By: Malia Richardson, Treasury Management Relationship Manager
May is Small Business Month, and Regions Bank has long served many of the small businesses across the River Region and beyond.
The lifeblood of a small business is its cash flow. Managing the timing of money coming in and going out can be the difference between simply getting by and confidently planning for growth. It is an ideal time for small-business owners to examine their cash flow and consider how technology can help.
Technology and Treasury Management
For today’s business owners, there are technology solutions to meet most cash flow needs.
Here are five common cash flow issues that small businesses face. For each of these issues, there is a technological solution that can help with your cash flow.
- Deposits are slow to reach your account. Dealing with physical checks can cause a time lag, resulting in a cash flow crunch. Electronic check services can convert checks to electronic transactions received by a bank. This allows for quicker deposits and reduced administration costs.
- Payroll is cumbersome and time-consuming. If you’re spending too much time on payroll, consider automated clearing house (ACH). This can be used to process debit and credit card transactions through a secure electronic nationwide network. Payroll direct deposit is an example of ACH that allows for quicker deposits and decreased administration costs.
- Funds are difficult to access. If getting physical checks to the bank for deposit takes more time than you prefer, that can create a situation in which you can’t access the funds you need to cover your operations. Consider a lockbox. This is an easily accessed post office box to which a customer of the business sends payments. The bank then collects these payments and deposits them, providing faster processing and quicker access to funds.
- Bookkeeping is becoming burdensome. As a business owner, you want to spend your time serving your customers, not managing your company’s books. If administration and bookkeeping are eating into your time, consider remote deposit capture. This allows users to deposit checks and transmit them to a bank by scanning them with a specially designed desktop scanner or using a mobile device.
- Spending is out of control. You can’t get on top of your cash flow if you don’t set spending caps. If this is an issue for your business, consider single-use accounts, which act like a paper check by creating a virtual 16-digit account number for each payment. This allows businesses to set credit limits and control spending.
Small businesses are essential to the strength of our economy. With the right technology in place, business owners can spend less time worrying about cash flow and more time doing what they do best: serving customers, innovating, and growing.
Regions Bank works closely with business owners in Montgomery, Wetumpka, Prattville, Pike Road and beyond to understand their unique needs and can help identify solutions that align to business goals.
To learn more, visit any Regions branch in the River Region or visit our website at www.regions.com/treasurymanagement.
Regions Bank, member FDIC
