Top cost saving tips for your business
Tools & Resources
Key learnings
- To maintain a healthy cashflow during rising costs you'll need to offset them by increasing revenue or reducing expenses.
- You can save costs in several key areas by deciding what to cut back on or switch to reduce money going out - for example changing suppliers.
- Consider time and effort like money too - where can you save time and optimise your team's efforts?
One of the leading causes of business failure is cash flow mismanagement and in the current economic climate, it is more important than ever to manage your money effectively. In this article, we highlight some cost saving tips for your business so you can improve your cash position without compromising operational delivery.
With inflation currently running at a very high level, all business owners are looking at ways to save costs and reduce spending.
Knowing where to make savings and when is critical for ensuring that you don’t compromise on the delivery of your products and services.
Click below to find our top cost saving tips for your business.
1
Optimise your time
Time wastage is a huge factor in many businesses and can be caused by too many unnecessary meetings and duplication of effort. So, look at your internal processes and ask yourself how you can optimise the time of you and your team to spend less time working in the business and more time working on the business.
2
Look at your energy
Powering your business premises and equipment costs money and with gas and electricity bills rising exponentially right now, it’s important to make sure you’re getting the best deal and keeping energy consumption as low as possible. Check out our article on energy efficiency savings for business to reduce your overheads.
3
Negotiate with suppliers
Whether your manufacturing products or delivering services, there will likely be lots of vendors that supply your business on an ongoing basis. If you’ve been working with a supplier for a long time, one way to reduce costs is to get alternative quotes for what you need and try to negotiate a better price. You can read our top tips for choosing a supplier to help you.
4
Reduce your expenses
Business expenses tend to add up over time as you grow your business but it’s important to review these along the way to make sure you’re not paying for services that you are no longer using. You should also look at your staff expenses and make sure they are following company policy when submitting receipts.
5
Manage your staff
Given that labour is typically the biggest cost associated with running a business, it’s important to make sure your employees are being as productive as possible and helping you achieve your business goals. Keeping on top of workloads with regular performance reviews can save you a lot of time and money by avoiding disciplinary issues down the line.
6
Make technology work for you
From accounting and finance software to customer relationship management solutions and everything in between, there are lots of digital tools out there that automate different aspects of running a business, saving you time and money in the process. These don’t have to cost the earth and there are lots of free or low-cost packages available.
7
Outsource
Hiring new employees can be very expensive so one way to cut costs is to outsource some of your functions to third parties. While this will certainly not be applicable for every role, and you should try to view your people as an asset rather than a cost, things like bookkeeping, PR and digital marketing can be outsourced to freelancers or agencies for a fraction of the cost of hiring somebody in house.
8
Embrace the cloud
Gone are the days where every business must keep physical records of all company data either in paper format or in on-premises servers. Storing data in the cloud can dramatically reduce costs and is often thought to be more secure compared with traditional processes.
Next steps...
- Write out all your ideas for where you can save money, time and effort - pick your top three to focus on and action them this week.
- Use your cashflow statement to spot areas you could reduce expenses or move from fixed to variable costs - see our article on how to use your cashflow statement to predict and build your resilience.
- Join us for our free cost of trading crisis webinar series for more advice and support.