8-Step Cash Flow Plan to Minimise Business Disruption
Across all regions of the UK insufficient cash flow reserves is a clear issue for many smaller businesses.
The latest Understanding the business impacts of local and national restrictions, UK – Office for National Statistics outlines the impacts of COVID-19 restrictions for businesses.
The main points are:
- Since early January 2020, the percentage of single-site businesses currently trading has picked up slightly in both Wales and Scotland, though the proportion of their workforce on furlough remains higher than in early January.
- Scotland has consistently had the highest proportion of its single-site businesses’ workforce on furlough leave, compared with other UK countries since early December 2020.
- Single-site businesses across the UK are more likely to have less than three months of cash reserves compared with businesses with multiple sites.
- Workers in single-site businesses in the hospitality and tourism sector are approximately four times more likely to be on furlough leave (63%), compared with single-site businesses across all industries (16%) in mid-March 2021, with single-site businesses in hospitality and tourism in Northern Ireland having the highest likelihood (85%) among the UK countries.
See more: 13-step business plan for 2021
8-step cash flow plan
Across all regions of the UK, insufficient cash reserves is a clear issue for many smaller businesses and the government has launched the Recovery Loan Scheme today (see below).
Cash flow and business planning in these uncertain times may appear difficult but there are some practical steps you can take to minimise potential disruption to your business:
- Review your Budgets and set realistic and achievable targets for the remainder of 2021.
- Get your employees involved in a discussion of likely trading conditions and get their input on reducing costs and maintaining revenues.
- Review and flow chart the main processes in your business (e.g. Sales processing, order fulfilment, shipping etc.) and challenge the need for each step.
- Put extra effort into making sure your relationships with your customers are solid.
- Review your list of products and services and eliminate those that are unprofitable or not core products/services.
- Review efficiency of business processes and consider alternatives such as outsourcing certain activities locally or overseas.
- Agree extended payment terms with all suppliers in advance.
- Pull everyone together and explain the business strategy and get their buy-in.
Please talk to us about cash flow planning for the next six months. We can help with a template so you can do this yourself or work together to produce estimates for a variety of scenarios.
