Between the concern over how to meet your financial obligations like bills and payroll and cash flow, it is a very stressful time to be a small to medium enterprise or startup business owner. A lot of these business owners are facing the same hardships and anxieties over financial sustainability, debt, and even unemployment.
The owner’s business and personal credit scores can take a massive hit if they have to miss their payments because of cash shortfalls. Listed below are some strategies you can implement to help protect your personal and business credit score while the whole world waits for this pandemic to pass.
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Review their bank accounts regularly for any suspicious and fraudulent activities
The bad news is a crisis, and the financial relief that usually follows seems to bring out criminals and fraudsters. That is very true in this current pandemic with the CARES or Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, which has prompted its fair share of fraudulent activities and scams targeting a lot of businesses.
For instance, CISA or Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency reported that recent fraudulent activities and scams include electronic mail or email with malicious links or attachments to fraudulent sites designed to trick the recipient into revealing their personal information like credit card accounts or social security number. Sometimes, these scammers use the pretext of shady financial aid or charity organization websites.
Be aware of any text messages, social media posts, phone calls, or emails with links or attachments. One way to find these scams and avoid them is to go straight to government websites to get accurate and actual information about available loans for small and medium enterprise and startup businesses.
Do the same with charity organizations you are planning to help. You can also go straight to creditors or financial institutions’ sites for more details about the necessary assistance instead of going to links attached to email messages.
Find out what the business can and can’t pay
Instead of ignoring the bills, create a good plan for paying as many utility bills as possible. Check your budget to see if you can eliminate or reduce any specific costs. After cutting or removing some costs, reallocate the money towards essential expenses like rent or mortgage, leases, credit card payments, vehicle loans, and utilities.
To help this process, make sure to consider digitizing your finances using applications like Quickbooks or TurboTax. These applications are packed with features to help people track their money, including integrations with credit card firms, different banks, or lenders.
To find out about CARE Act, visit this site for more details
Some apps also include services like how to organize transactions from linked debit and credit cards so users can account for all their expenditures. These categories can help business owners spot the areas where they can afford to cut costs. Not only that, but they can also immediately update payments like entertainment and gas that decreased because of shelter-in-place orders.
Use identity and credit monitoring protection services
Alert services that keep an eye on your identity and credit give business owners a better chance of avoiding and stopping fraudulent activities and scams that can damage people’s credit scores. It is a way to win back their control over their data and protect their identity in this digital age.
Though these services’ partnership with other protection services give users free data breach and credit monitoring, as well as smart identity features rolled into one single application. Some of these smart identity features can help stop fraudulent third parties from getting access to people’s information, significantly minimizing the risk of identity theft.
These applications also let people file data breach claims, apply for credits or loans, and log into websites and applications without using passwords. Not only that, but these apps also deliver tools and educational content to help people protect their confidential information and sensitive data.
For more help about marketing your business in times of need, check out websites like https://www.samovensconsulting.com/gun-to-your-head-marketing for more details.
Be more proactive about contacting loan officers and creditors
Let the creditors and loan officers know that you or your company are struggling to pay some of the bills. Procrastinating on these tasks will not help improve the situation. By reaching out to these people and letting them know that you are currently experiencing a difficult financial situation, there is a big chance that you can salvage your credit rating.
Everyone’s financial situation is taking a big hit because of businesses’ loss in clients, brick-and-mortar store location closure, or reduce operating hours. Creditors and loan companies might be more willing to help or work with you now more than they usually would. Take advantage of every available deferment-payment scheme.
But make sure that you understand or know every term before doing so. People need to know what they agree to, including whether these deferment-payment schemes involve a balloon payment in a couple of months or whether the creditor will move the payments to the end of the loan’s life.