When you are starting out in a new business, you always want to make sure that you are only spending what is absolutely necessary to spend. In fact, it is something of a constant battle trying to keep your finances in check, especially if you are quite new to running businesses in general.
There are, however, particular ways in which you can easily save money in any business, and it is worth being aware of what these are from the start. In this post, we’ll take a look at a few of the easiest places to save money in any new business.
Encourage WFH
The past year and a half has displayed just how easy it is to run a business with everyone working from home. Even if you can’t get everyone to work from home, or you need one or two people in a central location, you are going to find that working from home is a great way to save a lot of money in your business.
The reason? Overheads. When you don’t have everyone working in one place, you don’t need to worry about the upkeep costs of that office. If you can get to a place where you are completely office-free, that is going to be especially affordable. It’s definitely worth encouraging WFH as far as you can if you want to save some money in your business.
Change Energy Suppliers
If you do have an office that you need to look after, you can still save money just by saving on the energy that the place is using. And the best and most effective way to do that is just to change the energy supplier that you are using, as well as the method of heating. Certain methods are much cheaper than others – for instance, if you have a heating oil tank, that is going to be a lot cheaper than traditional heating. Do that, and change suppliers to a cheap tariff, and you will find that you save a lot of money.
Buy Supplies in Bulk
If there are certain supplies that you just know you are going to need regularly, perhaps because they are central to your operation, then you may as well buy them in bulk – as far as you can. This is not always possible – for instance, if the thing in question is very perishable. But even so, you should buy in as large a quantity as possible, every time. That is always going to be a lot more affordable overall, so there is no real reason not to do it.
As well as buying in bulk, make sure that you are buying from the more affordable suppliers. You might want to think about taking a look at your options whenever a new quarter comes around, or at the very least, at the end of the fiscal year. You never know if a cheaper source appeared somewhere in the last year, and utilising it could be very wise.
Cut Traditional Advertising
There has never been a better time to be a business advertising itself. With many of the traditional advertising methods, you always had to pay quite a lot upfront. This was especially true for billboards, television and even radio. It’s not that you shouldn’t do those at all – they can be very powerful marketing methods – but rather that you might want to cut those budgets and instead put a little more focus on some of the more contemporary methods of marketing.
The contemporary ones can be extremely effective anyway – and very often, they are very cheap or even entirely free of charge. Think of social media marketing, where you don’t have to pay a penny in order to reach huge numbers of people – but if you want to, you can pay a small fee for promoted tweets. This flexibility is likewise another great quality of this kind of advertising.
Outsource
Although there are varied opinions on outsourcing, the truth is that it is generally one of the strongest ways to save money as a business. When you outsource, you are effectively just putting the work into the hands of experts, who are also going to know how to do the work more efficiently. That means that you are only paying for them, rather than for all of the materials and so on too. It is not always cheaper to outsource than to do the work in-house – but it very often is, and in those occasions you should ensure you are doing so.
