As a small business owner in Singapore, manually managing your business expenses can be daunting. It is a time-consuming and error-prone process that can significantly damage your business's financial health. Fortunately, there are free-to-download online tools and platforms that help businesses digitise, streamline and automate their expense management. Free unified cash flow and expense management platforms such as Elevate, are tools that thousands of businesses are using to more conveniently manage business expenses.
Here's how you can use Elevate and other cash flow management platforms to manage your business expenses more easily:
1. Create a budget plan
The first step to managing your business expenses is to create a budget plan. A good budget plan should be comprehensive and specific to your business needs. It should include income and expenses, including variable and fixed costs, and unexpected or emergency expenses.
Ideally, your budget plan should be realistic and achievable. It should consider the revenue you expect to generate and the expenses you need to cover, and be flexible enough to accommodate changes in your business circumstances, allowing for adjustments as needed. It's also important to review your budget regularly and make necessary adjustments to stay on track with your financial goals.
2. Track your spending patterns
Cash flow management platforms like Elevate offer debit cashback cards and payables service with a helpful spending pattern tracking feature.
This feature allows you to pay, manage, and categorise your business expenses easily. You can easily track your spendings in different areas, such as product materials, transportation, entertainment, and more. This holistic view allows you to make better informed decisions on what expenditures to cut back on or where you can afford to spend more.
In addition, the Elevate Business Cashback Card allows you to earn 1% unlimited cashback from paying business expenses. Unlike other cashback cards in the market that only offer cashback on a few MCC categories, Elevate offers cashback on typical food and travel expenses, as well as business expenses like digital ads (i.e. on Google, Facebook, TikTok), software expenses (i.e. Xero, Hubspot, Adobe, ChatGPT), courier expenses (i.e. Ninjavan, J&T express, Singpost) and many more.
3. Always have emergency fund sources in hand
Emergencies can happen at any time. Having insufficient cash on hand may hamper your business operations significantly. Therefore, keeping aside at least 3-6 months of emergency fund is highly advisable.
For smaller businesses who still require additional funds, getting financing from the banks can sometimes be a struggle. Alternative financing solutions provided by regulated finance solution providers such as Elevate, allow smaller businesses to tap into a revolving credit line facility that is accessible, convenient and reliable.
With a quick disbursement process and a short approval time, you can easily access credit whenever needed, whether for urgent situations or additional working capital for your projects. Plus, you can enjoy up to 55 days of interest-free, and it refreshes with every timely repayment! Such an advantage will help you save more money, ensuring you always have enough for rainy days.
4. Automate wherever possible
As a small business owner, you are likely counting on yourself or a small team to run your daily operations. To maximise the time and resources of the team, it is best practice to automate any process that can be automated, so that you can focus your precious time on what truly matters – growing your business.
Your payable and receivables process are key areas where a chunk of automation and time-savings can happen, if the right tools are used. Leverage tools that can schedule your outgoing payables to suppliers ahead of time and on a recurring basis (if required). Elevate's Payables scheduling feature is a powerful tool that automates your payment process. With this feature, you can set up payment schedules in advance, saving you valuable time and reducing the risk of errors.
For receivables, there are a growing number of tools that can help you save time collecting payments. The receivables process is a tedious and tiresome one – we sure do understand – especially when it comes to chasing for late payments from customers. Fret not, because now, with tools like Elevate Receivables, you can send digital payment requests to customers directly from your phone or web app, enable automatic payment reminders to ensure customers pay timely, and offer credit card payment method which rewards customers for their payments to you – what that means is that customers get to earn card rewards when paying you.
By automating your payables and receivables payment process with Elevate, you can focus on other aspects of your business, knowing that your payments are being processed efficiently and effectively. Using an all-in-one platform like Elevate to manage your business expenses has many advantages. You get a consolidated view of all incoming/outgoing cash flow, which helps you make informed decisions about your business. Furthermore, its automation can help you save time and reduce errors.
Leverage flexible and affordable pricing
Furthermore, Elevate also offers competitive pricing and a flexible repayment schedule, which helps you manage your cash flow more effectively. So, why not try it now and see how Elevate can help you manage your business expenses more efficiently?
