I’m not sure if you noticed, but over the last month I’ve been on a savings spree. I’ve written about saving money over the tax-free shopping holiday this past weekend, and about managing your budget and tracking your expenses. Well today, I want to stay on topic and discuss ways to reduce your business expenses.
There are a lot of ways to cut business costs, which can result in an increase in revenue. Summer is the perfect time to evaluate your current expenses. Here are some suggestions for cutting costs:
- EVALUATE CURRENT SERVICES – Are you printing less then you used to? Have you added or eliminated employees in your workforce? These are just some of the questions small business owners should be asking themselves every year. Having more or less employees can add or decrease payroll and the amount you spend on benefits. When it comes to supplies, if your company is opting to email rather then print, then make sure you’re buying less paper or ordering less printer cartridges. You could also shop around to discount suppliers who might carry the same paper and printer cartridges for less.
- GET NEW BIDS – If you’re hoping to reduce expenses, now’s a good time to pull out your insurance policies and evaluate how much you’re paying or overpaying for coverage. Your insurance agent should be able to review the numbers and confirm that you’re not duplicating coverage or paying too much. If you have used the same vendor for years and aren’t happy with their services, you might want to ask for bids from other vendors or let your current vendor know you’re looking around and request a new bid.
- ELIMINATE LITTLE USED SERVICES – It’s amazing how many times I look through my client’s monthly expenses and find out some of the monthly services they pay for are hardly ever used or not used anymore at all. Did you have a rodent problem in your warehouse five years ago that you’re still paying monthly maintenance on today? Do you pay for cloud services and never upload anything? If you want to cut costs, ask your bookkeeper to pull up a list of all of your expenses and review them with you individually. If your bookkeeper won’t do that with you or isn’t willing to in the future, then you might want to consider getting a new bid for a new bookkeeper (hint, hint, call us at Brigade Bookkeeping… we always help our clients cut their expenses).
Being a penny pincher doesn’t mean you’re a cheap skate. As a small business owner, it means you can use the money saved to grow your business. So take some time to pull up a list of your company’s expenses and then truly analyze where you can cut costs.
Have a great week everyone!
