Cash Inflow Management Lessons From Over 10 Years in Online Business

This is going to be a short piece but a pretty important one for anyone already running a successful online business or someone trying hard to get theirs off the ground (on the way to success).

If you’re not interested in running a business and are happy working a job, you should close this tab and go back to working hard to make your employer more money and worrying about what your boss thinks of you.

When you run an online business, you will get payments from various countries from all over the world.

They could come directly into your bank account, or come via PayPal or Stripe or whatever other card processing company your business uses.

On a long enough timeline, you will inevitably end up triggering some or the other account safety filter, or some or the other domestic or international payments rule, and get your ACCOUNT FROZEN.

It happens to everyone, and it can cost you a lot of money.

Often with these online bank companies (like Payoneer, Wise, etc.) you may not even get an explanation and will have no bank branch you can visit.

All you can do is keep emailing them, and most of the time you will get very frustrating almost machine generated responses from customer support agents who haven’t even read what you’ve written.

Everyone thinks “It won’t happen to me” until it happens to them. “It won’t happen to me” is actually one of the 25 Myths That Young Men Have About The World for a reason.

Here are a few important “money inflow management” lessons from over 10 years in online business

1) NEVER EVER leave money with payment processors and pure online banks.

This means companies like:

• PayPal
• Payoneer
• Wise
• Stripe
• Square
• Whatever other new shape enters the market in the future

These guys are the quickest to freeze accounts and block withdrawals for sometimes months (and sometimes forever because of technicalities you are unable to meet).

They also have no physical bank branches you can visit to get your problems resolved.

All you can do is keep emailing them, and it can become VERY STRESSFUL and VERY FRUSTRATING because you will have to explain the same thing 20 times to different customer support agents while having tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars stuck with them.

ALWAYS ALWAYS ALWAYS withdraw your money to your traditional bank account EVERY NIGHT. Make a habit out of this. Your money should go from all of these “online accounts” to a normal traditional bank whose branch you can visit and whose employees you can physically talk to.

2) Have at least TWO traditional bank current/checking accounts.

This is because sometimes you can get one of them frozen for whatever reason.

For example, I once got one of my accounts frozen for a month because I had a missing KYC document, and I couldn’t immediately get it fixed because I was out of the country.

The only way I was able to run my business was because I had other bank accounts with money that I could use to make and receive payments in the meantime.

If I did not have additional bank accounts, I would not have been able to pay my employees, or even accept money from clients and customers.

3) Always have the phone numbers of key bank employees saved on your phone.

While my account was frozen and I was out of the country, I received a large payment from an international client in that bank account.

It would have been automatically returned, but I got in touch with the bank manager and the manager of the inward remittances department and they were able to hold the money for a few days till I returned.

If I did not have their phone numbers in my phone, the money would have been sent back, and I’d have to re-close the client.

Every time you go to the bank for whatever reason, take the phone number of the person you had to deal with. You never know when you might need them again.

4) Have More Than One Way of Accepting Payments

Most businesses use Stripe to process card payments. But let’s say that one fine day Stripe suspends or blocks your processing. What do you do then?

Yes you can usually get your account unblocked by giving them whatever information they want, but sometimes it can take over a week. What do you do in the meantime?

Dig the well before you become desperate for a drink.

Always have at least 3 active ways you can get money.

Paypal, Stripe, Payoneer, Paddle, LemonSqueezy, Gumroad, whatever.

Never have just 1 way to get paid. Diversify your risk.

Because you never know what triggers their “suspicious activity” filters. I once had a product go viral and make $300,000 in a few days. The normal volume for that account at that time was $10,000 a month.

This triggered the payment processors automated “suspicious activity” filter and they ended up blocking my account for a few days.

Luckily I was able to replace the payment processor on the sales page quickly. But I was only able to do that because I had active accounts with other companies. Otherwise I’d have lost sales.

5) Download Your Transaction Records EVERY MONTH

Do not assume that you will have access to all the records and documents years down the line.

Foreign remittance documents, VAT/GST invoices, etc. – make it a habit to download everything at the end of each month and keep them saved with you.

You might need them for tax purposes years and years later.

You might not be able to get them from these payment processing companies years down the line for whatever reasons.

Maybe they limit how far back you can go and download a document, or maybe the account you were using is now closed, or maybe the company you were using discontinued business in your country.

Whatever it is, it will not serve as a valid excuse if the tax department needs that particular document. Keep whatever documents you need on your own accounting systems.

That’s all for this piece.

See you in the next one.

Your man,

Harsh Strongman