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    Tag: capitalise

    Five tips to boost your business credit score

    Posted on by Rebecca Campbell

    Over recent months, it has been clear to see how inflation, interest rates and the energy crisis have affected our clients and their businesses, and in particular, their cashflow. One proven way for business owners to tackle these issues is to work on improving their business credit score to demonstrate that they are trustworthy, credible, and financially healthy.

    Cloud accounting expert Jill Morris, and partnership manager at Capitalise, Olivia Thomas, sat down to discuss business credit scores and how to boost your credit score in our latest blog.

    What is a business credit score?

    A business credit score is a measure of the financial credibility of your business, and is made up of various factors, including how much debt the business has, and most recently filed company accounts. Your business credit score allows lenders to understand the financial situation of a business and the level of financial risk involved in working with them. Having strong trade credit and supplier credit limits can help businesses secure investment and funding opportunities and negotiate better supplier terms.

    Five tips to boost your business credit score

    1. Pay on time

    Paying on time, whether this be direct payments or paying off suppliers, will improve a business’ credit score, as well as demonstrate to potential investors that you can be trusted. Any missed payments can reduce your credit score and even lead to a County Court Judgement (CCJ) which could stay on your business’ account for six years – heavily impacting the ability to apply for credit.

    2. Regularly check your credit score

    Regularly check your business credit score to not only track progress and measure growth, but also review any missed payments, areas to improve and unusual transactions. PM+M offers access to Capitalise for Business, giving businesses a deeper insight into their score, and the ability to credit check customers.

    3. Separate business and personal accounts

    Keeping personal and business accounts separate is very important, allowing you to track your business’ progress more easily and avoid your business credit score being affected by any personal debt or missed payments in your personal account. Remember, it’s just as important to keep your personal accounts healthy and strong by paying your personal bills on time as these can affect your business credit score if you’re the director.

    4. Avoid closing accounts

    Business owners may be tempted to close an account and start again – however, closing an account will impact your business credit score, as any missed payments or negative credit will still be visible. Essentially, the longer a credit history is, the more a credit score will improve. Closing an account may actually hinder progress and even reduce your score.

    5. Reduce the number of applications

    When it comes to looking for funding, making too many applications in a short period of time can negatively impact your business credit score if the lender is conducting hard searches, and will still leave a trace on your credit profile if the lender is conducting soft searches. Multiple applications could also indicate to lenders and/or investors that the business could be struggling financially, which could lead to applications being denied, loss of investment, or high interest rates on any funding agreed. If you are looking to secure funding, speak to us to ensure you are approaching the right lenders, and avoiding damaging your credit score with too many applications.

    Credit review service

    Through our partnership with Capitalise, PM+M offer access to Capitalise for Business which gives businesses a deeper insight into their score and what’s impacting it, plus the ability to credit check their customers. As part of this, you can access the Credit Review Service which can help improve your business credit score and limit by providing more up to date financials for Experian to review. There is a guarantee that if your business credit score doesn’t improve whilst using the service, you get your money back.

    Find out more by watching our recent webinar in partnership with Capitalise on managing your business credit score and mitigating risk to your cash flow – click here.

    To hear more about how Capitalise for Business and their credit review service could help you, get in touch by emailing cloudaccounting@pmm.co.uk.

    How Cloud Accounting could help your business in a recession

    Posted on by Katie Heaton

    The pandemic proved the importance of cloud accounting, with many businesses closing their doors and going fully remote, there was an influx of enquiries within our cloud accounting team. With many businesses wanting the ability to seamlessly shift to remote work and keep their accounting function running perfectly even when employees aren’t in the office, cloud accounting was the solution. Here we explore how the same advantages may apply to recessions.

    Xero

    Xero is an entirely cloud based accounting software for small businesses. It performs accounting functions such as invoicing, payroll etc. and also allows for direct business bank feeds to streamline bookkeeping. Xero has some great standard features such as business snapshot which is a dashboard style report, displaying performance measures to help you understand the financial position of your business. Using your customisable dashboard, you can discuss your businesses financial health with your adviser quickly.

    Using automated daily bank feeds and tracking categories you can keep a close eye on any areas of your business that may be more cost sensitive and very quickly see what is included within each nominal – even drilling down to a copy of the original purchase invoice within a few clicks of a button.

    As Xero platinum advisers, our cloud team work closely with Xero every day, offering expert advice in converting from other accounting platforms to performing Xero health checks and making recommendations for software integrations that will help improve efficiency and cut processing time for finance teams. Prices for Xero start at £28pm.

    Dext

    Dext is our no.1 recommend app integration with Xero. Dext is a software application that allows business owners to electronically capture and store receipts, invoices, and other supporting documents which a business depends on to ensure they keep accurate and secure financial records. Dext removes the hassle of manual entry.

    Dext also has the ability to fetch supplier information using API links, taking the stress out of uploading information out of the equation too.

    Telleroo

    For many businesses, making manual payment runs takes a large amount of time. From choosing which invoices need paying to manually inputting bank information to online banking – Telleroo takes care of all of that for you. Your supplier or contacts financial information (payment details) are all input into Xero, bills are then selected in Xero using payment due reports and marked as paid by Telleroo – this sends an automatic payment run to Telleroo for approval (with copies of the invoices if also using Dext) and with a very swift approval process the payment run will be made. No more manual bank payments!

    Approvalmax

    With more remote working and digitalised finance functions, Approvalmax acts as your approval stamp at a managerial level except it’s completely digital. As businesses look to tighten their spending in certain areas, Approvalmax allows for a seamless PO and PI matching process, with a completely bespoke approval matrix available.

    Capitalise

    We have partnered with Capitalise to enable an easy funding search application process which can be completely managed by us. Capitalise allows us to do one application to most high street and other less traditional lenders for a range of finance products – whether a simple bank loan or a more complex invoice financing facility, our relationship with Capitalise and the connection with cloud accounting software allows us to search for the right products if needed.

    Capitalise also has a credit improvement service which aims to help strengthen any companies with a less than average credit rating, which in turn will allow for better terms for any lending if required.

    Futrli

    Futrli predict helps prepare short or long-term forecasting and reporting using all your accounting data. You can see daily whole business analysis across all customers and suppliers. Follow profit and cashflow, and debt to discover how you’re tracking to your plan. It also has the ability to create and manage reporting boards and KPI packs, making reporting easy and accessible. Feeling the cashflow pinch? Futrli can track daily cashflow with pinpoint accuracy, understand the optimum time to pay suppliers to get the best cashflow for your business and see the impact of early or late customer payments.

    Futrli can also help speed up the budgeting processes with instant smart budgets using algorithms.

    How could this help in a recession?

    Cloud accounting makes it easier to predict and access the relevant information – not to mention the fact that cloud-based services tend to cost less than yesterday’s on-premises solutions and drive more value too. For everything that companies strive to do during recessions, such as cut costs, stay agile, get innovative – cloud-based software serves the agenda.

    Our experienced cloud team are proactively helping many businesses digitalise their finance functions by converting and implementing different software and applications to streamline the finance functions of all sized businesses.

    Get in touch

    For further information or advice on the above cloud-based options or any general guidance on what may be the right options to ensure your business is well equipped to survive a recession, please get in touch with our cloud team manager, Rosie Cooper, using the button below.  

    A comment to note that the article does not constitute personalised advice and that advice should be sought before taking any action.