Finance & Cash Flow
Financial trouble in a small business usually starts with habits, not bad luck.
Most small businesses do not fail because of one big mistake. They drift: the business pays for family expenses, bills are paid when remembered, records are updated before the tax date, and nobody knows the true position until a payment bounces. This session teaches a short set of routines that an owner can start in the same week and keep up without a finance team.
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Discipline is what turns profit into money you can actually use.
Many owners are good at selling and weaker at the unglamorous side: recording, reconciling, paying on time, and keeping business money apart from household money. None of this is difficult. It is simply easy to postpone, because the cost of skipping it is invisible until a bank asks for statements, a notice arrives or a month ends with no cash.
Discipline is not about spending less. It is about knowing where the money is going and deciding in advance, so that decisions are not made in a panic. The routines in this session are deliberately small, because a small routine kept for a year does more than a perfect system abandoned in a fortnight.
What the session covers
30 topics across 6 areas. Six routines, each with an exercise the owner can do the same week.
Separate the Business from the HouseholdThe foundation for everything else.5
- Why one account for everything hides the real position
- A separate business bank account, and why it matters for records
- A rule for taking money out, and for putting money in
- What to do about past spending that was mixed
- How this affects a future lender, auditor or buyer
How you structure a proprietorship's own drawings has tax implications. Check with a chartered accountant.
Pay Yourself on PurposeAn owner's pay is a business decision.5
- Why taking whatever is left leads to unstable decisions
- A fixed monthly amount as a starting point, reviewed at fixed intervals
- Keeping a clear line between owner's pay and business profit
- What happens in months when the business cannot afford it
- Taking professional advice on the right way to pay yourself
The Weekly Money HourOne hour, same time, every week.5
Participants design their own hour and book it in their calendar before leaving. A short, regular look is worth more than a long, occasional one.
- Money in: what came in and what is still owed to you
- Money out: what is due this week and next
- Balance: how much is actually in the bank
- Entering bills and receipts before they pile up
- Writing down one decision or question for the week
Due Dates and Paying on TimeLate is expensive, and avoidable.5
- A single calendar for tax, statutory and supplier due dates
- Which dates depend on your business type and turnover; ask your accountant
- Paying suppliers by the agreed date, and why delay has costs
- That payments to micro and small suppliers have legal time limits and may have tax consequences, so ask a chartered accountant about them
- Reminders that do not depend on memory
Due dates and rules change. The session shows how to build the calendar; the dates themselves come from your accountant and official sources.
Approve and Record Every RupeeEven if the business is only you.5
- A simple rule for who may spend and how much
- Saving bills and receipts, and a place to keep them
- Recording cash spending, since it disappears fastest
- Reconciling the books with the bank statement monthly
- What to do when you find a mistake
Guarding Against Temptation and PressureWhere good intentions most often break down.5
- Spending on appearance before the business can afford it
- Lending to friends and relatives out of business funds
- Using the next customer's advance to settle old bills
- Signing guarantees or taking informal loans in a hurry
- Telling yourself or your partner the truth about the numbers
No judgement. These are the situations that catch most owners at some point.
What participants leave with
- A weekly money hour checklist they have adapted for their own business
- A due-date calendar template to fill in with their accountant
- A simple approve-and-record rule for spending
- A thirty-day plan with one small habit per week
- A short list of questions to ask their chartered accountant
What this session is not
- Tax, accounting or legal advice for an individual business
- A software demonstration or a recommendation of any app
- A lecture on spending less
- A substitute for a bookkeeper or a chartered accountant
Who teaches it
- Chartered accountants and bookkeepers who work with small businesses
- Finance practitioners with experience of small-business records
- Owners who run their own books and will describe honestly what works
How the session runs
Two hours, in a small group. The practitioner introduces each routine with a short, made-up example and then participants do the matching exercise: draft their weekly money hour, list their upcoming due dates, write their own spending rule. They leave with a plan to start the habits that week. The session gives general education and does not replace individual accounting, tax or legal advice.
What your students leave with
- A separate business account and a simple rule for moving money between it and personal life
- A fixed weekly money hour and a checklist for what to look at in it
- A decided monthly amount the owner pays themselves, as a starting point to review with an accountant
- A calendar of tax, statutory and supplier due dates, with a reminder habit
- A simple way to approve and record spending, even in a one-person business
- A plan for the first thirty days of new habits, with one small step for each week
Scheduled sessions
Nothing scheduled yet
Sessions are arranged with a college once a date is agreed. Ask us and we will find the right person for it.
A student rather than a college? See what is coming up, or ask your placement team to host this.
Small money habits, kept every week, are what a business is built on.
Tell us who your students are and what stage they are at. Sessions are free for participants.