Let us further assume that your debtors ( customers) owed you the following amount:

1. ABC Ltd   $150
2. General Trading Ltd $200

It means the total amount owed from customers is $350.

These must be entered as opening balances. Please look at the steps given below to enter that:

Step 1 Enter the total amount owed from customers in the Trade Debtors Account. To do that go to Setup=> Balances=>Account Opening Balances

Step 2    Enter $350 in the Trade Debtors account as shown.

Step 3 Now you need to enter the value of individual sales. To do that go to Setup=>Balances=>Customer Balances

Step 4 Select the customer

Step 5 Click on Add Sale

Step 6 Enter the details of the sale.

Step 7 Once you have entered all the sale you should get this message( if everything is all correct)

How do I know if my debtors are balanced

The simplest way is to run the Receivables Reconciliation Report. Look at the sample report below. The imbalance is generally shown at the bottom.

What are the possible reasons

There are several reasons but the most common are:

1. No opening balances entered when starting to use MYOB file
2. Making direct entries usually General Journal entries into the Debtors accounts
3. Applying payments to sales before the date of the sale( looks strange but very common)
4. Using Receive Money to record customer payments rather than Receive Payments

What do I do?

The best thing to do at this stage is to run the Receivables Reconciliation Report and see if it is imbalanced. We will be running a series of blogs over the next two months and will reveal all that you can do to set it right and prevent that from happening in the future.

No Long Terms of Payment

Do not give your customer a long period of repayment. Most businesses in New Zealand ask their debtors to pay on the 20th of the following month. They would extend this offer even without the debtor having requested for it. If you do this you are trying to harm your business yourslf and nothing could be worse than that. So what should you do? Ask customers to pay you straightaway. Whenever I go to a business to provide my services I give them the invoice at the end of it and ask them to pay. 90% percent of them pay just then, the balance pay within a week. Why do they do that? Because I never ever brought up the question of paying in the following month.

Extend only minimum credit

The next thing which you must implement is to extend minimum credit terms ie give them seven days or ten days. The other thing which must be clubbed with this is to set the a limit on the amount. The terms that is number of days and the amount can be progressively increased depending on the payment history. Use this as an incentive rather than a blanket sanction.

Remind them

I usually remind my customers by sending them an email on the seventh day and if they do not reply or pay by 10th day I ring them up. I have not had to do that more than two or three times in the past four years.

Want to know more click here

The first thing which I did was to relocate my self from my stylish office in New Market to the present location in Penrose. This office is as big, more convenient for the customers and has free parking plus it comes at 25% the rent. In fact there is one more still available. If there is anyone interested do let me know I can get the details for you.

I had been spending a lot on advertisement to promote my services. I switched on to using Google Adwords. This is quite targeted and has been giving me excellent results. I have recently started using social media tools like Twitter and Facebook. If you have not started using them I suggest you do. These are very effective and absolutely free. You may follow me on Twitter. I also have blog and you may read to get a general idea about Twitter.

Expense on telephone is something which no business can escape. Since I have customers nationwide I was spending a lot on toll calls. I switched to Skype . Just $10 per month  for unlimited calls nationwide. Nothing could be more convenient for me. I use it even when I am away from the office. Moreover it is free while calling customers who are on Skype.

Most of the MYOB users pay huge sums for technical support. I devised a simple plan. I use webex ( a remote access tool) to support my customers. They just pay for the exact time they seek support for. Some pay as little as $30 . If you may like to enquire give me an email. I gain by saving on petrol and lost travel time and you gain by paying less.

I negotiated with MYOB for discounts on software and I simply passed that to my customers. This brought in more business.

It was also a time for me to look at some free stuff myself. Since there was so much time at hand I upgraded myself by doing some very useful free courses run by New Zealand Trade and Enterprise.  These are really wonderful courses. You may like to explore them.They cover all aspects of the business.

You may have your own experiences or story to tell . I will be very keen to hear. Do leave a comment or email me you story.

But why am I telling you all this? Well I happen to connect on Twitter with one very excellent person Sean DSouza  from www.psychotactics.com. I had read several of his articles in the newspaper and I used to find them quite interesting and full of practical advice. He sent me a FREE report on “Why Some Headlines Fail?”. At the face of it this report looks simple but it proved to be very powerful. I used the report to change the headlines for one of my courses. I had not received a single enquiry for that course for the past few months and now in just three days, after changing the headline using the advice given in his report ,I have got three queries. What a difference.  I am being pretty honest about it. You may check this report and download for free  from http://www.psychotactics.com/psychoheadlines.pdf.

Best things are always free.

That is prcisely what a business needs to do. It need to monitor the health of the business everyday,every week and every month. If a business owner or manager fails to do that there is no way of knowing as to which direction is the business heading. Most business owners leave that to thier accountants. I do not think that is the right approach. The accountant is not the manager or the owner of the business. Nobody knows the business better than the owner. Therefore MEASURE MEASURE and MEASURE.

What is the starting point of measuring the performance? You must keep a record of every little transaction – income or expense. A small investnment in an accounting or record keeping software would go a lonfg way in helping a business to measure the performance and achieve growth.

Have you used Twitter? If you have not then I must say you are missing something. I wonder why people do not grab something which comes for free. Get on to it and enjoy the fun. Here are some things you would need to know if you want to start tweeting. Why not twitter when everyone else is.

What is Twitter?

It is social media website where you can connect to other people may they be your friends you know or just your customers or any body whom you may be interested in. You can send them short text messages which incidently are restricted to 140 characters. Since these messages are from the web you can send links to your website or any other web page as part  of the text. That is what makes these short messages called Tweets the most powerful 140 characters ever.

How do I begin?

You need to log on to www.twitter.com and start an account. As simple. It is so simple that I do not even want to leave any instructions.

Whom should I follow?

Well you could follow anyone you want to for example you could follow me at www.twitter.com/bizmate . The only catch is that the other eprson should approve you fooling them. This in fact helps in keeping the whole setup secure and you do not have fears of being stalked by people you do not want to. You can however check by reading the profile of the person you want to follow. It basically depends on what you want to acheive out of the whole involvement. I for one follow some interesting business writers and businesses in New Zealand.

What about people following you?

You can allow people to follow you and that may be the purpose of the whole exercise. These are the people who receive your tweets when you twitter. So more the followers , greater are the chances of your tweets being heard far and wide. People could re-tweet what you have tweeted and so it spreads. Let us say you have sixty people following you and let us assume they all are interested in  what you tweet. Let us further assume that you have a special on a product in your business and you tweet that message and send a link in the message which links back to your website. Can you imagine how quickly you would reach those sixty people and suppose even 10 percent of them re-tweet that : you are in for some hefty profits.

Can it be any Better?

Yes it is and the best thing is that it is free. Imagine free advertising. Can not be better.

Get going and and see you at www.twitter.com/bizmate

I have my own reasons and these are:

• Much of it is free absolutely free
• If everyone else is doing then it must be right
• In any case it is a cheaper way of getting to your potential customers
• Most of these sites can be accessed from a simple browser therefore you are always linked
• You can measure your success just like you have on google
• You get to experience and share so much with people out there who are experts in their field
• It can spread like wild fire and is the best way to be known
• Facebook provides targeted marketing and hence that could be the best value for your dollars

If you have just decided to join Twitter then here are the five excellent twitter tips  to get going.