 Now entrepreneurs who are organized and methodical in record keeping show competence, professionalism, avoid legal and regulatory problems, and grow their small businesses. Record keeping in business is required by the law. Common sense, ethics, corporate governance, and best practice cheaply keep him proper books and records in business. Now prospective entrepreneurs should first cultivate the habit and master the art of record keeping before starting up their businesses. Welcome to Business Insight in Plasti, Africa. I am Justin Akadomi. Now Nigeria's inflation hits 15.40% and meet high food prices just as its public debts hit 38 trillion Naira. Let's take a highlight of major business stories that ran it up this week in Nigeria. The headline inflation moderated by 60 basis point BPS to 15.40% the lowest level in 12 months. Specifically, food inflation moderated by 1.09 percentage point PPTS year on year YOOY to 17.21% owing to the supportive base effects. This is coming at the backdrop of the Unitide demand pressure witnessed on the month on month MOM food inflation reading. Conversely, the core inflation was up by 61 BPS, reflecting continued price pressure on cooking gas. The death management office DMO says Nigeria's public death hit 38.005 trillion in the third quarter 2021 due to the issue of euro bonds. This is according to a press release titled DMO publishes total public death for quarter 3 2021. The four billion dollar euro bonds issued by the government in September 2021 accounted for the majority of the increase of 2.540 trillion compared to the similar amount of 35.465 trillion at the end of quarter 2 2021. According to the DMO, euro bonds have benefitted the economy by raising Nigeria's external reserves, consequently sustaining the Naira exchange rate and providing critical funds for the federal government to finance various projects in the budgets. The governor of the central bank of Nigeria, Godwin MFLA says most of the roads constructed in the country will be towed to repay the loans used to fund them. MFLA said this on Wednesday while answering questions after the two-day retreat of the bankers committee in Lagos. He said most of those roads will be towed and we know that in many other countries in the world roads are towed because those projects are commercially viable. The United Arab Emirates, UAE, has increased the number of flight slots given to the Nigerian flag carrier Airpeace to seven per week from an initial one per week. It has also granted the Nigerian carrier the permit to fly directly to Dubai instead of just Sharjah airport. Dubai civil aviation authority announced the slot extension in a letter to the Airpeace chairman amid an ongoing diplomatic row between Nigeria and the UAE. It said the letter was with regard to slot availability at the DXB terminal one and as a gesture of goodwill and in support of UAE and Nigerian relations in case Airpeace wishes to start their flight slots have been blocked by Dubai airports. The continued shortage of foreign exchange in the country may delay the proposed rollout of the fifth generation network as the two telecommunication companies which won the 3.5 GHZ spectrum band begins plans to acquire major equipments worth a million of dollars from overseas. On Monday MTN Nigeria and MAFIB Nigeria Communications Limited won in the Nigerian Communications Commission life auction of the two available slots of 100 MHZ TDD slots of 3.5 GHZ bands. The auction ended at 273.6 million dollars for each available lot and each winner is mandated to pay the latest February 2022 or lose the license according to the commission. And those were the stories that rounded up business for this week. For small business owners everywhere record keeping is a necessary and sometimes tricky part of making sure a business runs smoothly. Now Rita Babalala is the lead consultant at Beacon Get Limited. She has over 20 years experience part in the banking industry working in the oil and gas industry and as a director in charge of business development and human resources. She joins us now as we look at the need for record keeping and accountability for SMBs. Good evening to you both Babalala many thanks for joining us on business insight and plus TV Africa. Thank you for having me on board. All right let's talk about them record keeping you know for some small business you know especially if it's just owned by one person they tend to say that they know how much they expand and how much income they make so they just feel that they don't really need a proper record keeping. Why has this become very important? Okay you see for most entrepreneurs they probably started out their business as a result of their passion as a result of their hobby. So when the business is not evolving they find it very difficult to go beyond that stage and this thing to do me feel that oh they can still manage it but they forgotten that for you to have record keeping you think is a kind of accountability that you need to have as an individual everything that does not get recorded does not get measured you begin to have problem with it. So when they don't keep record they assume they will know every of the information concerning their businesses you have funds going out you have funds coming in you have expenses that you do every day so once you don't record them down whether manually or electronically you will run into problems because if the brain is not designed to hold as much information as you think you can hold on to. So I think for record keeping for SMEs they need to know the practicality of trying to record things down once they don't do it they begin to falter and when you begin to falter the business itself becomes shaky so for me I would think record keeping is very important they need to understand that they cannot record everything manually they cannot put everything onto their brain you still need to put one form of measures and that involves reaching down as well as getting an electronic copy of anything that you're doing trying to put something online whether you're using Excel whether you're trying to use Python whether you're trying to use any of this software you need to put something down thank you. All right Rita fine we understand that you need to keep adequate records but at what point would you need external help in terms of making sure that your records are accurate and so in case you need to use it for something formal just when do you really need to have external help in such scenarios? Okay it depends on the scope of your business operations when the business scope is evolving and you find yourself getting so many things at the same time when you need information as at when you need this and you begin to like start looking for documents you need to start looking for information that next ordinarily you should have at your fingertips then you know you need to ask for external help external help could also be like an internal help because for small businesses before they