Trying to run a real estate business without proper cash flow management is like being blindfolded in a maze: you may eventually figure out where you’re going, but you’ll be stumbling around and making mistakes before you get there.
And since you can’t see where you’re going, it’s risky. It’s likely that you’ll stumble into a bad situation rather than achieving your goal.
What’s the current state of cash flow within your business? Best case scenario: Even with subpar management, you’re doing OK – but a few things could be optimized to further boost your success. Worst case scenario – such as during a pandemic: It could cost you your business.
To avoid these risks and stay in control of your real estate investing business, you need careful cash flow management. Whether you’re knowledgeable about finances or not, it’s a key part of your business management and it’s worth putting some effort into. In a nutshell, cash flow management involves:
- monitoring your expenses and income
- analyzing the data you collect to see how you’re doing in each area of your business
- optimizing your processes to make the most of your resources.
When you take these steps, not only will you have answers to some of the financial issues that you may be facing, but you’ll be able to set a strategy in motion to improve the health of your business’s cash flow. This sets you up for success all across the board!
Questions You Can Answer with Good Cash Flow Management
Monitoring, analyzing, and optimizing your cash flow is crucial to the health of your real estate investing business. Where is cash flowing into your business, and where is it flowing out? Are you paying too much for repairs, maintenance, and management fees, or can you afford to put some money into improving your properties? What’s your breakeven point? What’s the future likely to look like for your properties? What do people owe you and what do you owe to others? Do you have reserves? What will you do if you have a shortfall?
Right now, the need to answer questions on cash flow, quickly, is really important for both lender and investor relationships. They need to know you are on top of your game.
Managing Multiple Companies: It Doesn’t Have to Be Hard!
Many savvy real estate investors hold properties across two or more separate companies. This has many benefits, but it can make it difficult to manage cash flow. Traditionally, it has been necessary to download multiple files and combine the information into one spreadsheet in order to see cashflow across companies. This is time-consuming and has to be manually updated each time you need accurate numbers, which means you have to go to all the time and effort once again. But the STRATAFOLIO Cash Flow Dashboard makes it effortless! We show you your entire portfolio’s cash flow in one single dashboard. Plus, you have the tools to drill down and across your portfolio to see what is working or not working.
The STRATAFOLIO Solution to Managing Cash Flow
With STRATAFOLIO’s Cash Flow Dashboard, you can:
- View key metrics for different time periods and see how they compared to the same time last year
- Isolate a single entity or asset, or view everything all together
- Dig into the details (including your income, operating expenses, overhead, debt)
- Get the information you need to project future cash flow, keep your income balanced, and more.
All this information is kept up to date and available at all times. You can pull it up at a moment’s notice if you need updated information. Plus, STRATAFOLIO is designed for more than just cash flow management! See what it can do for your commercial real estate business by scheduling a demo today.
