The Importance of Adequate Funding
Integrated Financial Forecasting decreases risk as your business embarks on a journey of commercial challenge, expansion, or both. During the growth phase, every metric escalates from revenue and direct costs to overheads. While prudent expense management can prevent costs outpacing revenue, the sum tied up in outstanding debtors inevitably surges. So, the funds you must secure before debtors settle their dues increase, alongside escalating revenue.
Yet, expansion necessitates investments. For example, you may need to invest in system upgrades, bolster your workforce or enhance digital marketing. Each advancement carries a price tag, and these costs materialise well before you reap returns.
To illustrate, picture doubling your business’s revenue, gross margin, and profit. Achieving this requires consistent yearly revenue growth of 15% over five years – not sporadic growth over four out of five years or three out of five.
Even in scenarios where cost growth mirrors revenue growth, a 15% expansion demands a funding increase of at least 15%. Should you seek to invest in the business, your funding requisites extend beyond this baseline. Cash flow finds equilibrium when you attain your desired growth and stabilise your business’s size, ushering in augmented cash reserves.
When faced with a commercial challenge, the cause could be a major competitor’s entry to market, a downturn in major markets that are significant sources of revenue and margin for your business, or a range of other factors.
Commercial challenge requires short-term or structural additional funding, to maintain critical assets, retain your people, and continue to sell, market, and deliver your value proposition to your marketplace. There is nothing worse than hitting the limits of your current business funding, whilst knowing that additional funding will enable you and your business to both weather the challenge and emerge stronger as it subsides.
Navigating the Path to Funding Your Growth or Challenge
There are three vital steps to take,
- Harness accurate financial insights by regularly producing monthly financial accounts encompassing Profit and Loss, and balance sheets. Without these tangible actuals, updating forecasts remains an elusive task.
- Create an Integrated Financial Forecast (IFF). It is a comprehensive revenue forecast spanning the current and upcoming fiscal years. This forecast should delineate customer and product groups. To create your IFF, draw from your past year’s monthly accounts (preferably two years) to build Profit and Loss balance sheets, cash flow projections, and funds flow forecasts. This holistic IFF, facilitated by tools like Forecast 5*, is a prerequisite for securing additional funding from lenders.
- Satisfying Bank Requisites: Banks’ insistence on an IFF rests on several crucial points,
- Confirmation that you can produce a profit and loss forecast commensurate with the business’s existing size.
- Evidence of net asset growth mirroring revenue escalation in balance sheet trends.
- Insight into cash flow trends outlining the modality and timeline of fund reimbursement.
The Continuous Evolution of Funding and the Role of IFF
While Integrating Financial Forecasting is a cornerstone, its true potency lies in its consistent evolution. When you substitute each forecasted month with actual figures, a dynamic portrayal of progress emerges. A dynamic forecast bolsters your credibility with the bank. It paves the way for increased funding as your business continues to thrive.
Benefits of Growth Funding
Advantage Business clients frequently seek funding, especially as growth becomes an aspiration, or commercial challenge presents. Employing the strategies described above, using best practice forecasting disciplines and knowledge, will help you construct and continue to produce funding forecasts. This process will cement and enhance your relationship with your lender.
The domino effect is profound – as your lender’s contentment grows, your stress levels diminish. Timely expense payments become second nature, and most significantly, your personal remuneration arrives punctually.
A Tool For Financial Stability
Consider the scenario of business owners grappling with insufficient funding due to commercial challenge, or trying to obtain more funding for growth. The threat of employee theft or fraudulent activities looms large. An IFF would swiftly detect such activity, minimising its impact.
For example, a client in the building sector had 30 tradespeople executing chargeable work and appeared to have a profitable enterprise. Suddenly, the business became strapped for cash, necessitating a million-dollar lifeline to continue trading. Employee fraud was the culprit. The business owner, a devoted angler, had to relinquish his cherished custom-built fishing launch to salvage his enterprise.
This bitter experience transformed him into an advocate of Integrated Financial Forecasting. Subsequently, his operational oversight improved drastically. He secured additional funding, and while his original fishing launch remains a goal, he has procured a smaller vessel. This cautionary tale underscores the IFF’s pivotal role in mitigating such costly lessons.
In summary, more than just fraud poses funding hurdles. Growth ambitions may include equipment requisites, IT system upgrades, and marketing ventures – an expansive spectrum of funding needs. Within this environment, an IFF offers a holistic remedy for diverse funding demands.
Embracing Growth Funding
Growth funding and commercial challenge are the business owner’s friend, not your enemy. We encourage our clients to embrace these situations and treat them as a conduit for transformative growth. Underpinned by the tenets of an Integrated Financial Forecasting, businesses flourish, teams thrive, and families prosper. Funding is the lifeblood, but strategic funding is the beacon guiding successful enterprises.
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