A company’s cash conversion cycle is the amount of time it takes for money spent on production, sales efforts, and inventory to convert into cash. Calculating this cycle can help you manage your company’s cash flow. In most businesses, inventory is purchased with credit, becoming the company’s accounts payable. That inventory is then purchased on credit by customers, becoming accounts receivable. Once the company collects cash from customers and pays for equipment, inventory, and property, the cash conversion cycle is over. By determining how many days your company’s cycle takes, you can strategize ways to speed it up and get cash faster.

One important way to manage cash flow is to keep strict accounts receivable policies and make sure your customers pay on time. Send out invoices as soon as possible and wait until you’ve received payment to ship merchandise. For especially expensive transactions, consider credit checks to ensure the customer will be able to pay. Send out notices to remind customers of remaining balances, and don’t hesitate to charge late fees. Creating an accounts receivable aging report for long-term customers will help you monitor their payment patterns, so you can see which customers may need reminders to pay.

It’s important for cash to flow in as quickly as possible – you should be getting paid quicker than you are paying. Pay your bills with electronic funds transfers so you can pay on the exact due date, instead of sending money days in advance. Always pay vendor bills before deadlines, but wait as long as possible without paying late. Ask for flexible payment plans. Just be careful – it’s important to maintain your company’s credit, or you can risk damaging your ability to eventually expand.

Using inventory management software will help you keep track of your profits and how much you are selling. A company typically ties up the majority of its money in goods and inventory, work in progress, and raw materials. Without inventory management software, tracking it all can be very difficult. There are many options online that can help you manage orders, inventory, and shipments. Once you have this information, you will be able to determine what is and isn’t selling. This will allow you to make better decisions about ordering inventory. Also, business self-help websites can keep you informed about successful strategies.

Learning to manage your cash conversion cycle and understanding your accounts receivable and payable is a crucial part of running a small business. Inventory management software can increase cash flow and keep your business in the black.

Assess Your Limiting Beliefs

Money is one of those things you probably have strong opinions about. You may be aware of these opinions. You may not. Close analysis is required. Make a list of all of the things you believe about money. Write them down in sentence form.

For example, do you believe you have to work hard to get rich? Add to that list all of the things your friends, parents and relatives said about money when you were growing up. For example, did you hear your parents or grandparents say “money is a sin”? Don’t analyze your thoughts just yet. Simply write down what you believe and what you heard growing up.

Now, one sentence at a time, take a look. Do you really believe that sentence about money? Why do you believe it? Why not? What experiences support or disprove that belief?

It may take you several days to work through this list of beliefs. That’s okay. At the end of the list you will have a new belief system about money. Because chances are the things you thought you believed about money aren’t really true. For example, not everyone has to work hard to get rich. Some people are lucky. Some win the lottery. Some inherit money. Embrace these new beliefs. Use them to support your money habits and a positive mindset.

Affirmations

Affirmations are positive statements. For example, “Everything I do returns profits to me.” Use affirmations to help eliminate negative thoughts about money. You’ve just explored your limiting beliefs. Hopefully you’ve eliminated them. However, it can take time to erase them from your psyche. Use affirmations to replace your negative thoughts with positive ones.

When you recognize a negative money thought, replace it with a positive one. Write it down and repeat it several times a day. Becoming conscious of your thoughts about money is the first step. Changing them to positive thoughts is the powerful second step.

Good Habits

Finally, embrace your affirmations and new beliefs to create good money habits. These don’t have to be major life changes. Small changes can make a big difference. For example, start setting aside $25 each week in a savings account. This small step can reap large rewards. Start paying off your credit cards by adding $100 to each payment. Again, a small step but one that can really make you feel positive about your money.

Money is a part of life. Changing the way you think about it can change your life. Take a look at your beliefs. Explore your thoughts. And embrace new habits that make a difference.

#1 Create Networking Goals

What do you want to achieve with your networking efforts? For example, do you want to create partnerships with other business owners? Do you want to broaden awareness of your brand or drive traffic to your website? Do you want to increase credibility? Decide what your goals are and then you can move onto the next step which is to plan how you’re going to achieve your goals.

