Cash Flow and Accounting

There's a never ending flow of difficulty that comes from business ownership. It's constantly dealing with too little work, or too much work, or employee problems, or customer problems, or equipment problems, or lack of organization, or whatever. The problem I'm focussed on now though is cash flow. Trying to make sure that your cash flow is there is just plain difficult. When customers are late on payments, or there's a job that goes significantly over budget, it can seriously cripple you. I realized today that I really don't charge enough for the work that we are doing to make sure that my cash flow stays constant. For whatever reason, there's a voice in my head that says, "that's too much! Your competitors are way below that, you'll never get this job if you bid that high!". It sounds stupid, but it's a hard thing to bid high on jobs. Your natural impulse is to go low to try and win the bid. As a result, the labor budget is tight, and if any problems occur on the job your profit margin is gone, along with your cash. Come payroll time you find that the job you won really cost you money.

So, if you've read this far into this post, you are probably bored out of your mind. What I wanted to share though was that it's the Lord who provides for everything, including cash flow. I was reminded of that today when I won a bid where I was $2000 over my competitors bid. We still won the job based on the value of our service. It's a good reminder to trust the Lord when I'm bidding and give a realistic price that does not hurt me or the company in the long run. Knocking down the price just to get the job is basically saying that I don't trust the Lord to provide, I'm counting on the lower price.