The Importance of Cash Flow Management
Cash flow refers to the movement of cash coming into and going out of your business, so cash flow management is the planning, tracking, and controlling involved in ensuring your cash flow is stable and can support your business’s needs.
When you own a business, money comes in through debt (like a loan) or equity, along with revenue generated from sales. But as you’re making money, you’re also spending it. Cash goes out as you build your inventory and cover monthly expenses like debt service, buildings, vehicles, equipment, technology, and salaries.
The key to cash flow management is optimizing your accounts receivable (the money you collect for your product or service) with your accounts payable (the money you owe to vendors and suppliers). Ideally, your customers will pay you as quickly as possible and you’ll pay your expenses as slowly as you can.
It may sound easy, but this is actually one of the most challenging aspects of owning a business. The good news is, we’re here to help. Below are a few of the services we offer to help streamline operations and manage cash flow.
Online Invoicing and Payments Collection
When it comes to running your business, you want to make sure it’s easy for your customers to pay you—and for you to follow up with your customers if they don’t submit that payment.Autobooks is an online solution that lets you send invoices and collect payments. You can also easily upgrade to add accounting and reporting features that let you keep track of your business directly inside online and mobile banking, where you do the rest of your banking.
An added bonus: when you do your business banking with United, you get free access to Autobooks. This is a great solution for smaller, on-the-go businesses because you can easily send and accept payments right from your mobile device. Autobooks is also ideal for non-profits—you can embed a donation link on your webpage to easily collect donations through your Autobooks account.
Point of Sale Merchant Services
If you’ve ever been to a restaurant and paid your bill right from the device your server used to take your order, or spun a screen around to insert your credit card at a fast-casual restaurant, you’ve experienced a point of sale (POS) system, or merchant services—another one of the ways we help businesses easily collect payments and manage their cash flow.United partners with Clover Solutions to offer our customers an all-in-one POS system to accept payments and manage inventory, employee schedules, payroll, and more. It also has built-in security and fraud prevention, making it a safe choice for your business.
Lending and Credit Cards
Cash flow management is a delicate balance—you’re relying on others to make on-time payments so that you can turn around and cover your expenses on time. But there will be times when that balance is disrupted, so making sure you have access to credit is vital to keeping your business running.A business credit card can help you bridge the gap when you need extra cash for an emergency expense or to cover day-to-day expenses. When you partner with United, you get access to free online expense reporting tools, along with flexible rewards. Plus, there’s no fee for additional employee cards.
Business loans can help you cover larger purchases, and we even have options to speed up the loan process (you know what they say—time is money). For example, if you own a construction company that relies on trucks to move equipment and materials to job sites and one of your trucks stops running, you can’t wait weeks to buy a new one. Every day that truck sits in the garage is a day of lost revenue. An express loan can help you purchase a new truck quickly so you can keep cash flowing into your business.
Payment Fraud Protection
The best offense is a good defense. That holds true when it comes to preventing payment fraud at your business. A fraudster gaining access to your accounts is a surefire way to disrupt your business operations. Therefore, having solutions in place to protect against this risk is an important component of a comprehensive cash flow management plan.If you write checks or have ACH debits posted to your business checking accounts, Positive Pay services are a great way to detect and prevent payment fraud from occurring by putting you in control before the payments are processed. Customizable permissions and access provide stronger internal controls, and Positive Pay can save you money by limiting potential losses and legal fees with the timely return of unauthorized items.
United Community offers comprehensive treasury management solutions that can be tailored to your cash flow management needs. Whether it’s managing payables and receivables, information reporting, or fraud protection, we have a specialized team dedicated to finding solutions that will help you streamline operations and improve cash flow management.