evolve they don't think about having a team structure having somebody in-house whether as a bookkeeper whether as an accountant whether somebody in house that can just manage finances so from going before you get to the external help you need internal help as well get somebody in house to do your record for you you don't have to do everything yourself so you need to get somebody internally and then you now extend to externally but if you find your hindrance scope of volume of your business you see how it is and you can begin to see the scope of work and you need to send invoices out you need to send weight bills you are selling and you need to make use of journals when those journaling problem becomes easier for you then you know you need an external help one way or the other and most of the time we think as entrepreneurs that those people are very expensive you don't want to pay ICs but the part of ignorance that you're going to pay in terms of defaulting in terms of tax regulation in terms of maybe government regulation they are quite expensive even to your own working in things are not working their average right so it's better for them to seek out external help all right fine uh Rita in um your talk you mentioned um bookkeeping you talked about accounts collecting accounting is there um any uh differentiation between uh bookkeeping and uh proper accounting yes there is a bit of um I would say there is much difference in it why I use a bookkeeper depending on the scope of your business if I small micro manage business and owner manage business and your staff strength is just between three or four and your scope of work I mean your scope of volume of work is just below maybe like a five million a 10 million a 20 million per month then you just need somebody that comes in periodically to come and help you balance your books record the receipts oh you have made payments to social so and so people incomes are coming in from other people how do you record this down how do you want to measure it so those are basic things that you need help for and not most entrepreneurs are grounded in accounting functions if you're not so versatile in finances or record keeping then you know you need help but if you're someone that has the practicality of working in the in another friend before you've worked in as uh probably as an employee somewhere you've handled the finances you have you've handled work elsewhere you feel you can manage yourself financially then you can start with yourself get yourself into the bearing get yourself into the hassle trying to balance your book at the end of each day if you can't do it at the end of each day then set up that you need to do it maybe probably on a weekend basis but record keeping will surely be done so once you have that in at the back of your mind you are self accountable to the fact that there's a particular time every week every day of the week that you need to set aside to be able to balance you all right fine let's talk about them one issue that most small business owners have which is separating them personal finance and income or revenue from that of the business because sometimes they have issues when it comes to you know separating which money is for the company or the business and which is for private and other times too they tend to do a bit of drawings and they might not really know exactly how much they have made from such a venture so how how do you come in here so what should be done in that particular scenario okay so for this kind of scenario honestly most of us as entrepreneurs we fall into that trap because you feel you can't separate the two but believe you may you get to the point where everything gets modeled off so I tell people when you're starting out in business no matter the scope of your business operation have this at the back of your mind that you need to separate your personal account from your business account as individuals we all know how the cost of living is in Nigeria right now so no matter what it is when you separate the two you know the inflows going in goes into the corporate account you know whatever personal money you want to spend for yourself goes into your personal account so for me and other people like I coached me regularly I tell them at the end of the week at the end of the month depending on your personal expenses try to set aside a certain fund and move it to your personal account I call it sometimes when I first started my business I used to put myself in like a telephone allowance I put myself my fuel in allowance transport allowance those are things that are in necessity in your business so as entrepreneurs you don't have to wait to the end of the month to pay yourself a salary because if you don't do this thing periodically like that as the expenses come up you get used to the heart of tipping your hands into the coffers of the organization's accounts because imagine every day one diesel every day you need to pay for probably one or two things like petty cash and then you need to make expenses or you're waiting for yourself at the end of the month 30 days and then before the 30th day there's no way you won't be keeping it to your company company's account because you are human you want to meet needs at home you want to meet personal needs you want to buy yourself lunch you want to cook you want to buy some other things so as individuals in order to have that self-discipline and control if it's a weekly basis I have an entrepreneur that's a creative director that sells and he told me himself that you know what when he started out himself he thought he could do it on a monthly basis but he has learned to pay himself every week so when he gets out free to sew at the end of the week what he does is he moves a certain amount of money to his personal account and then you can spend money from your personal account and then what he killer thing that we do as entrepreneurs we don't pay ourselves salaries you just assume account and your personal account at one and the same ownership is in animals with you running your account after all you are doing of your business you can spend the money the way it says that is a wrong notion so for every entrepreneur that's self accountability of trying to know what your expenses are on a weekly basis on a monthly basis then you pay as yourself that kind of money and you move it every week if you feel you can manage yourself or you have somebody that is financing you elsewhere then you cannot say oh I want to do this on a monthly basis but if you cannot accommodate monthly basis then I want to enjoy them to please state I mean start with the weekly deductions pay yourself weekly and move and separate your personal finances from the company's finances okay so Rita if I got you correctly you are saying specifically there's nothing wrong in actually putting yourself on a salary if you own your own business yeah there's nothing wrong in it we call it delay gratification in some cases but delay gratification