“Don’t sell yourself short.” That’s a piece of advice we hear all the time – and for Canadian entrepreneurs, it’s one they may want to take to heart more often.
In a new study from Intuit Canada, which provides businesses with accounting and financial software, researchers polled about 600 small to mid-sized businesses (SMBs) to find out how comfortable they are with their finances. The survey looked at full-time businesses with 99 employees or less.
About 27 per cent of SMBs polled feel they may be charging less than they should be for their work, and 39 per cent said they may not be valuing their goods and services at market value. Just 15 per cent said they might be overcharging, highlighting a disconnect between actual market conditions and how confident SMBs feel about their knowledge of them.
That lack of certainty is also clear when it comes to entrepreneurs’ financial literacy. On a scale of one to 10, about 46 per cent of businesses said they feel their knowledge about finance hovers around a five or less.
Still, despite not knowing a lot about finance, 87 per cent of respondents said they manage their own finances and do their own accounting. Just 51 per cent said they hire an accountant or bookkeeper to help them out, while only 35 per cent rely on both financial management software and an accountant to work out their finances.
That being said, entrepreneurs running SMBs know they need to up their game if they want to ramp up their financial know-how, and that might mean turning to software tools to help them in those areas. Eighty-six per cent of businesses surveyed said they feel spending on tech to power their businesses is worth it, while 88 per cent said relying on tech saves them time. Another 85 per cent said leveraging tech actually makes them more cost-efficient as well.
