The last part of the year, including the holiday season, can be a very impactful time for small businesses.
For one, this time of the year can be full of opportunities for a company. A recent survey of 300 small companies indicated that, for many different types of businesses, it is pretty common for the year’s final quarter to be the most profitable. Given the high level of shopping over the holiday season, it might not be too surprising to hear that retailers were among the businesses especially likely to report that the fourth quarter of the year saw the most profits.
However, the holiday season and the time around it can also pose challenges for small businesses. This is because, along with opportunities for boosted profits, this time period can also carry added costs. In the above-mentioned survey, many businesses pointed to to their costs going up in the final quarter of a year. Costs it was particularly common to see increases in include those connected to inventory and marketing. As this underscores, trying to capitalize of the opportunities of the last part of the year can have a lot of expenses connected to it.
So, during the final quarter of the year, it can be important for businesses to carefully think about how best to handle these costs and how best to maximize their chances of fully taking advantage of the opportunities the holiday season and the end of the year present.
What if the end of the year doesn’t end up being as profitable as a business expects? This could put a business in a tough position to deal with the added costs it may have taken on. So, a holiday season not going the way they were expecting is among the things that can lead companies to cash flow and debt problems. When a small business experiences such problems, it can be important for its owner to promptly seek out guidance on what can be done to resolve these problems.