If you had to make a list of some of the biggest issues that plague small business owners on a regular basis, cashflow problems would undoubtedly be right at the top.Cash flow is about more than just the money coming into and going out of your business. It represents your ability to capitalize on opportunities as an entrepreneur as opposed to watching them pass you by because you lack the necessary cash on hand. It's about making sure that you have the cash inflow you need to pay your employees on-time. It's about understanding how you're going to pay vendors and other suppliers to get your products and services into the hands of the people who need them on-time. The list goes on and on.Based on this, it should not come as a surprise that an estimated 82% of all small businesses that close do so because of a significant cash flow problem. When you also consider the fact that the number of small businesses that fail to make it beyond their fifth anniversary is estimated to be 48%, it's easy to see why this is one critical aspect of being an entrepreneur that you do not want to overlook.To be clear, none of this is to say that if you manage to avoid significant cash flow problems you're guaranteed to run a successful business for years to come. Unfortunately, the situation is a lot more malleable than that - there are still a lot of other variables that need to be accounted for. It's simply that proper cash flow forecasting is imperative to avoid a lot of the major mistakes that new entrepreneurs in particular commonly make. It will also help avoid disruption and can be a key contributing factor in your business's ability to scale and grow larger over time.Thankfully, getting a handle on cash flow problems as a small business owner isn't necessarily as difficult as one might assume. It does, however, require you to keep a number of crucial things in mind along the way.The Ins and Outs of Cash Flow: Breaking Things DownFirst, it's important to get a handle on just what is meant by the term cash flow in the first place. Generally speaking, it can be separated into two categories: cash inflow and cash outflow.Cash inflow refers to the amount of money that is coming into your business at any given time. This is typically represented by the money being generated when you sell your products or services. Note that not every dollar that comes into the organization is revenue, mind you - you still have expenses and things of that nature to account for.Cash outflow, as the name suggests, is the money going out of your business. This includes not just payments to people like your employees but also payments to vendors and other suppliers. Regular expenses and debt payments would also fall under the cash outflow umbrella.These two concepts are closely related and a cash flow problem in one area will almost immediately start to impact the other. If you start making late payment after payment to your suppliers, for example, your relationship will be harmed, and you may find it difficult to find people to work with in the future. Making a late credit card or other debt payment could hurt your ability to borrow (and negatively impact your credit rating). It can even harm your reputation not just with your customers, but with your employees as well.All of this is why there really are no such things as "small" cash flow problems." What seems like a minor issue at first will soon snowball into something far bigger if left unchecked, which is why you need a stable foundation in place to avoid these types of situations altogether.Pay Attention to How (and Why) You're BorrowingBy far, one of the most important ways to make sure you have a handle on your cash flow situation is to gain as much insight as possible into the money that you're borrowing - and why.It's rare that an entrepreneur has the money on-hand to build an entire enterprise on their own without taking out additional debt like small business loans. Many even use business credit cards and similar borrowing techniques to get up and running and to make sure that things are running as efficiently as possible.Having said that, you need to pay careful attention to borrowing too much or borrowing from sources that are too expensive. If you have too many loans with a high-interest rate, you may be paying more each month than that money is actually bringing into your business. If you start to miss a payment or two, those interest rates could increase even further - causing you to take on additional debt just to stay afloat.If possible, refinance any high-interest-rate credit cards and similar loans to take advantage of more favorable terms and conditions. Likewise, don't borrow additional money if you're already strapped or if it just doesn't make long-term financial sense to do so.Maintain Those Cash ReservesOne of the biggest lessons that many small business owners learned given everything going on in the world over the last few years has to do with the importance of cash reserves.One day, everything is going smoothly and exactly as expected. The next day, something unprecedented happens - like a sudden global pandemic begins, forcing most businesses to indefinitely close their doors without any indication of when or even how they'd re-open again.According to one recent study, 17% of small business owners said that they'd have to shut down permanently if they were faced with just a two-month-long revenue loss. This is why cash reserves are critical - they help you prepare for whatever life happens to throw at you, regardless of how unexpected it may be.In other words, don't immediately spend every extra dollar coming into your business after expenses and other payments are accounted for. Try to build up as large of a reserve as possible so that if something does happen, you'll at least be able to weather the storm for a while until you come up with a more permanent solution or until conditions return to normal.