It is essential for you to understand the flow of money in, through, and out of your business. For some businesses, this can even be a daily issue. Positive cashflow (more money coming in than going out) is essential to keep the business going.

So how do we keep more money coming in vs. going out? Obviously, having a good control on expenses and payables is essential to controlling what is going out. Timing is crucial in managing cash. Making sure that you are collecting the money owed to you in a timely fashion assures that money is coming in. Another key cashflow issue is maintaining an appropriate level of stocks and supplies. Again, a good practical rolling cashflow budget will address all of these issues. (Give us a call or fill in our enquiry form if you’d like a copy of our brilliant, simple & free cashflow forecast!)

Once you are successfully monitoring your cashflow, the next issue to address is profitability. A great place to start to look at profitability is breakeven. The definition of breakeven is the point in your business when your gross profit covers all of your fixed costs. If you go "above" breakeven, then you are profitable. So here is the formula:

BREAK EVEN SALES = FIXED EXPENSE divided by GROSS PROFIT MARGIN

This answers the question, how much do I need to sell to pay my expenses? You can calculate break even for a year, a quarter, or a month, a week or even a day. Let's go through an example in a small business for one year.

Let's use a coffee shop. This coffee shop only sells black coffee! (We'll deal with marketing in another article!!!) The cost to operate this shop is monthly rent (including utilities) of £ 750/month, salaries of £ 2,000 per month, and other fixed expense of £ 500 per month. They also worked out that the cost for coffee and water is £0.10 per cup, and they sell a cup of coffee for £1.25. We have all we need to calculate break even.

YEARLY FIXED EXPENSE = (£2000 + £750 + £500) x 12 months = £39,000.

GROSS PROFIT PER CUP = £1.25 - £0.10 = £1.15

GROSS PROFIT MARGIN = GROSS PROFIT divided by GROSS SALES = £1.15/£1.25 = 0.92 (92%).

BREAK EVEN SALES = FIXED EXPENSE divided by GROSS PROFIT MARGIN

BREAK EVEN SALES = £39,000/0.92 = £42,391.30

So we need to sell £42,391 of goods to break even – anything above that is profit.

But how much coffee is that?

CUPS OF COFFEE SOLD TO BREAK EVEN = £42,391.30/£1.25 = 33,913 cups per year

…or 652 cups per week and 93 cups per day (if you are open 7 days a week 52 weeks per year).

So now you can work out what profit you want to make and use the same calculation to work out how many coffees you need to sell in order to achieve that profit!