5 Ways For Your Business To Have Good Credit

Often, as a commercial lender, I have companies inquire as to how they can make their organization credit worthy.  Many times lenders struggle getting financing approved due to the lack of some key required information.  I would like to take this opportunity to go over some basic information that may help your company secure financing.  Also note, much of the information I request is also very useful information for yourselves and the management of your company.

   1.  Updated Information

The most important step is keep up to date financial information.  Most lending institutions require at least annual financial statements.  This will include the minimum of an Income/Expense Report and a Balance Sheet.  This reporting provides a snap shot of your business year to date and needs to be completed within 90 to 120 days of your company’s yearend.  Completion of the same will also result in reporting to CRA (Canada Revenue Agencies) as required and is typically completed by your accounting firm.

Business Emergency Planning

In the past I have posted articles about being personally prepared for an emergency, and my focus was specifically on 72 hour kits and evacuations, whether because of an emergency in your home or a more widespread emergency in the community.

As we have seen in this past couple of weeks, it is very important to be prepared personally, but it also important to have your business prepared for a disaster.

Developing The Plan
Here are some points to consider when developing your Emergency response Plan or Business Continuity Plan:

 - Identify the purpose of your business, who you serve and what you do for them.

 - Identify the critical services you must provide and the resources you need to provide them.

 - Identify the most probable disasters, such as fire, flood, snow storm, electricity outage, phone service outage, lack of staff (sick or can’t travel…).

 - Look at the impacts of the disasters on your business.  Many impacts can be grouped into a few categories: 

• no reduction in resources, 
• a reduction in resources, 
• complete or almost complete lack of resources.

 - These impacts then determine what you can do:

Games That Teach About Money

In my quest to help youth understand the importance of budgeting, avoiding unnecessary debt and saving money, I have looked at various board games as teaching tools.  Some games, like Life, has aspects of what I am looking for but is too unrealistic.  I have altered the rules to Monopoly, adding savings account and mutual fund options, and most recently making GO a salary based square where the salary goes up and down with education and may even be missed if you lose your job with a Chance card.  That version is actually coming very close to what I want, but I have some minor tweaks to do yet.

A game that my eldest son has been playing over the past couple of months is called Record Shop Tycoon.  You start out in a small store in a poor location (it's all you can afford) and then are responsible for stocking music CDs to sell to your customers.  The game takes into account neighbourhood buying patterns, supplies