment)/Investment = ROI
Therefore, you need to know what financial gains you had with the investment considered and subtract the value of the investment made, dividing the result by this initial number.
So, for example, assuming you made an investment of R$500 in ads and managed to sell R$3000 from those ads, your ROI, in this case, would be:
(3000 – 500)/500 = 5
The number 5 indicates that your return was 5 times greater than your investment. In percentage terms, this represents a 500% return.
If the return is positive, it means that you are on the right track and that your e-commerce strategies are efficient (but can also improve).
A negative return is a warning sign. In this case, it is worth investigating how to reverse this situation so that the return increases or the investment decreases.
9. Control inventory
Controlling stock in an e-commerce is essential to avoid, for example, the customer buying something online and then finding out that the product has run out. Therefore, you need to notify the customer that the item is out of stock, which greatly compromises the experience they have with your business.
Furthermore, controlling stock also avoids urgent purchases, which can make products more expensive and reduce their competitiveness in the market.
With up-to-date stock management , you can plan your supply, which means the possibility of cost reduction. After all, by stocking your stock in advance, you have more time to look for the best prices on the market and negotiate with suppliers .
10. Control cash flow
Whether in the case of e-commerce or a physical store, cash flow is one of the most important elements of a business’s financial management.
Inputs and outputs must be monitored daily to ensure organization and financial control.
The idea is that, at the end of the month, you are in the green. Therefore, managing your finances daily prevents surprises. By identifying a problem in your cash flow early on, you can act on it immediately, increasing your chances of resolving it more quickly.
In this case, a financial management system can help, as it records all inputs and outputs, as well as centralizing your customer data and allowing you to monitor your monthly billing progress .