A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the award of a master of business administration degree in the school of business and public management at KCA Uuniversity
Financial management is very critical in ensuring that Small and Medium Enterprises remain solvent. Meeting financial obligations reflects that SMEs are entitled to continuity. The world is changing at an alarming rate prompting new challenges that are making financial management in SMEs difficult. The common challenges in financial management resonate with record keeping, regulatory compliance, borrowing arrangements, financial analysis, financial reporting and operational funding. In this regard, this study sought to establish the financial management challenges faced by SMEs operating in Nairobi. In particular, the study sought to Establish the effects of business regulation, to determine the effect of record keeping on performance, to establish how financial sources influence performance of SMEs in Nairobi, to determine the effects of risk management on performance of SMEs, to find out how monitoring procedures affects performance in small and medium enterprises to establish the regulatory compliance attributes, the record keeping and financial analysis systems applied SMEs. To find out their financial sources and to establish the risk management and monitoring procedures they apply. The study applied a descriptive survey design. The target population of this study was 600 SMEs operating in the Nairobi Central Business District. This study applied the simple random sampling technique to select 60 SMEs. In this study, the managers of the SMEs were the respondents. Data collected was mainly quantitative in nature and was appropriately analyzed using descriptive statistics. The descriptive statistical tools in SPSS helped the researcher to describe the data and determine the extent used. Correlation analysis was used to analyze the relationship between the variables. The results of this study were presented in both tabular and graphic formats. The study concluded that the business regulations, record keeping, source of finance, risk management and the monitoring procedures were all significantly associated with the performance of the small micro enterprises. The study recommends that the SMEs managers to undertake some risk management courses to improve on the risk management skills. In addition, the study recommended that the SMEs managers need to come up with clear monitoring procedures and monitoring tools to monitor the performance of their businesses.