doesn't mean to be straight gentle yourself because when you're saying the money there is no way you get to the point you just start stealing from the company's money I call it internet stealing now you find yourself that is not even yourself that are stealing from the company but you're also stealing from your company because when you when you draw up a lease and you have so much expenses and you can't match it with the revenue coming in you begin to steal you begin to take on the course of the business and that's why we as entrepreneurs our businesses in this part of the world fail to scale up to something efficient to something that is profitable and I tell people it's not all business that is sustainable if your business is not sustainable and you've been running it for three five years and you still just yourself managing your business then that means you I mean it's like you're having a baby and the baby can't walk at the age of two or three years and it's the same way with a business so if you run a business five years you cannot transit and scale up that business it is because of one I mean some of these things that we feel to do as entrepreneurs that personal accountability is not there so I will enjoy them to always pay themselves it is a necessity that's why at the end of the month a liberal deserve his wages as an entrepreneur as the head of your business as the chief evangelist of your business as the accountant of your business as the you wear all hats you need to pay yourself thank you all right well said so at least that you know that you're actually making money and even if you do you're not getting it you could actually plough plough it back to you you know your business let's talk about employing and back profit sometimes some people say that even making profit I should actually be enjoying it you know so at what time or what percentage ordinarily should you be plowing back in case you make profit or some income from your venture okay this is a tricky question and then you can address it this week you seem to know your your needs you need to know what your business means them there are three areas that you need to watch you earn what you go and what you spend that will determine how you balance what you need to pay yourself whether as delay gratification or whether in heading back to your business when I started my business whenever whatever income I make I make sure that 50 percent of it goes back into the working capital I call it like building up my working capital reserve for some people it could be 80 percent so you see me to work around these parameters what you want as a business person what your business self-holds are causing as income into the organization and then what the business is self-owned as an asset by the time you match these three parameters together you'll be able to determine what percentage you will plough back into your business a business that does not plough back some of its profit is only setting itself of failure there is that element of business you need to plough it back so the percentage now depends on also the scope of your business operation if your business is such that requires every capital huge financial outlay you know at least 60 or 70 percent of your money must go back into the business but like I also said you must be able to manage your internal expenses what you hold out and then what you are also expanding out of the organization you have bills to pay there's phcm there's internal network I mean there's what you call it data there's call cards so you must know what you need to pay at the end of the month then of course you're also talking about salaries for your employees you're also talking about cost for doing business in Nigeria you know those ones that you don't necessarily think about but like you can surprise one of these days and you just meet them at the corner of your office waiting for you so those are things expenses that are incidental to the running of your business so you need to make provision for them so at that point in time that is when you can now decide what percentage needs to go back into your business or your cash reserve or what you call building up your result all right many thanks to you Rita I wish we had more time to even talk because there's a whole lot that young and new businesses need to learn concerning record keeping and of course some accountability thank you so much Rita yes okay thank you so much thank you all right keeping clear records of income expenses employees tax document and account easing just good business it can bring you peace of mind and help you monitor progress towards goals and save you time and money all right away from all of that now we'll be giving you new tips on how you can actually revive your growing business five ways to revive a dying business is your business showing signs of distress or is it straight up thanking there are simple measures you can take to bring it back from the break your business might be dying but it doesn't have to mean it's over here are five things you can do to save your dying business and also help it thrive one evaluate your situation honestly before facetions treat a patient they do all kinds of tests and make a diagnosis so when you realize that your business is in serious trouble stop you need to take a good head look at your company to evaluate and access what's going wrong you can't take action without knowing where to start second rethink your strategy the way you think about your failure is key to your success after reevaluating your company chances are you have found where you went wrong and you're ready to redefine and rethink your strategy you have decided not to give up and you are determined to succeed this is a great step in reviving a dying business but it's also a hard one three focus on your people you may think that the problem is in your software hardware or your data but the best business are the ones that run with soul your most important asset are your people your employees when your company seems to be falling reevaluate not just your strategy but those who need to execute it if necessary get rid of those who are slowing you down and hire those who will help you revive your dying business four let go of pride and fear rather than playing the blame game which will get you nowhere successful CEOs and business leaders know that admitting their faults and showing genuine humility will help rebuild and rebuke the organization when business leaders are willing to change or stick to preconceived ideas of what they think will work it is a recipe for disaster and five don't lose your passion now passion is what made you start your business in the first place and it will help you to keep going passion may not always come with the voice of reason but it may be the feel you need to reignite that fire so you see your business can actually thrive and that's the size of the show for this week I am Justin and I'll see you again next time bye for now