How to Improve Cash Flow: Top 12 Strategies

Introduction

Running a successful business is undeniably challenging; it demands a deep understanding of the financial landscape. While revenue and expenses hold importance, it’s the fluidity of cash flow that sustains operations. A robust cash flow isn’t just vital for business success; its absence can be highly detrimental for businesses. 

According to the US Bank, a staggering 82% of small businesses fail due to cash flow issues, underscoring the importance of optimizing cash flow. A healthy cash flow empowers you to navigate financial obligations seamlessly and capitalize on emerging opportunities. 

But how can you enhance your cash flow? In this blog, we will discuss 12 cash flow strategies that will help your business improve its cash flow. 

What is Cash Flow?

Cash flow refers to the movement of money and cash equivalents in and out of a business. Cash inflow is money received from sales, investments, or financing, while cash outflow is money spent by the business. By monitoring and analyzing these cash flow components, businesses can optimize cash usage and ensure liquidity.

When cash inflows exceed outflows, it leads to positive cash flow, indicating financial health and the ability to reinvest in operations, make payments, and cover expenses. On the other hand, when outflows surpass inflows, it leads to negative cash flow, necessitating financing to sustain operations. Monitoring cash flow is essential for budgeting, identifying issues, and ensuring financial stability in a business.

Types of Cash Flow

Cash flow is typically categorized into three main types: cash flow from operations, cash flow from investing, and cash flow from financing. These components play a critical role in financial analysis, allowing you to evaluate a company’s operational performance, investment decisions, and financial strategies.

1. Cash flow from operations:

Cash flow from operations (CFO) pertains to the money generated or spent directly from a company’s core business operations. It reflects the funds involved in producing and selling goods and services, indicating the ability to cover operating expenses and sustain operations.

2. Cash flow from investing 

Cash flow from investing (CFI) focuses on how much cash a company has generated or spent on various investing activities. This type of cash flow includes purchases of assets, investments in securities, and sales of assets or securities. Negative cash flow from investing activities may not always be negative, especially if it involves significant investments in the company’s growth, like research and development.

3. Cash flow from financing 

Cash flow from financing (CFF) reveals the net cash flows used to fund a company and its capital structure. It encompasses transactions related to issuing debt, equity, and paying dividends. Analyzing cash flows from financing activities provides insights into a company’s financial strength and its capital management.

What are the Challenges in Cash Flow Management?

Cash flow management involves various processes and techniques to handle an organization’s cash inflows and outflows effectively. Here are some key challenges in the cash management process:

1. Redundant system and high bank volume

With the expansion of businesses and the opening of new units globally, the volumes of systems and banks usually increase. Many of these companies struggle with localization and require technology that can address those needs more effectively than other options. This leads to a decentralized data transparency structure and currency availability.

2. Tedious manual and error-prone processes

Individual task execution might lead to data input errors and limited bandwidth. The treasury department spends most of its time integrating, entering, and confirming data. This results in only a little time left over for crucial tasks.

3. Settlements or transactions in multiple currencies

Cross-border payments and currency volatility further complicate cash management. Without proper protocols in place, cross-border transactions can be expensive and complex. Reconciliation, currency-related complications, and suboptimal payment periods are the top three cross-border receivables challenges. As a result, currency rate swings can reduce company profits impacting cash flow.

4. Limited forecasting frequency and quality

Companies often lack centralized cash forecasting tools and primarily create forecasts using spreadsheets. This has an impact on forecasting turnaround time and accuracy. In addition, new industry innovations, such as the acceleration of payment processing with features like rapid and faster payments, put extra strain on cash flow forecasting. Also, inaccurate forecasts lead to poor cash management.

12 Best Ways to Increase Cash Flow and Manage It Effectively

Proper cash flow management is crucial for companies seeking to enhance their cash flow position continually. The fundamental approach to strengthening cash flow involves accelerating receivables collection and slowing payables. However, executing this strategy can be challenging, as many companies experience the opposite, leading to cash shortages. Here are 12 things you can do to enhance your cash flow:

1. Enhance inventory management

Efficiently managing inventory is critical to improving cash flow. This is because overstocking ties up capital, while insufficient inventory leads to missed sales opportunities. Automating inventory management streamlines operations reduces waste, and ensures timely replenishment.

2. Fine-tune expense management

Carefully managing expenses is key to maintaining a healthy cash flow. Analyze spending patterns to identify areas for optimization. Cutting down unnecessary costs without compromising on quality fosters financial stability and sustainability.

3. Embrace automation for efficiency

Automating financial processes with technology can minimize manual errors and save time. For example, by leveraging automation solutions like HighRadius’ AI-based cash forecasting solution you can automate daily cash forecasts for up to 12 months with 95% accuracy and make data-driven decisions based on future cash predictions. Additionally, consider outsourcing certain functions while maintaining oversight to ensure alignment with business objectives.

4. Optimize invoicing practices and promote timely payments

Incentivize prompt payments from customers by offering discounts or rewards for early settlement, while implementing penalties for late payments to encourage adherence to payment terms. Ensure invoices are sent immediately after sales transactions to expedite the payment process. 

5. Foster vendor collaboration

Cultivate strong relationships with vendors to negotiate favorable payment terms and discounts. Early payment discounts can generate savings, enhancing working capital. Collaborative partnerships built on trust promote flexibility during cash flow fluctuations.

6. Leverage data analytics for insights

Harness the power of data analytics to gain actionable insights into cash flow trends and performance metrics. By leveraging data-driven decision-making, businesses can proactively identify opportunities for optimization and mitigate potential risks.

