*Interviewee: Gabrielle Hartin (G) *Interviewer: Amanda Gome (A) *Location: *Date: 00/00/00
A: Three years ago, Gabrielle Hartin. started her own business, APCOT. The idea behind the business was to train the trainers, to increase the level of professionalism amongst trainers. She’s been very successful, but one of the big tips to her success has been her management of cashflow. From day one, she’s been cashflow positive and Gabrielle is going to tell us how she’s done it. Gabrielle, one of the biggest problems for small business is cashflow. Has it been a problem for you starting up APCOT? G: A: It sounds like I’m bragging, but no, it hasn’t been a problem, ever. So why have you always had such a disciplined approach to cashflow?
G: I don’t know. I guess I was always just very careful about making sure I had money coming in and money going out. I’ve ... I guess I get it from my father who form a very young age taught us to budget and put money aside for the rainy day. A: How did you go about setting the prices and then managing your cashflow?
G: In terms of setting the prices I ... I guess I did two things. I looked at the expenses involved my end in ... in running the course and how much of a margin I could put on top for my profit. The other thing I did was looked at the market place and see what other ... what the competitors were offering in terms of price and I made sure that was covering my expenses and got a good margin as well as fitting into the price range so that I wasn’t too expensive. I didn’t want to be too cheap either. I wanted to be portrayed as a quality provider so I needed to price myself in that range. One of the terms of payment was payment upfront so I always had money in my hand before my bills were due. I’ve found over the ... the last couple of years as the organisations I have as clients have become bigger, that I haven’t been able to do that as much so I changed my terms. Instead of asking for the whole amount upfront, I would set it out as 40% upon signing, 30% at the beginning of the contract, so I still had a lot of money in my hand before I was actually creating expenses for myself. And then the final 40% would come through at the end of the contract so I was still able to handle the cashflow in that sense. A: Do you do a cashflow monthly or weekly? Or how can you tell we ..? What your cashflow position is? G: Actually, something that really, really helped right at the beginning I’ve just remembered. I went to the ATO. The Australian Tax Office were running free seminars on GST and BAS statements and how to do all of that for new business. So I went to their ... their seminars and learnt a lot of things about reporting for GST and BAS and ... and one of the things was you can report monthly or you can report quarterly. And I thought I want to start by reporting monthly because that will force me into looking at my finances every month and making sure everything’s balancing out. And the idea was at the beginning that I’d just do that to get started and then I’d
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move over to the quarterly reporting. While it’s been two and a half years, I’m still doing the monthly reporting and I’m now actually doing it as part of my strategy because it continues to force me to make me look at my finances and my money coming in and out every month so that I ... it doesn’t get away from me. A: So how far ahead do you plan with your cashflow analysis? Do you have a year? G: Yeah, I’m just staring now. I started at ... an informal one last financial one. I’ve got a more formal one this year where I’ve ... I've done a forecast for the year in terms of expenditure and also in terms of projected income based on the products and the services that I sell. And that’s been built ... based on comparison of ... of what the business has done over the last two years so it’s still ... everything’s been in the black since I've started and that’s where I continue to ... I plan to continue to ... to always have those forecasts and those statements in the black. End of recording
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