Making 2016 A Great Year For Your Business Finances

Making changes to processes in an active business is like changing the tires on a car at highway speed. It may be worth it in the long run, but it’s a huge challenge in the short run. The best way to approach such transitions is to find the slowest possible times of the year to implement changes.

One time of the year that things slow down just enough to make some changes is the first couple of months of the year. Everything is closed out and cleared out, and you can start the new calendar with some new techniques. And if you’re just now venturing into business, start on the right foot.

If you felt that 2015 had too much complexity, too many errors, and not enough good news from taxes, look through some of the possibilities for saving in 2016.

Strategize On Taxes

This is a good move any time of the year, but early in the calendar can be the most impactful. Many individuals and businesses alike still have the fresh regret from the write-offs they just missed for the preceding year.

While that pain is still noticeable, it’s a great time to set things in motion to prevent a repeat next January.

A good starting point is to get professionals to take care of things. Invariably, your own accountants are juggling payables and receivables, leaving them in a mad rush to make payroll and giving them few opportunities to look at the big picture and save you money.

As is often the case with these services, they’ll pay for themselves. Get started on that right now.

Review Debt

So many times, debt is seen as out of sight, out of mind. We are comfortably making payments and don’t think much about it. But that complacency can cost you a lot of money!

Depending on your goals and your standing with regard to taxes, you have the flexibility to do a lot of different things if you can get a lower interest rate.

If you’d like to free up some cash for other purposes, you can reduce your payments. If you’d prefer to accelerate payoff, you can increase principal amounts with the same payment. Or you can take on a larger payment to shorten your payment term.

There’s no one choice that’s perfect for every business, but the key here is that it provides you with flexibility.

Automate Your Processes

There is nothing more out of date than paper. Minimizing the amount you use for daily transactions and bookkeeping isn’t just a green thing to do, it also reduces mistakes, provides detail, and generates countless useful reports and statistics.

Some businesses continue to use paper and ink due to a perception of its permanence and verifiability being superior to electronic records. However, Cloud technology and electronic signatures have all the security and durability of paper without the massive file cabinets and overhead in paper, ink, and office machines.

They also carry the added advantage of being able to rapidly develop a variety of reports and summaries that would take hours to be compiled by a human.

There is rarely an easy time to do a drastic overhaul of your bookkeeping, debt structure, or tax strategy. But there are definitely hard times to do them, and there is always a benefit in doing them.

As your business grows–whether it’s from the newborn stage or as a mature, flowing business–it can be very helpful to examine your processes periodically and find the subtle ways you can save money.