#2 Choose Your Tactics

Once you have your goals, plan how you’re going to achieve them. This step involves two considerations:

1. How much time do you have to commit to networking?
2. What tactics best support your goals?

For example, if you want to generate partnerships with other business owners you might choose to attend a local networking meeting each month. This may easily fit into your available time and schedule. If your goal is to drive traffic to your website, then you may choose to focus on social networking sites. This tactic may require a daily time commitment of an hour or more which may or may not fit into your goals.

#3 Take Good Care of Your Contacts

Regardless of the goals you have, it’s important to take great care of your new contacts. Touch base with them on a consistent basis. Provide value. Send information, notes and clippings to professional contacts. Send articles, videos and valuable email messages to social networking contacts. The more you take care of your new contacts, the more value they’ll provide you. Your networking efforts will be worth your time and energy.

#4 Turn Your New Contacts Into More New Contacts.

Networking has the power to multiply your efforts. For example, you might create a referral program. Each contact or customer who sends you a new customer might receive a reward. Also, the more value you provide, the more likely your new contacts will tell others about your business. Put your networking contacts to work for you.

#5 Schedule Your Networking

Networking can take over your life. However, you can gain control of it by simply adding your networking time into your schedule. Plan time for it so you can stay in charge. Also consider using technology to help you maximize your time. Email groups and autoresponder can help you send messages to new contacts. Social networking applications can also help you schedule posts in advance.

Taking charge of your networking is as simple as setting goals, creating a plan and scheduling your tactics. Use your resources to maximize your time.

#1 Create a three tier system. The first tier will be things you access daily. These items need to be close at hand. When you’re sitting at your desk they should be within easy reach. The second tier items will be things you access weekly or monthly. These items don’t need to be within an easy reach. However, they should be readily accessible in your office and easy to find.

The third tier items will be items you access less frequently. You might only access them once a year. These items can be tucked away in a closet or storage bin outside of your office. An example of a third tier item might be tax returns from previous years.

#2 Clear your clutter. Before you begin organizing your office, clear the clutter. Remove everything from your desk. Don’t stuff it in a drawer either! Sort through the items on your desk and pay attention to the types of items you have. For example, if you have receipts, unopened mail and bills then these are three categories you’ll need to create a storage solution for.

#3 Organize your equipment. Most offices have an abundance of equipment. You might have a printer, a fax machine, a telephone and a computer. Many of these items don’t need to be on your desk. Consider creating an office center where all of your equipment is located. Then all of your wires are in one place instead of dangling all over your office. Also consider plugging all your electronics into a power strip. Then you can turn off the strip at night and save money on electricity.

#4 Use a filing cabinet, or two. Your filing cabinet system can be part of your tier system. Tier one files can be positioned right next to your desk. Tier two files can be in the back of your office, perhaps doubling as a shelf to hold your printer or other piece of office equipment. Tier three items can be filed in a storage box and packed in a cupboard or closet to save space in your office.

#5 File logically. Create a filing system that makes it super easy to find what you need. Label everything. Consider using both a category label and a date label. For example “taxes” and “First Quarter 2009″

#6 Create a desktop system. In addition to creating a filing system for your tier one, two and three items you’ll want a system for some desktop items. For example, where do you put bills that need to be paid? Tucking them away in a file cabinet might not be a good idea. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Instead, consider using a desktop filing system as well.

However, you’ll want to create a habit of putting things where they belong. You’ll also want to routinely clean out these trays so they don’t spill over onto your desktop.

#7 Use calendars, planners, and lists. Part of an organized and productive office includes task management. Find a location for your calendar, planner and lists. Ideally this will be within reach of your desk. A desktop calendar for example will help you stay on track and create positive and productive habits.

Organizing your home office for maximum productivity is really a matter of creating systems and habits. Use the tier system for maximum productivity and efficiency.

Let’s take a look at how you can achieve this resolution and stay passionate and focused in the coming year…

#1 Analyze why you’ve struggled to stay passionate and focused

Are you working too hard? Are your goals not being met? Are you struggling? Any or all of these things can affect your ability to stay passionate and focused.

Before you can make a change it’s important to assess what has gone wrong in the past. Spend some time contemplating why you’ve struggled to stay passionate in your business. It’s entirely possible that you’ve chosen the wrong business for your personality and interests. That’s okay. The New Year is the perfect time to make things right.

