7 Free Financial Tools for Small Business Owners

As a small business owner, you know money is essential to the overall success of your business; however, your financial management capability is more critical. And having the right financial tools to help with the planning, analyses, ad reporting of your finance is the most crucial of them all.

Business is war and like any other war, you need the right equipment to win your battles.

ExpertsNG

Have I lost you?

I hope not. Let me explain.

Business growth requires a lot of checks and balances, and one of the things that need your constant check as a business owner is your financial statement.

Financial statements are important because they contain significant information about a company’s financial health. Financial statements help companies make informed decisions since they highlight which areas of the company provide the best ROI (return on investment).

Trust me Big businesses are doing more than buying and selling and recording profit and losses.

I know you probably started this entrepreneurial journey to earn a little more cash but let’s face it; you need some form of knowledge in finance and plenty of help with financial analysis.

So, you probably should have listened more in your accounting class. Kidding.

What was I saying?

As the owner of a small business in Nigeria, you must review your financial statements regularly. I do understand that you may not necessarily have the required skills at an expert level but analyse, you must.

Below are seven of the tools that I use to help with my financial planning and analysis.

So How Do You Check Your Business Health?

You see, your financial statements, also called financial reports are formal records of the financial activities of your business.

Related: Bookkeeping 101 for Small Businesses in Nigeria

Now financial statement analysis, on the other hand, reviews the financial statement of your business in other to help you make better economic decisions that will help you earn more.

No. That piece of paper squeezed in your back pocket doesn’t count. You need a balance sheet, an income statement, a statement of changes in equity or rather – retained earnings, and a cash flow statement. I’m starting to sound like your account teacher, but those rows and columns are very important, else you’d have a headache trying to sort out your money as your business grows. We don’t want that.

Now that you have all your financial records sorted I know you think you could just glance over it and I’m going to say stop. Don’t do that. There are free financial tools to help you analyze your financial records.

But before that, let’s talk about the HOWS.

How to Analyse Your Small Business Financial Statement

There are several ways to analyse your financial statement but let’s leave that for the big shots. I’ll focus on these three;

• Horizontal Analysis
• Vertical Analysis
• Ratio Analysis

But what I really want to talk about are free tools for financial analysis. So I’m just going to skip right through these:

In no particular order

HORIZONTAL ANALYSIS

1. Also called Trend analysis
2. Financial activities are compared over period. Could be over years.
3. It’s presented in percentage with a baseline of 100%. Simply put, product A did 40% in 2015 and in 2016 it did 60% (Something like that.)
4.  It’s easy to spot the growth trends of any given product by looking at the financial patterns

VERTICAL ANALYSIS

1. Compares items on the expense line to see how each item contributes to overall sales in percentage

RATIO ANALYSIS

1. It helps you evaluate operational efficiency.
2. Your business may be making good profit but isn’t experiencing growth because when it comes to internal revenue money is not being managed properly.
3. When paired with Horizontal and Vertical analysis, ratio analysis can help provide insight on the financial health of a business.

It’s a lot to take in for a budding business but trust me it would save you a lot of effort if you get the frame work right.

Every small business has it’s challenges but financial management shouldn’t be a part of yours.

Let’s jump right over to the 7 free Tools for Financial Analysis.

7 Free Tools for Financial Analysis

There are different aspects of financial analysis. Each of the financial tools listed will help track a different aspect of business finance. Some of these tools incorporate your business finance statement from multiple sources helping you to access the financial health of your business with little stress. I have ranked these tools in order of the purpose they serve in finance management.

1. Account Management Tool

Xero is the trusted software as far as free goes. Top features as Invoices, Quotes, Contacts, Bills, Bank reconciliation, Spending, Bank account balances, Profit and Loss, Cashflow. Although some features as the CIS calculations may be limited to the UK. Other than that, Xero seems like the best option for your multipurpose account needs.

2. Cash Flow Management Tool

Float comes highly recommended but really if you’re a budding entrepreneur in Nigeria, you could use Google Docs to track your cash projections. You bet it. Google Docs may not come off as fancy for your taste but it does the same work for FREE with no catch to go premium to use its best features.

3. Payroll Management

Xero offers employee payroll tracking but as a small business owner in Nigeria, I can bet you are mostly multitasking on job roles.

4. Expense tracking

While there are more professional expense tracking apps, for a start try Spending tracker. The User interface is simple and it offers charts to help you visualize your spending patterns. You could also check out Zoho books.

5. Inventory management

I couldn’t find a mobile App for Ordoro and is best suited if you run a dropshipping business but it won’t hurt to snoop around. Ordoro takes pride in providing an efficient workflow for seamless shipping. Like I said suitable if you run a dropshipping business.

6. Budgeting

I don’t know how much of the features on planGuru are offered for free but it’s worth a shot.

7. Business credit

Now, this is new. According to Meredith Wood, A business credit card increases the credit score of your business. I know credit cards aren’t popular in the Nigerian market. Hence, my advice is to keep track of the small loans incurred for your business and build your credit score by maintaining an excellent reputation for loan returns this would help for accountability when investors go through your financial statement.

Finally, and I probably don’t need to tell you this, but your business account should be separate from your account as an entrepreneur. Contact your local bank about opening your business account. Your ability to separate business from personal accounts is the first step to a healthy financial life.

Click here to talk to an expert on how best to manage your accounts and business finances.

Suggested Reading: Solved: Top 6 Challenges of Small Business Owners Today