Page 28 - Paulisms: Gold Nuggets for Small Business

1.5 Invoicing
Invoice daily. Load your data regularly throughout the month. Load everything by the end of the month and apply the ‘Line in the Sand’ Paulism (see Part 2: Chapter 3.1.1).
1.6 Stock levels
You must know your stock levels. I know a company who didn’t do a stocktake for five years and had to write off $600,000. Stock is often not understood. Your profitability will go up and down each month depending on the amount of stock you have on board. Each item needs to be accounted for. There are stock systems available or it may be you simply count it and add it up. Either way, give knowing your stock levels and value respect.
1.7 Discounts
Know your numbers and protect your margins. Don’t discount if you don’t need to (most discounts that are given don’t need to be). For every discount you give, you must sell so much more! Protect those margins.
Discounting may be part of your model and is most common in retail. Question whether you do need to discount to get a sale. Building value in the sales process offsets discounting. I preferred giving a discount for additional sales to pull volume sales over the line as opposed to one-off