Five Signs That You Can No Longer Handle Your Small Business Finances
Being a small business owner means you wear a lot of hats; juggling many different responsibilities to keep your business thriving. The pandemic added additional challenges to many small business owners who are still trying to recover from those challenges. Regardless of how big or small your business is, here are five signs that you can no longer handle your own small business finances and what you can do about it.
Late notices and fees
Small business owners are consistently responsible for two sets of bills: their personal bills and their company’s bills. That means twice as many bill payments to keep track of; which ones are due monthly, quarterly, bi-annually, or annually. If you depend on the arrival of a paper bill to remind you a bill is due, you’re putting your company at risk. Missed credit card bills are especially susceptible to being overlooked if you’re not diligent, and not paying on time can result in late notices and fees. While several companies may allow you to do automatic payments, not all do that, and oftentimes small business owners with a tight cash flow prefer to manually make payments to ensure they have the finances to cover the bill payment.
Duplicate bill payments
Just like missed payments, busy business owners can sometimes pay the same bill twice, which means that much less money is on hand for other expenses. How can this happen? Sometimes a bill comes up in a bank’s online bill pay dashboard, and then the same bill may appear via mail or email. If you’re handling your own bill payments, you risk paying that same bill twice. Now the credit card company has that extra money instead of you! That’s never good for your finances.
Lapses in coverage
While missing payments or duplicating credit card payments is not ideal, missed insurance or utility payments can put a small business at true risk. During the pandemic, many utility companies were a bit more forgiving about late or missing utility payments, but those reprieves have now been shelved. If you miss a utility payment, you risk utilities being shut off. The same goes for insurance payments, which can put your small business at risk for additional liability.
Falling for a billing scam
Scammers are getting much more sophisticated in luring people to give them money or personal information. While seniors still tend to be the most at risk for scams, small business owners are finding themselves bombarded with phishing emails and worse. One scam is the unpaid utility bill scam, and busy business owners are especially susceptible to falling for it if they believe they’ve forgotten to pay a bill.
Missed billing errors
It’s important to check that the transactions listed on your bills are accurate so you can take action against fraud or reporting errors. At the very least, you should review your monthly statement for errors but for many small business owners, that’s precious time that simply cannot be spared. However, not doing so can put you and your company at risk for fraud, late charges, or worse.
Bill management help for small business owners
In recent years, there have been more options available for small business owners to manage the task of bill paying. Companies such as Bill Simplicity have made it easy for small business owners to better handle their bills. The benefits of bill paying services are numerous, including:
- Ability to access your bills from anywhere
- Dedicated bill paying assistants
- Ability to invite others to access and review bill payments
- Bill examination and review
- On-time payment guarantee
- Notifications and alerts
The benefits of professional bill payment companies like Bill Simplicity provide a substantial value to small business owners who have better ways to spend their time than dealing with the cumbersome job of managing bill payments and other finances.
If you’re a small business owner in need of bill payment management help, you can try Bill Simplicity out for free! We offer a 90-day free trial so you can see for yourself how much time and headaches a bill paying company can save you!
