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3 Fail-Safe Business Growth Ideas

There isn’t a small to medium sized business that isn’t looking to manageably scale and grow their business. Yet growing a business can be difficult for many companies. If nothing else, attempting to work on the business whilst you’re working in it, is exhausting. However, we have three fail-safe ideas which we always tell our clients to follow if they want to start making meaningful differences in growing their company.

Simple Business Growth Ideas for SMEs

 

  1. Put Your Prices Up!

The majority of clients rarely think to put their prices up, or worse — feel like they can’t. However, everyone else is putting their prices up; so of course, you must also. Price is often tied up with concern over a. worth or b. demand. The truth is, if people want your product or service, they will pay for it. If you are competitive and professional, why shouldn’t you expect to charge the correct price?

Undervaluing and underselling a product or service is not only detrimental to our mental states as we start to believe our worth is akin to the charge amount, but also terrible for our industries. Repeatedly I witness horrifically low hourly rates on agency sites. Not only are these personally unsustainable, but it devalues the sector as a whole. At some point, the people who are initially selling their work for such low rates have to put their costs up to survive, then guess what? Clients will look for the cheaper option – pushing these guys out of the sector as they can no longer afford to remain with these sorts of clients. Very simply, cost your work properly and charge what is required to offer a first-class service or product, the right people or companies will pay for the best. It is these clients or customers you should be looking to align your company alongside.

How to easily raise your prices

Try answering these questions:

  • Are you charging enough?
  • How do you measure your profit margin on each sale you make?
  • What does a 5% increase in sale price do to your profit margin?

Now try two simple exercises:

  • Look at all your services and simply add £50 to them. What does that increase look like? What difference does that make?
  • Now consider your clients: if you have 10 clients bringing in £1,000 per month each, put £50 on each (5% increase). What would £500 extra per month mean to you? See how much more you can earn by adding a slightly greater increase.
  1. Sort out your sales and marketing!

Yup, if no one knows you exist how do you expect to sell anything? Marketing is essential for bringing in new leads to convert into clients or customers.

Have you ever considered how many new clients or customers you actually need to earn the money you’re looking to achieve?

Marketing consultant and founder of Sasa.Marketing, Cat Bowyer, offers three genuinely helpful pieces of advice to companies looking to get better noticed:

A. Do you really know who your customer is?

  • Do you know their motives?
  • What are their communication channels?
  • What concerns do they have?
  • What size are their budgets?

Understanding your customer will ensure you’re investing your marketing spend in the right places.

B. Make sure your marketing objectives reflect your business objectives. Are you looking to achieve growth through new customers, or growth through increased sales per customer? What about your profit margin and sales relationship? Do you have a high margin and low sales or a low margin but high sales?

C. Websites and social media content are great, but you still need to let people know you’re online. Otherwise it’s like having a box of leaflets under the desk. Make sure there’s a mix of campaign and brand awareness activity.

From a bookkeeper’s perspective we look at the figures involved in marketing from a time and value ratio.

  • Do you know your conversion rates? (The conversion rate is the percentage of new leads who take a desired action and become paying customer.)
  • How many leads do you need to generate, so they eventually convert into the desired number of clients or customers?

For example, conversion rate of new leads to paying customers is 5% and you would love to gain two new clients in a month. How many leads do you need to generate? The answer is 40 new leads, which at 5% conversion rate will secure you two new clients.

Marketing is a numbers game! The more people you attract, the more customers or clients you’ll retain! The greater your marketing efforts, the greater your gain.

  1. Capacity

To improve capacity, it is essential your organisation runs efficiently. Rather than taking on more costly staff members, place in better systems and processes that actually work to reduce labour time in all departments.

  • Train your current work force with your new systemisation to effectively utilise your current team, before looking to employ more staff to cope with an increase in demand.
  • To systemise your organisation, you will need a plan. It’s essential you understand your figures and have a visualisation of the profit you require to achieve the kind of growth you’re looking to make. If the figures and goals aren’t attainable or tangible, how do you expect to get great results?
  • To get an idea of how to create a financial model and plan that will work for you, read our article: Financial Clarity – How To Sleep At Night.