#2 Identify habits you’d like to adopt to support your resolution

A steady system of positive and supportive habits will help you make a change for the better. For example, one of the reasons you may have trouble staying focused could be because you don’t have a quiet workspace.

You can create a workspace and then create the habit of spending time there each day. If you’re trying to be productive from the kitchen table or living room couch, it may be difficult. Create habits that support your success.

If you’re struggling to stay passionate about your business because you’re overloaded with tasks you dislike, outsource the tasks you can unload. Then create a habit of managing the uninteresting tasks and then rewarding yourself with some fun. By adding a positive reward to the task, you can approach it with a better attitude.

#3 Slow and steady wins the race

One of the reasons most New Year’s Resolutions don’t stick is because people expect too much right away. The secret to achieving your goals is to manage them in smaller, bite-sized chunks. Break your goal down into smaller and more manageable steps. Determine why you’re not passionate about your business. Identify why you’re unfocused. Create smaller goals to help you change your habits.

Embracing positive habits and making lifestyle changes will help ensure you achieve your New Year’s goal. Your business will be much more successful when you can embrace it passionately. It’ll be more fun too!

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life’s setbacks — including death itself — at the university’s 114th Commencement on June 12, 2005.

The idea that the cyclical nature of the economy makes recessions a great time for entrepreneurs goes as follows; the economy runs in ups and downs. Right now it’s down, but it won’t be forever. It will recover, likely to a point even stronger than it once was. Why is this good for entrepreneurs? Because starting a business now, while the economy is down, means that your business will be established when the economy recovers, making the timing perfect for explosive growth or even better, to sell!

In theory, this is actually a fairly valid point. After all, if you start a business in a boom and your growth is strong, when the next recession hits, you’ll have to hold on to that struggling business and deal with all the problems established business deal with in recession, and hope for the best. If you want to sell, you’ll either have sell in a buyers market like no other, or you’ll just have to wait! However, if you start your business in a recession, it’s the opposite.

Your costs are low because you’re still small. You won’t have to worry about layoffs and massive cost cutting, because you’re haven’t incurred enough major operating costs or enough staff to make it necessary. If you can grow your business a bit and establish yourself in the hard times, when the good times roll out again (and most people decide to launch start-ups), you’ll be in good shape to take advantage of all the associated opportunities. If you decide to sell, you’ll be selling an established business in a time when money is flowing and the market is in your favor as a seller.

The unfortunate part is that it’s not as easy to launch a successful start-up when the collective chips are down. Capital is hard enough to come by when the economy is doing alright, let alone when people are being squeezed. Angels and VC firms won’t be investing as much as they would be in good times, and sources of funding closer to home like friends and relatives will probably be even more dried up.

Boot-strapping will be an absolute necessity, and money will be extremely tight. It won’t be easy to get off the ground and get going, but it’s far from impossible. So if you’ve got an idea on the shelf that you thought you’d leave for a sunnier time, dust off and seriously analyze whether or not you could get it going, even in a limited form, with the means available to you now. If the answer is yes, it could result in a serious advantage down the road.

The second argument the author of the article made in favor of our current situation was related to hiring and the amount of talent available. So it goes, and logically so, the massive amounts of layoffs that have been going on have freed up a lot of very talented people from the jobs that once made them inaccessible to you. Likewise, the lack of jobs out there right now due to companies restricting hiring have lowered the compensation expectations of this newly available talent to levels far below the salaries they’d demand in prosperous times.

What does this add up to? Talented, cheap, available professionals who may very well now be in your price range, which they weren’t four years ago, and probably won’t be four years from now. So hunt them down. Best case scenario, your business takes off and when times get good, you’ll be able to afford their inflated expectations. Worst case scenario, you won’t be able to afford them, they’ll leave, but you’ll still have had a top notch professional working for your business for as long as they’re around, and the impact they may have could be substantial.

Again, it’s a little easier said than done. Hiring the right people is always difficult regardless of the economic situation businesses face, but the fact remains, the level of talent available at a certain compensation level will always be higher during recessionary times than it will in prosperous times. A top notch pro who demands $150,000 a year when things are good may very well accept $85,000 a year to come work for you after their old company is forced to cut them loose. So if by some form of magic you have money to spare in your hiring budget, do NOT horde it. Spend it. It may be the best money you spend during the entire recession.