Running a contracting business is hard enough during the best of times. If you suspect there’s a recession on the horizon, you might be worried about the future of your business. With tools like CloudSwipe, you can manage your incoming payments efficiently and collect the money you’re owed on a faster timeline to improve your cash flow. Furthermore, here are a few additional steps you can take to keep your company solvent in case of a recession.

Create Accurate Estimates

As a contractor, creating accurate estimates for projects is always important – but it’s never more crucial than when you’re trying to keep your business afloat during a recession. By ensuring that your estimates are accurate, you’ll be able to boost your profit margins. You can use job-specific software, including general construction, electrical, HVAC, or roofing projects. For instance, pros can use a roof estimating app to instantly calculate complicated measurements and roof areas, ensure that each estimate includes up-to-date tax and custom pricing information, and save templates to generate new estimates more efficiently.

Use the Right Accounting Software

Perhaps you’re already using accounting software, but it lacks some of the features you want. Ideally, you’ll want to find a program designed with your industry in mind. By using accounting software for construction, you can track the time and expenses devoted to each project, manage your subcontractors’ hours and payments to stay tax-compliant, and closely monitor your company’s financial performance.

Managing Material Costs

What if you’re worried about keeping your clients on board and landing new projects as the costs of materials change? Economic shifts can affect the prices of materials, but you can take steps to keep those costs in control. To avoid possible hidden costs, Billd recommends using materials management software.

Support Your Team

Managing your team well is always important – but if you want to keep all your employees on board throughout the recession, you’ll need to go the extra mile. Allocate the workload fairly, and no matter what, never fall behind on distributing paychecks. This is also a good time to establish a cash reserve for your business if you haven’t already. That way, you’ll be able to keep your employees on the payroll, even if you run into hard times.

How can you go about building a cash reserve? Fifth Third Bank recommends storing three to six months’ worth of expenses in a commercial bank account, where your cash will be secure – and you’ll be able to earn a bit of interest. 

Marketing Your Business

How can you attract new business if your current client is pulling back on spending? You’ll have to start marketing your business more heavily to attract new customers. Maybe you’ve primarily relied on word of mouth, but now, it’s time to be proactive. To advertise your services, DesignHill recommends launching a website or updating the design of your existing site, creating flyers or signage to place locally, putting some time into social media marketing, and listing yourself in local online business directories so that people can easily find you.

If you’re staring down a recession, you might be dealing with intense financial anxiety. But as a business owner, there are plenty of things you can do to improve your company’s prospects. With these tips, you’ll be prepared to face a financial decline.

Do you want to enable faster, easier payments for your customers? CloudSwipe is your new digital payment solution! Sign up for a demo through our website today.

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