Preserve your commerce business’s cash flow with Juni Capital

Maintaining a healthy cash flow is one of the most important tasks for finance teams working in commerce today. A strong cash flow helps you avoid unnecessary risks and expenses (such as late fees on accounts payable), which negatively impact your business’s reputation and slow down further growth. If you’re looking for smart, effective ways of preserving your company’s cash flow, read on to learn about common obstacles and what you can do to overcome them.

Why is cash flow management so important in commerce today?

Managing cash flow is essential for keeping any business running and growing. With a well-managed cash flow, your business is better positioned to meet its financial obligations (accounts payable), invest in growth opportunities, profit from stronger relationships with suppliers and ensure smooth day-to-day operations. It’s important to manage your cash flow effectively, or else your business will suffer from missed payments, damaged supplier relationships and missed opportunities for growth.

How can commerce businesses overcome cash flow problems?

Modern commerce businesses often face several cash flow challenges that can impact their operations and growth. Below, we cover the most common cash flow problems and provide some tips on how to avoid them.

Handling seasonality

Seasonal fluctuations in sales can lead to periods of high revenue followed by slow periods, making it challenging to maintain consistent cash flow throughout the financial year. These fluctuations put a strain on your working capital, which can often lead to difficulties in financial planning and budgeting. That’s why it’s important for finance teams to implement robust cash flow forecasting and management strategies to anticipate and mitigate the impact of these variations.

If your business struggles with cash flow problems during off-peak seasons, consider some of these solutions: 

  • Arranging for cost-effective seasonal lines of credit 
  • Negotiating more favourable payment terms with your suppliers
  • Maintaining a cash reserve to buffer against low-revenue periods 
  • Leveraging historical sales data and market analysis to help predict seasonal trends more accurately
  • Optimising your inventory management and resource planning

Bridging the gap during your cash-to-conversion cycle

High upfront costs of inventory and advertising can create a cash flow gap that you have to bridge until sales revenue comes in. For finance teams working in commerce, monitoring and managing that gap (also known as the cash conversion cycle, or CCC) is one of your top priorities. 

To effectively bridge the gap, focus on optimising each stage of your business’s CCC: 

  • Reducing days inventory outstanding (DIO) by improving inventory turnover 
  • Shortening days sales outstanding (DSO) through efficient accounts receivable management 
  • Extending days payable outstanding (DPO) without jeopardising supplier relationships 

Many commerce businesses improve their liquidity with strategic buying practices such as just-in-time inventory, dynamic discounting and supply chain financing. Securing short-term financing solutions can also help. Some common financing options available to commerce businesses include:

  • Trade credit: Allows you to purchase goods or services and pay for them at a later date, freeing up working capital in the short term.
  • Factoring: Involves selling your accounts receivable (invoices) to a third party (a factor) at a discount, providing immediate cash.
  • Revolving credit facilities: Provide a line of credit that you can draw from as needed and repay, offering flexibility to cover your business’s short-term cash flow needs.

Increasing spend as your business grows

It’s always good news if your business is growing. Yet the more your business expands, the higher its operating expenses and employee costs become, adding even more pressure to your cash flow. Growth often demands higher spending on salaries, employee benefits, infrastructure, logistics, technology and marketing.

To balance your growth investments with cash flow requirements, it is important to ensure your business’s expansion is sustainable. Here are some useful strategies to consider:

  • Detailed financial modelling and scenario analysis: This helps you forecast how your commerce business’s growth will impact its financial situation in the future.
  • Cost control measures: Cost-saving initiatives, such as process automation and outsourcing non-core activities, can help you reduce spending while still scaling your business.
  • Maintaining a lean cost structure: Regularly review your expenses to look for potential savings.

Inefficient inventory management

Without a strong inventory management strategy, your business is at risk of tying up too much capital in its stock. This has a negative impact on your liquidity and flexibility. 

Effective inventory management involves striking the right balance between having enough stock to meet customer demand and minimising excess inventory that can lead to obsolescence and high holding costs. Here are some important inventory optimisation techniques for commerce companies to consider: 

  • Economic order quantity (EOQ): Calculating your business’s EOQ enables you to determine the optimal order size to minimise the total cost of ordering and holding inventory. Calculate your business’s EOQ using this formula: (2DS/H), where D = annual demand (sum of all units sold), S = ordering cost per order and H = annual holding costs per unit.
  • Safety stock calculations: Safety stock calculations give you a buffer of inventory to protect against stockouts caused by fluctuations in demand or supply chain disruptions.
  • ABC analysis: An ABC analysis helps you prioritise your inventory management efforts by categorising items into three classes (A, B, and C) based on their importance, so you can focus on stocking the most valuable items and optimising stock levels.
  • Inventory management tools: Integrating inventory management software into your ERP system gives you real-time visibility and control over stock levels, so you can avoid overstocking and stockouts.
  • Establishing strategic supplier relationships: Fostering strong, long-term vendor relationships can help you secure better procurement terms, such as longer payment periods and discounts.

How Juni Capital helps you preserve and optimise your cash flow

To help commerce businesses maintain an optimal cash flow, Juni has developed Juni Capital: a financing solution developed specially to address the common challenges that commerce businesses face. 

Here are some of the cash flow solutions available to you through Juni Capital:

Bridging the CCC gap

Juni Capital helps you bridge the CCC gap by providing the liquidity you need to keep operating smoothly while waiting for sales revenue to come in.

Credit cards

Juni Capital offers flexible credit lines that you can use for advertising, inventory and scaling your business. With Juni credit cards, you can access interest-free financing from €10,000 to €2 million, with repayment terms of up to 60 days. This helps you to manage your cash flow and allocate funds effectively.

Invoice credit

With Juni Capital, you can use credit to finance your invoice. You can settle your invoices now and extend repayment terms on any invoice, freeing up your cash flow and enabling better negotiation with suppliers. We offer financing from €10,000 to €20 million and get up to 120 extra days to settle your invoices.

Strengthening supplier relations

By helping you maintain your cash flow, Juni Capital gives you more bargaining power when re-negotiating payment terms with your suppliers. 

Managing employee expenses

With secure business accounts and corporate cards from Juni Capital, you can simplify card payments for employee expenses. Our multi-currency IBAN accounts streamline your local and global payment flows, reduce complexity and help lower your costs with fixed FX fees. Juni Mastercard Corporate virtual cards also come with custom controls, so you can set spending limits and manage expenses more effectively. Plus, you can earn up to 1% no-caps cashback, paid out to your Juni account 30 days after each month-end.

Consolidating spend in one place

Juni Capital provides a smart dashboard with access to over 2,400 integrations to consolidate all your spending data in one place. This helps you keep better control over your finances. Our dashboard also provides financial insights that enable you to make informed decisions and identify areas where you can optimise spending.

Ready to start optimising your cash flow?
Every commerce business benefits from ensuring a stable, optimal cash flow. By bridging the gap between spending and sales, helping you negotiate better payment terms and streamlining payments for employee expenses, Juni Capital helps you overcome cash flow problems and grow your business.

Learn more about how Juni Capital can help your business start extending its runway in as little as 24 hours. Sign up today and start optimising your cash flow.

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