September and October seem to be a swift slide right into the holiday season. If you're a busy small business owner, you may not have realized that the end of the year is coming up quickly. Instead of spending late December in the rush of the season, start planning ahead to get your financial statements and taxes organized now. 

Here are Small Business Best Practices: End-of-Year Financials

Let’s face it: No one likes to call and ask people for money - ESPECIALLY if that person happens to be a client. If sending friendly payment reminders and past-due notices doesn’t work, it probably means it’s time to pick up the phone. 

Did your nerves just kick in?

Why is calling clients for money so uncomfortable? Is there a way to avoid it?

Whether you only have an idea or you're ready to take your business to the next level, finding financing or funding can be a stressful endeavor.  Starting a business often starts with self-funding or bootstrapping, including borrowing money from family or friends, selling your home or maxing out your credit cards. The risk of strained relationships and finances may add to the burden but a passionate business owner will push through it. 

You love what you do, right? Now it's time to sell that idea to an investor. These important steps can help you do that.

If a client has ever asked about your payment options, you have some idea of the multitude and complexity of B2B payments. It's important to be flexible in your payment options, allowing your clients to pay in any way that's easier for them and quicker for  you. Slow-paying clients can kill your business, affecting cash flow, working capital and all that you need to keep producing your goods and services. 

While B2B payment options can be overwhelming, growing businesses must understand the reasons for flexibility and choosing the options that work best for clients.

Tracking and collecting receivables is vital to your business' cash flow. Without a steady cash flow, your business may not have enough working capital for important expenditures. Set up an organized accounts receivable department with dedicated responsibilities to ensure a positive cash flow and success for your business.

Here are three best practices to set up your accounts receivable department for success.

The dream of starting your own business is intoxicating, especially when you're tired of working for someone else's dream.  According to MBO Partners' 2018 State of Independence in America, 4.8 million independent workers are referring to themselves as "digital nomads" and seek the life of working from anywhere.  While the dream has become reality for many, still others are hoping to enter the world of entrepreneurship. As with any grass is always greener scenario, there are ups and downs to owning your own business, not the least of which is a very different sort of stress than you may be used to.

Let's look closer at the causes of stress for entrepreneurs and some tips for handling it. 

Every service business has had one or two clients that fill them with a sense of dread. The business relationship may have started out well and then turned sour. Occasionally, there are those clients that were predictably difficult and that pit in your stomach told you they would be from the very first phone call. Depending on the status of your business and cash flow, you may choose to grin and bear it. You may also wonder how you can prevent future toxic client relationships.

Toxic client relationships can negatively affect service-based businesses. Here's how to deal with them and red flags that would have predicted them.

Within your accounting department, there are responsibilities that can help or hamper your business' bottom line. Today we'll examine a relationship that is closely tied and could be the answer to negative cash flow. While your sales team greatly affects operations, it's the collections of those accounts that really determines the success of your business. When your accounts receivable team is not able to collect and are consistently writing off bad debt, it may be time to turn to your credit manager for answers.

A credit manager's job can affect collections and it's important to understand how.

Cash Flow is the flow of cash or cash-equivalent into and out of the organization, as a measure of a business' liquidity and overall performance, within a certain period of time.

The catch-22 of running a creative, digital marketing or ad agency is that it takes money to make money. While it would seem that bringing on more clients would increase cash flow, the challenge is having enough employees available to handle the client work. And if a client quits your agency, will you be laying off those employees? These are only a few of the thoughts that plague the mind of an agency owner when they're trying to get to sleep at night. Cash is king and must be available to keep the lights on, the employees happy and your clients on board for the long haul.

Tackle these four things to solve the cash flow problem of marketing and ad agencies.