PPP3 - START UP WEDNESDAYS - MANAGING YOUR MONEY

Today I attended the next 'Start Up Wednesdays' session which was headed by an inspiring individual called Keith Evans, who is the Managing Director of a Leeds based company called 'Cida Co'. 

Cida Co are a training and consultancy company who help creatives put their entrepreneurial dreams into action by providing them with the right information and support to do so. Despite their broad range of focuses todays session was specifically focused on how to manage money - a subject I still have a lot to learn about!


SESSION NOTES; 

The session provided us with a mountain of relevant information and advice from how to budget to how to charge clients correctly. However, undoubtedly the most beneficial aspect of the session was the Microsoft Excel documents that were made available to us. The first document allows us to work out how to charge clients properly and the second allows us to identify the cash flow through our hypothetical business.

Notes taken in the session are listed below; 

IMPORTANT POINTS;

• You have to be confident when discussing pricing or people will try to exploit you.
• Topics covered;
• Budgeting.
• Costing & Pricing.
• Cashflow.
• Costing and pricing are not the same thing;
• Costing is how much it costs us to do a job or make a product.
• Pricing is how much we charge for that job or product.
• Overheads are financial outgoings that we have to pay to survive and can be fixed or variable.
• A fixed overhead would be outgoings such as rent & utilities.
• A variable overhead would be outgoings such as internet & travel.
• Pricing can be affected by tangible factors;
• Geometry - work is cheaper in China.
• Reputation.
• Competition - will someone do it cheaper.
• Pricing will cover both wholesale and retail.
• When pricing/charging clients it is important to be able to articulate what they are paying for - why are we so good?
• Pricing can be split into two sub-sections;
• Money needed to survive.
• Desired amount of money.
• The amount of money needed to survive is divided by the amount of hours you work in a year to define a rough hourly based rate.
• 'Cash flow' is the flow of money through a business. 
• Regularly reviewing the cash flow can help to detect future problems.
• Calculated risks are much better than blatant risks.  
• Analysing your cash flow can help you evaluate risks.
• Documenting your cash flow can help you to identify peaks and dips in profit throughout the year.
• Allows you to identify downtime.
• Keeping detailed records such as cash flow can help you to attain loans from the bank.
• Repayment can be factored into cash flow.
• Columns of the Cash Flow document can be updated with real figures as the year progresses for a more accurate understanding of the businesses finances. 

PRINTED MEDIA 

As part of the session we completed various small tasks which had relevance to the information discussed allowing us to put the theory into practice.

The images below display some of the forms received as part of the session; 

Sheet allowed us to assess our profit and loss.  

The above sheet was a printed version of the costing & pricing excel document Keith talked through.