This joyous season might be your peak business period, or the contrary. With that, it is essential to plan well to ensure that your organisation is well prepared for it.
You might find that some debtors might attempt to postpone their payments until the next year. To ensure that you have a healthy cash flow in January and February, you need to be assertive in your debt collection before Christmas.
With the holiday season approaching, it is also a good time to go over your staff annual leave entitlements, especially if January is when the business winds down. This will help in decreasing any accrued annual leave liabilities of your employees.
Remember, even if you’re flexible in accommodating your staff requirements, you should remember that the accrued leave liabilities will become a future cost. Hence, before they accumulate up to a significant amount, you should remember to review them continuously throughout the year.
It is very important to not neglect your stock management, especially if you have a retail business. You should keep a close tab on your stock movements and try to minimise the volume by Christmas.
On the other hand, your business might pick up in January, then you would need to ensure that you have ample stock available for sale or raw materials for production to enable your business to start off smoothly. It is wise to plan ahead to get hold of what you need before your suppliers start their holidays, instead of waiting for them to return from it.
Don’t forget to plan out your cash flow for this festive period, particularly when businesses are trading at a loss to cater for the Christmas sales. This will significantly affect your cash in hand when January arrives. Make sure you have accessible cash reserves. You might want to consider focusing on profitable sales generation between now and Christmas to help ensure there is adequate cash flowing in.