Small firm owners fail to keep track of debts

Over a third of SME owners admit they don't know how much money they owe or are owed at any given time, according to a recent survey.

Added to this nearly half admit that they don't have any form of system to alert them to the fact that an invoice is overdue. Small business owners said in response to the survey by accounting software company KashFlow, that it would take them an average of 2 hours and 45 minutes to calculate how much money they owe or are owed.

Duane Jackson, Managing Director of KashFlow said: "I was really shocked that in the 21st Century, when advances in technology means that people can work out their finances at the click of the button, over a third of small business owners are saying that they don't have clue how much money they owe or are owed".

The survey of 1479 small business owners also showed that:

• 35 per cent of small business owners said that they did not know how much money they owed or were owed,
  
• 46 per cent said they had no way of tracking overdue invoices,
  
• 83 per cent said that they had no formal training on book keeping or keeping accounts.