Everyone knows that in business, cash is king. So, if everyone knows this, why do so many small businesses run out of money and subsequently close down in their first 3 years of operating?

Guest post by By Lauren O’Hare
GearShift

gear1 (1)[1]It might be because we all know cash is king, but we don’t all know how to plan cashflow effectively. This means making sure there is always enough of it so that when business is not exactly booming, operations can continue until things pick up.

It’s not easy to forecast cashflow – there are so many unforeseeable circumstances like ‘what if I have to employ more staff to step up production?’ Or ‘what if my rent and rates are put up by my landlord out of the blue?’ Or worse still – ‘my bank just cancelled my overdraft and it needs re-paid in 2 months’. All of these scenarios could cause your best-laid plans to descend into financial chaos. This is where businesses often find themselves with cashflow issues.

GearShift was conceptualised from seeing this happen to businesses, unfortunately more than once. GearShift’s founder, Kevin Cowan is an accountant who has always been frustrated by the lack of software on the market that can help both accountants when advising their clients, and small businesses planning their finances. He saw an opportunity to create a piece of cloud technology that would revolutionise how businesses plan their finances and how accountants can offer more than just compliance services to their clients.

GearShift produces profit and loss, balance sheet and cashflow forecasts in minutes – saving you time, and syncs with KashFlow to pull in actuals – making data more robust and giving the opportunity to track progress against plan.

Not only this – the visual nature of how the data is presented in GearShift allows you to identify potential problem areas and develop solutions quickly. The what if scenario planning tool will help answer those difficult questions we were talking about earlier, meaning you are always one step ahead with GearShift.

Now GearShift is fully integrated with KashFlow accounting software. This means that you can import your KashFlow chart of accounts into GearShift to save you time setting your forecast categories up, and your actuals can be pulled across in seconds into the GearShift app, giving you more comprehensive data to track performance against.

GearShift opens the door to better client relationships for accountants. By proactively forecasting and spotting potential issues early, accountants can help clients address these issues long before they turn into actual problems. Accountants are already trusted advisors, but now they could be even more so.

KashFlow named GearShift one of their ‘Top 5 Apps’ in the spring release. So why not try GearShift with KashFlow today and see how as an accountant, you can revolutionise your practice, and as a small business, you can make forecasting more straightforward and grow your business by making smarter, more informed decisions.

Lauren O’Hare is the Marketing Manager at GearShift – straightforward business forecasting and cashflow management software. Click here to find out more.

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