Starting or running a small new business can be an exciting yet daunting prospect, and there are many hurdles which owners must overcome to ensure that their business survives for the long-term. Primary among the business survivalist toolkit is a healthy cashflow. The saying goes “turnover is vanity, profit is sanity, but cash flow is reality.” Without being able to pay staff and suppliers on time, your business will not survive very long. At the core of a healthy cash-flow lies the function of credit management. It sounds quite simple if you think about at it first – you just need to make sure that clients pay their bills on […]

So, you thought you were you? You aren’t. You’re him. And her. And the guy who bought that new Xbox you never used.   Towards the end of 2017, Troy Hunter, well-known security researcher and the creator of Have I Been Pwned, discovered that the personal details of more than 75 million South Africans had been leaked to the internet. This massive database came from the web server of a company called Jigsaw Holdings, and within it lay the ID numbers, contact details, addresses, and income estimates of every single one of these 75 million people. He found the identity thief’s equivalent of an oasis in the desert. Here lay […]

Many South Africans believe that land grabs will only directly impact those whose land is expropriated if land grabs without compensation become commonplace. According to Frank Knight, CEO of Debtsource – a specialist credit management company – the impact of such land grabs will however be far deeper and more damaging to our economy than many appreciate. “One of the contributing reasons why Africa has been slow to step out of poverty, is because property rights have not been respected across many parts of the continent” says Knight. He explains that African property owners, such as small farmers that own subsistence-living land in Africa, are unable to use their property […]

Advice is to build your business on quality debtors While revenue and turnover are key metrics used to measure the success of a business, companies live and die by their cash flow. That’s the view of Frank Knight, CEO of credit management specialist Debtsource. “Most businesses are too focused on turnover. While this figure may look good on an income statement, it simply represents a commitment to pay. Until the invoice has been seettled it’s a hollow figure, because a business is unsustainable if there’s no money coming in to pay suppliers or staff.” Knight states that a sound trade credit management strategy is essential for the establishment of healthy […]