Year-end & cash flow

Micro business owners squeeze vital financial tasks into a few hours per month

 

Owners of micro business and sole traders are either woefully underestimating the time they take each month to conductfinancial tasks, or are failing to carry out crucial financial and administrative objectives, new research has concluded.

A study from management software firm Kashflow has found that Britain’s 5.3m micro company owners and one-man bands collectively spend 2.5m working days each month completing financial management tasks the equivalent of 3.6 hours per business owner.

The research considered the number and scale of the financialtasks micro owners and sole traders would need to complete, with the extensive list seemingly impossible to complete in such a short time.

In less than a day each month, micro business owners and sole traders claimed to be fitting in financial tasks as different and as complicated as creating and issuing customer invoices, chasing late payments, recording income and expenditure, reviewing corporation tax liabilities, paying salaries, profit and cash flow forecasting, reviewing supplier costs, reviewing capital investment and growth opportunities, and many more.

The study revealed some surprising findings about the perceived capabilities of the owners at some of the UK’s smallest firms, when it comes to management and financial tasks.

Of the hundreds of micro business owners and sole traders surveyed, almost a third admitted that managing their company finances left them feeling stressed, yet only six per cent rated their ability to manage finances as not good.