 

Business growth doesn’t have to be confusing:

  1. Create a plan
  2. Put your prices up
  3. Market yourself
  4. Improve your efficiency.

However, if you want to chat through these ideas or look at figures you can achieve with a professional bookkeeper, get in touch! Call 01206 700 252 or email hello@clouditbookkeeping.co.uk

App of the Week – AutoEntry

With every task we do, we always ask the question “Is there a better way?” And with day to day bookkeeping – YES, there is! That’s why AutoEntry is our choice of The App of The Week.

AutoEntry simplifies your business’ bookkeeping. It eliminates manual data entry for accountants, bookkeepers and small businesses. It automates the extraction and processing of bills, invoices, expenses and receipts and inputs them directly into your accounting solution.

It is perfect for small and medium businesses across all industries where volume of invoices and receipts is high. No more manual data entry of invoices, receipts, bills or statements. Simply email, scan and upload, or snap with your mobile app.

Features

  • Submit Documents – No more manually inputting invoices, receipts or invoices. AutoEntry extracts the data you need and publishes to your accountancy package.
  • Data Security – AutoEntry employs best practice security policies including encryption across the platform.
  • Full Line Item Capture – AutoEntry captures full line items, including the description, unit price and quantity for each line, with verified accuracy.
  • Item line settings – Apply rules to allow AutoEntry to ‘remember’ specific line item descriptions, or certain words within a description.
  • Purchase Order Matching – AutoEntry syncs captured invoices to matching open purchase orders.
  • Document Storage – Once AutoEntry has posted your data, it creates digital records, so users no longer needs to hang on to large quantities of paper documents, with client data stored securely in the cloud.
  • Integrate seamlessly – It integrates with your accounts software including Xero, QuickBooks Online, Kashflow, Sage 50, Sage One, Reckon, Freeagent and others.

 Additional Features

  • Data extracted & verified – Remove manual errors and rely on quickly searching secured stored, digital copies.
  • Smart analysis – Easily submit invoices, expenses and receipts as you get them, on the go.
  • Auto-publish – Seamless automatic publishing of verified data into your account software.

 How it works

  • Capture and submit documents – Forward emails from suppliers, snap receipts on the mobile app, or scan and upload to the website.
  • Accurate, automated data extraction – Data is processed and verifies before applying remembered Supplier, Tax Code and Category rules.
  • Seamless integrations – The add-ons ensure the seamless automatic publishing of verified data in your account software

Benefits

  • Save time – No more manually inputting invoices, receipts, expenses or statements. AutoEntry extracts the data you need and publishes to your accountancy package.
  • Paperless – With data stored securely in the cloud, there’s no need to store, file, print and copy paper documents anymore.
  • Integrations – Seamless automatic publishing of verified data into your accounting software.
  • Mobile app – Submit invoices, receipts and expenses on-the-go via the mobile app for iOS and Android devices.                                                                                                                       

Pricing

Powered by AI, AutoEntry is becoming increasingly sought after, due to its accuracy, speed and impressive range of in-built features. And, as well as being the smartest solution out there, with its flexible, pay-as-you-use pricing plans, AutoEntry also offers the best value for money. Users only pay for the documents they upload onto the platform, as needed month by month. Adding more companies or employees incurs no extra fees, meaning the whole team can make use of the solution without any fuss or extra expense. Advanced pricing plans available for firms with a large volume of documents.

By using AutoEntry, your businesses gain the following benefits:

  • Reduce the time and cost spent on manual data entry
  • Eliminate human error
  • Improve service turnaround times
  • Submit receipts and invoices on-the-go with its mobile app
  • Drive employee engagement
  • Store data more securely in the cloud

 AutoEntry + Xero

AutoEntry works by capturing and analyzing details from paper documents, before posting this information into a user’s Xero account. By leveraging the solution’s in-built intelligence, the data is entered into the correct fields every time, so there’s no fuss or room for error. 

 

Getting started

  1. Log into your AutoEntry account and go to ‘Company Setting’
  2. Click on the ‘Integrations’ tab and select Xero

Link your Xero with AutoEntry so that when you Publish your receipts or statements, they will directly be uploaded into Xero.

 With AutoEntry, you can say goodbye to piles of paperwork and hours spent typing up data, and get back to what really matters, serving their customers and growing their business. If you need help with setting up AutoEntry or integrating it with Xero we, at Cloudit Bookkeeping, will be happy to assist you.

Are you wasting time processing expenses?

