How do you achieve healthy cash flow in your print business?

9 July 2024

Cashflow

Every sign and print business has to attempt this difficult balancing act: making sure enough money comes in to invest in your print business. This is not an easy process, just think of late payments, inefficient invoicing processes and difficulties in managing purchase invoices. In this article, we discuss some of the things you can address to monitor cash flow.

Know who you are dealing with

It is crucial to keep a close eye on your customers' financial situation so that you do not run any financial risks yourself. You can do this by simply working with a reliable CRM system in which you keep track of all customer-related information, including VAT numbers. But before accepting new customers, it is wise to do a credit check first. We ourselves work with Creditsafe, a leading supplier of business information. This integration ensures that you always have insight into current customer data. And therefore also see which customer is actually virtually bankrupt. By proactively acting on this information, your print business is protected against financial risks.

Increase your profit margin, don't just focus on sales

To increase your profit margin, it is vital to know your cost of production. Once you know this, you can take a margin on it. But if you don't know the cost, you risk losing profit. An ERP software such as MultiPress supports you in calculating your production cost and production time. This is important, because if you don't know this, your machines will be very poorly utilised. And these cost a huge amount of money, so every second they are idle represents a huge problem. In short, having a business software not only saves you a lot of time, but also increases profitability and improves competitiveness.

Get invoices paid faster

One of the pillars of your print business' financial health is fast and accurate invoicing. And you don't pursue that with an outdated system, as it hinders smooth transactions. However, you can do that with a business software such as MultiPress, which collects all the necessary data, automates the invoicing process and immediately sends invoices as PDFs via e-mail. This then also seamlessly integrates electronic invoicing such as XML or UBL, allowing customers to easily enter their digital invoices into their financial systems. This not only ensures that invoicing runs smoothly, but also that it is future-proof.

Using various online payment methods not only speeds up internal invoice processing, but simplifies the entire payment process for your customers:

  • You create the optimal user experience with comprehensive reports, smart checkout, recurring payments and smart routing, among others.
  • You have all the financial information at a glance and can see the status of all outgoing and incoming invoices.

Be smart about outgoing payments

Planning ahead is essential to understand your financial situation and anticipate future challenges. Think of adjusting payment terms, efficiently managing incoming and outgoing invoices and planning investments at strategic times, ... With a business software such as MultiPress, you can easily monitor payments. Sending reminders is also set up fully automatically:

  • The system tracks the payment status of each invoice and proactively alerts when a customer exceeds the payment term. This reduces the risk of defaults and ensures a streamlined financial workflow. And so financial risks remain a distant memory.
  • Payment monitoring in MultiPress ensures that all data is managed centrally and also stays up-to-date. As a result, you always have an up-to-date overview of the status of payments. And you can identify payment arrears or balance overruns in good time.
  • There is also a link to your financial software package, allowing you to easily import the latest payments. As a result, all changes can also be made immediately in MultiPress.

The planning tools in MultiPress can also support you. This makes it possible to analyse historical data, predict your cash flow and identify potential bottlenecks in your print business. This approach also enables you to act proactively and make financial decisions, optimising cash flow.

Optimise your administration

If you do most of the above steps manually, you will only last a few weeks. You will incur delays, make mistakes and work inefficiently. Moreover, entering and checking accounts manually is also labour-intensive. Therefore, invest in a software adapted to your business: the print and sign business. Choose a software tailored to your business, but which has already proven that it can grow with your ambitions; after all, you don't change ERP/MIS software every three years...

Optimise your cash flow with MultiPress and take your financial processes to the next level!