Confident Queen Genny

Business Women’s Day is celebrated all around the world on September 22nd to commemorate the day when Hilary A. Bufton Junior founded the American Business Women’s Association on September 22nd, 1949 along with three other business women from Kansas City. This special day celebrates the contribution that women make in the business world and focuses on ways to give women more equality. The first ever Business Women’s Day was celebrated in 1983 when a joint Congressional resolution was passed

Since the 1940s, women have been playing an increasing larger role in the world of business. These days, women have practically equal footing to men when it comes to business and there are a large number of female company owners and bosses.

A number of special events are held on this day, including seminars, meetings and other events that encourage business women from around the world to network and share their experiences

As a woman in business, today I celebrate my achievements and hope you will celebrate your’s too!

My two businesses:- Accountancy and Confidence Building and Happiness
wwww.gennythetrainer.wordpress.com
http://www.confidentqueen.wordpress.com

Thanks to everyone who made it a very happy day and we celebrated lnternational  WooHooBoomBoom Day which I created just as a way of helping to give people a reason to  wake up each morning and smile.

International Women’s Day 2015 Theme: MAKE IT HAPPEN

http://www.internationalwomensday.com

All around the world, International Women’s Day represents an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of women while calling for greater equality.

Make It Happen is the 2015 theme for our internationalwomensday.com global hub, encouraging effective action for advancing and recognising women.

Each year International Women’s Day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8. The first International Women’s Day was held in 1911. Thousands of events occur to mark the economic, political and social achievements of women. Organisations, governments, charities, educational institutions, women’s groups, corporations and the media celebrate the day.

As a business owner you have to make sure you are in control of your finances on a day to day basis, It is no good to wait until the end of your financial year and wait for your accountant to tell you how well your business performed. .

Bookkeeping systemThe first thing you need to have in place is an effective bookkeeping system, so that you will be able to generate useful and accurate accounting reports. You can have a simple manual bookkeeping system or a computerised system. Even when you have a computer system you need to understand how it works and what the reports mean. I am going to attempt to summarise some key points which you may find useful

Cash flow forecastAll businesses should try and monitor their cash flow at least on a monthly basis. Although when money is tight you could do this very week. A cash flow is a simple way of recording when you are due to receive money and when you are due to make payments. It will help you to recognise times when you will need to spend less or even chase your customers for payments. This can be done by creating a simple excel spreadsheet.

Credit controlOn a regular basis you should review your payment terms to your customers. I remember I had a contract which was going to generate a lot of income for my business, but I realised that the company would take 60 days to pay me and meanwhile I had to pay staff and other expenses every month. It meant that, if I just relied on this one customer I would have a serious cash flow problem, so I had to also get smaller contracts where the payment terms where between 7 and 30 days. I also changed my trading terms so that where I had large contracts I would ask for a deposit and for payments to be in stages.

Profit and Loss Account
As a business you should also regularly monitor your profit or loss., which has two parts.

Gross Profit
Gross profit is sometimes referred to as your trading profit. This is calculated slightly differently if you have a service businesses or whether your have stock that you are buying and selling. Simply gross profit is your sales minus the direct cost of what you are selling or providing.

Net ProfitThis is your gross or trading profit minus all your regular expense or overheads such as Telephone, Gas, and Electric etc

Balance sheet – So how much is your business worthOne of the key to business success is to regularly monitor how much your business is worth. Having a positive bank balance does not mean that you have made a profit. An example is a business owner who had £30,000 in their bank account, and forgot that £25,000 of that had to be set aside for payments to supplier’s he owed.

LiabilitiesThis is a list of all the companies or individuals that your owe.. You could also break down your liabilities into two headings, your current liabilities, these are companies you owe but have to pay back within a year e.g HMRC.. The long term liability will be debts that you have to pay over a longer term example a business mortgage.

AssetsThis is a list I things that your own. Fixed Assets – example: Equipment, Motor Vehicles. Current Assets will be things like: a positive bank or cash balance, your debtors – people who are you, and the value of your stock etc

Current minus current liabilitiesThis figure is very useful to calculate as it will tell you whether you have sufficient immediate cash to pay your debts that you have to pay back within a year.

Your networthThis is where you subtract the liabilities from your assets; this amount is your net worth. When someone is referred to as a millionaire, this is the number that people look at. It is possible to have a negative net worth. If you have a negative net worth this means that you owe more money than you have. So as a business you will need to have a financial review and look for ways to increase income and maximise your expenditure.

Please feel free to add your comments and questions

Genny Jones – FMAAT