7. Resolve disputes swiftly

Promptly addressing disputes with customers and vendors prevents delays in receivables and payables. Establish clear dispute resolution processes to facilitate efficient conflict resolution. Proactive dispute management safeguards cash flow and preserves business relationships.

8. Honor debt obligations timely

Prioritize timely repayment of debts to avoid penalties and maintain creditor confidence. Implementing electronic payment systems streamlines debt management, ensuring adherence to payment schedules. Prompt debt servicing preserves cash flow liquidity and enhances creditworthiness.

9. Negotiate favorable terms

Negotiate favorable terms with suppliers and creditors to optimize cash flow. Lengthening payables cycles and securing discounts for early payments conserves working capital. Balancing terms for receivables and payables promotes financial stability and supports business growth.

10. Segment customers for credit risk

Segment customers based on credit risk to optimize collections and minimize delinquencies. Utilize data analytics to assess repayment likelihood and tailor credit terms accordingly. Mitigating credit risk preserves cash flow stability and strengthens customer relationships.

11. Gain insight from your cash flow statements

Unlocking cash flow potential begins with a clear understanding of your cash flow statements. These statements provide valuable insights into the financial health of your business by tracking key entries such as the opening balance, customer receipts, payments to suppliers, operational income, taxes paid, interest earned and salaries and wages. Understanding your cash flow statements empowers you to make informed financial decisions, optimize cash flow, and ensure the long-term stability and growth of your business.

12. Conduct customer credit checks

In today’s business landscape, selling on credit is common practice. However, before extending credit to customers, it’s crucial to conduct a credit check. Poor credit may indicate potential late payments, posing risks to your cash flow. Remember, business success isn’t just about closing sales; the timely receipt of payments is equally vital. 

The Impact of Automation on Cash Management

Cashflow management software is becoming increasingly accessible to organizations of all sizes. Executives can simply track processes and policies using cash management software. Furthermore, all payment request data is maintained in a centralized, cloud-based system, making it easy for treasury staff to preserve accurate records and obtain them quickly. Here are some of the advantages of leveraging automation for cash flow management:

1. Budget tracking and cash positioning

A cash management application assists in keeping track of a weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annual budget. Moreover, a cash forecasting tool can be used to track the deviations of forecasts from the actuals. The budget can be used to see if the company has enough cash to maintain working capital for the time period provided.

2. Effective decision-making

A cash flow management report provides enough information about a company’s revenue and expenses. Treasury teams can use a cash management system to analyze these documents and determine the cash balance in the company account. This cash balance can be determined early on to see if the organization’s financial status is steady, surplus, or deficit.

3. Ease in making payments and reconciling payments

Payment reconciliation is a bookkeeping technique that compares internal financial records to bank statements for maintaining the accounts. Cash management software helps to automatically match data on cash transactions from financial documents with those recorded in expense tracking. This makes it easier to keep track of costs and manage finances.

4. Time and cost savings

Cash management software allows treasurers to focus more on strategic and high-priority activities by integrating real-time bank data and combining it into a single location. 

5. Better intercompany lending

It can be difficult to collect data from multiple departments and keep track of current collection efforts using manual processes. Cash management software automates the collection of intercompany interactions, balance tracking, and interest recording across all reflective and notional bank accounts.

How Does HighRadius Help in Improving Your Cash Flow Strategies?

Most businesses are still dependent on Excel for cash flow analysis, with limited scalability. Due to the lack of automation and robust tracking mechanisms, treasury professionals often spend considerable time tracking cash transactions. They do so by manually reconciling the expected cash transactions with the bank statements, which often leads to inaccurate results, a lack of cash visibility, and decreased productivity. 

HighRadius’ Cash Management Solution automates this manual cash-to-bank reconciliation. It auto-generates and posts general ledger entries for bank transactions, enables customized rule creation, and provides real-time visibility into cash flows helping businesses to reconcile the prior day’s planned cash transactions vs bank transactions at the click of a button. It also identifies discrepancies between actuals vs expected and handles unmatched bank transactions or cash transactions using an easy-to-use interface. 

Leveraging our solutions, businesses can automate critical cash flow processes, improve efficiency, and gain better visibility into their daily cash positions. By streamlining cash-related activities and utilizing advanced features, businesses are able to accelerate cash inflows, enhance cash management productivity, and optimize cash utilization. 

FAQs

1. Why is it difficult to improve cash flow?

Improving cash flow can be challenging for businesses due to factors such as mismatched timing of expenses and revenues, inefficient collection processes, excessive debt obligations, and inadequate financial planning. Cash flow problems arise when payables precede receivables, causing a shortage of bill payments and operations.

2. What strategy can be employed to enhance cash flow?

One highly effective strategy to improve cash flow is by offering enticing discounts for early payments. By incentivizing customers to settle their bills ahead of schedule, businesses can significantly accelerate the inflow of cash, enhancing liquidity and financial stability.

3. How do you manage better cash flow?

To manage cash flow effectively, businesses should maintain accurate bookkeeping, generate cash flow statements, analyze these statements to identify opportunities for improvement, cut unnecessary spending, forecast cash flow, and speed up the collection of accounts receivable.

4. How can I generate cash flow quickly?

To generate quick cash flow, focus on accelerating your accounts receivable by invoicing promptly and offering early payment discounts. Negotiate better payment terms with suppliers to delay outflows, sell any non-essential assets, and consider short-term financing options like business lines of credit or invoice factoring. 

5. How to free up cash flow?

To free up cash flow, start by cutting unnecessary expenses and negotiating better terms with suppliers to extend payment deadlines. Optimize inventory management to avoid overstocking, reduce debts to lower interest payments, and consider leasing rather than purchasing equipment.