Money leaks refer to the small, unnoticed losses that can accumulate over time. The thing that makes them different from other cost inefficiencies is that they’re often so small that it’s easy to downplay them as just the cost of doing business. Still, when multiple money leaks persist, they inevitably collectively slow down your growth potential.
To be clear, it’s not always practical to be hyperfocused on every little peso. However, the areas we’ll talk about below are key pressure points where small adjustments make a significant difference in your bottom line. Let’s dive straight into several practical ways to plug common money leaks, so you can protect your hard-earned revenue and keep your business on an upward trajectory.
1. Implement Easy Cashless Payments
Minor discrepancies are a fact of life when handling physical cash, especially given that Philippine brick-and-mortar stores often struggle to secure optimal amounts of various coin and bill denominations for making change. Nudging more customers to go cashless minimizes this issue from the beginning, but you need to be sure that your system can process the kinds of cashless payments Filipino customers go for.
The popular Maya Terminal POS device, exclusively available to Maya Business users, is shaping up to be the Philippine standard for cashless acceptance. It accepts multiple modes of debit and credit card payments, ewallet &QR code transactions, and other cashless payment methods popular in the Philippines. You can also set up a static payment QR code via Maya QR and display this in-store to further encourage customers to go cashless.
With easy cashless payments, you can easily reduce the errors and petty pilferage that you would just have to accept with physical cash. Fewer physical cash transactions also means fewer counting and reconciliation errors, which means a lot less friction in your financials.
2. Standardize Your Physical Cash Handling Procedures
Even when you offer cashless options, some cash transactions are still necessary. Creating consistent protocols for handling cash, including double-counting at the start and end of shifts, securing funds in a safe, and limiting employee access according to accepted best practices. Consistent employee training on these processes will serve to further minimize errors and opportunities for misappropriation, saving your business money in the long term.
3. Audit Your Inventory Regularly
“Inventory is money” is a common adage among business veterans. But while inventory holds value, it is not necessarily directly counted in the financials, which means it is not always at the top of one’s mind. Nonetheless, issues like inventory theft, spoilage, and mismanagement are extremely common cash leak issues in the Philippines, particularly for businesses that have to move massive numbers of diverse SKUs.
More frequent, serious audits can bring these inventory-related losses down, slowing down a common back-end money leak. Audits also offer an opportunity to further optimize your warehousing practices, ensuring that you’re consistently stocking the right kinds of items in the right quantities. Be sure to properly link your Maya Terminal with your Electronic Cash Register (ECR) and to connect your ECR to your inventory management software to help streamline your audits.
4. Optimize Order and Supplier Management
Over-ordering stocks can leak money fast, especially if these stocks have a limited shelf life. Make it a point, going forward, to negotiate better deals from the outset and to maintain strong relationships with trusted vendors so you don’t end up over-ordering or overpaying. You can also sign up for Maya Business to enjoy free PESONet and InstaPay transfers to your suppliers to further bring down your order costs.
Of course, the biggest hack is to have an accurate picture of your inventory stocks at all times (see tip #3). Ensuring your Maya Terminal, ECR, and inventory management system are all linked up will give you a more up-to-date overview of your inventory so you don’t have to risk unnecessary orders.
5. Monitor Employee Expenses
Employee-related expenses, particularly from petty cash to reimbursement claims, can drag down your cash availability if left completely unchecked. Keep everything above board to protect your business and always require receipts for all reimbursable spending. This builds accountability and stops unauthorized expenditures before they unnecessarily impact your bottom line.
6. Control Waste in Daily Operations
Collectively, all the items that can be considered operational waste represent the biggest money leak at most businesses. Small things like the extra food left over from free employee meals, and major areas like overproduction solely to satisfy quotas, are often chalked up to the cost of doing business. In reality, they are almost always controllable in some way.
Policy changes, better training, technology investments, and even active measures to change internal culture must all be on the table if you’re serious about stemming the impacts of operational inefficiency. You might not save every single wasted peso, especially in the short term, but you will lay the groundwork for a more competitive, cash-efficient business later on.
Plugging Money Leaks Is Easier with Maya
Every peso saved contributes to your growth and stability. For many businesses, saving and doing more starts with just one decision. Sign up for Maya Business to open a new world of efficiency and to enjoy streamlined processing of card, e-wallet, and QR code payments Philippines’ businesses swear by.
When you’ve signed up for a Maya Business account, you also get a high-performance Maya Business Deposit account for your Maya Terminal settlements, cash disbursements, and much more. Maya Business Deposit also makes every recovered peso count, thanks to an industry-leading 2.5% per annum interest rate, giving you PHP 25,000 in interest per year on every PHP 1 million deposit. Maya Business Deposit also provides free InstaPay and PESONet transfers, plugging yet another cash leak and giving you even more everyday savings.
All qualified Maya Business users will also receive a Maya Flexi Loan offer of up to PHP 2 million within 3 months. You can use your Maya Flexi Loan to optimize your cash efficiency and lay the groundwork for continued growth. Use Maya as your primary processor for all wallet and card payments to receive even better Maya Flexi Loan offers in the future.
Sign up for Maya Business now to access top-tier payment solutions like Maya QR and the Maya Terminal. Explore Maya’s offerings over the latest version of the Maya app to uncover more ways to streamline your business’s payments.