Most Landscape Gardening businesses owners start out by themselves and may use subcontractors to help when an extra pair of hands is needed. When your business grows to the point that you require help consistently, you might consider taking on an employee, however, there are pros and cons to doing this. It could be cheaper in one respect than using a subcontractor, but you will need to pay annual leave, sick pay, and pension contributions. The benefit to recruiting an employee is that you have support for your Landscape Gardening business which will get work turned over quicker.
But what if things go wrong? What if a job you were relying on falls through? Or you’ve spent time nurturing a prospective client and they don’t sign up? Or you’ve completed a job and the customer won’t pay their bill? Suddenly it’s not just your own income that is at risk but someone else’s too. There is a great responsibility in ensuring there is enough sales to cover all the business outgoings, including your staff’s salaries and your own.
How do you ensure that you don’t stay up at night worrying about how to pay your employees this month? If you can, the best option would be to save some profit and set it aside to cover the business through a blip. I would suggest opening a separate bank account, or alternatively, some banks have separate spaces that you can transfer money into. This way you will know exactly how much you have set aside, and you will need to make a deliberate decision to dip into it. Also, you could take out a business loan, overdraft or credit card, the benefit being that you don’t have to use it until it is necessary. If you look for a business loan, ensure you look at the interest rates and choose the loan with the best terms.
Cash flow is the lifeblood of a business and, as a Landscape Gardening business owner, it is essential that you manage it carefully. You should know exactly how much needs to come in each month to cover your overheads and how and when the cash will be coming. I suggest using a cloud accountancy software like Xero, but at the very least you should be keeping track of sales, purchases and bank movements on a spreadsheet.
If you are thinking of recruiting an employee, it could help your business to grow and scale quickly but be prepared first by arranging backup funds so you can always pay their salary. Keep a close eye on your cash flow so you know if you need to dip into the backup funds. It will help you to react quickly if there is an issue and not wait for funds to run out before you are alerted to the problem.