Expense claims are an administrative burden for all businesses. From taxis, flights, meals, supplies, and everything in between – there are countless expenses that need to be reimbursed to the people who work at the company. But it’s amazing how the simple task of reimbursing employees turns into a paper-filled back-office nightmare.

With many apps now available, the task of tracking and recording expenses is becoming easier and more efficient, saving business owners and their accounting team hours in administrative time.

We love Xero and their new Expenses function where employees can capture receipts and submit claims for their work expenses with their mobile device. Let’s have a look at how it works and how it can save you hours in dealing with paperwork.

Xero Expenses:

Xero Expenses works seamlessly with Xero accounting package, and has all the tools and insights small businesses need to efficiently track and manage expense claims. You can now Capture expenses on the go and keep everyone up to date with push notifications.

A better way to manage expense claims in Xero

The Xero Expenses offers small businesses a more efficient way to manage expense claims with:

Expenses Mobile

  • Faster expense captureto reduce data entry through automatic scanning of receipts and eliminating the need to store paper versions.
  • iOS and Android appspush notifications to let businesses, employees and advisors capture, submit and keep up to date on the status of expense claims from anywhere.
  • More flexible user permissionsto give complete control of whocan view, submit, and approve or pay an expense claim for or on behalf of someone else.
  • Simple and intuitive workflowsto make it easy to see where an expense is at, review and approve all unpaid expenses, and create batch payments to get employees paid promptly.
  • Greater insights and powerful analyticsto empower businesses and their advisors with a detailed and real-time understanding of spending habits and patterns.
  • And with multi-currency, relevant notificationsand seamless Xero accounting integration, the new Xero Expenses is smarter, easy to use, and designed to benefit both the small business and their employees.

Advantages

  • Easily capture and submit expenses

You’ll find automatic receipt processing in the Xero Expenses. Small business owners can easily capture and submit expense claims through their mobile device on both iOS and Android. Simply take a quick picture of the receipt and let Xero submit the expense claim. The design and workflow improvements make it easy to capture and submit an expense claim without the paper chase or endless follow up.

  • Eliminate Hidden costs

With reduced data entry and by streamlining everything from submitting expenses through to reconciling transactions, you can eliminate the hidden costs.

  • Better visibility

You can see all the most important information at a glance, so you always know where your expenses and cash flow stand.Expenses chart

  • Enables Growth

Access valuable real-time reporting and powerful analytics to monitor patterns, plan ahead and make fast, informed decisions.

  • Flexible controls and permissions

The user permissions model gives more flexibility and control to the right people at the right time during the expense claims process. This significantly simplifies the workflow and boosts efficiency. That’s because only appropriate people in the business can view, submit, approve or decline, and pay an expense claim.

You can also find a highly-requested feature – the ability for a user (typically an accountant or owner) to submit an expense claim on behalf of other people in the organization. The relevant people will receive real-time push notifications on their mobile phones, which makes it easy for accountants, business owners and employees to keep each other up to date.

  • Easy review and payment

Xero expenses provide you list views and expense drill-down views, which can save you time and let you enjoy better functionality:

  1. The expense claim list immediately gives you a high-level view of your own or your employees’ expense claims in easy-to-consume groupings, such as by status or by employee. The most important information required for review, approval and payment are available at a quick glance. These include status, amount, expense account, description, vendor and date. From the list, just one click will let you drill down into the details of the expense – and provide a view of the receipt, tax details, tracking categories and associated label.
  2. You can view approved expenses claims that are awaiting payment within bills. Xero provide links to and from bills, so you can conveniently view bills associated to expense claim reimbursement side by side with vendor and supplier bills. This allows you to more easily make a decision around who and what gets paid in one simple view.
  • Expense analytics

Quite simply you have to know how your staff spends money and if they follow established rules and policies. An exciting new feature gives small businesses and their accounting partners deeper insights into spending and expense claims that will provide actionable findings. Accountants and business owners have access to a real-time and accurate view of their expenses.

With Xero Expenses function, expense claims are no more a burden. It makes create, review, approve and paying an expense claim not only easy but also quick. It saves a lot of time and provides you the opportunity to enjoy better functionality. If you need any help exploring Xero Expenses or any other Xero features, talk to one of our trained bookkeepers and we will be happy to assist you.