As a business owner, you are constantly looking for ways to increase your profits. While many businesses only consider growing sales, there is another way to maximize the money your business makes — cutting your expenses. When you do this, you can put more money into your pocket or back into your business to enable more growth.
Hiring Freelancers
You may truly need another copywriter, graphic designer, or web developer. But you don’t necessarily have to hire a full-time employee. Many potential workers are freelancers, and experts predict that by 2020, up to 50 percent of the workforce will be freelancers.
Hiring freelancers has many advantages. You cut down on your required office space, training expenses, and the cost of benefits because freelancers supply all of this for themselves. You can also hire multiple freelancers for the project each is best suited for rather than a generalist who has a little knowledge of everything.
Shop for the Best Deals
Go through your expenses. Yes, you may be able to cut some completely from your budget, but you can probably do more by looking for better prices. Switching to a different office supply store or ordering supplies online may save you money.
You may also find that you can get the same features in software with a less expensive option. For example, Microsoft Office has long been the top seller for document processing and spreadsheets. Google’s Enterprise solution, G Suite, is $10 cheaper per person per month, and many people prefer it for accessibility and other reasons. If you have 10 employees, that could be a savings of $1,200 per year. For some software, you may even be able to use free open-source software.
Maximize Work Time
According to a recent study, an average employee’s cell phone may be taking up around five hours of his time each week. That does not include time spent in unnecessary meetings or driving inefficiently on a route. UPS mapped out routes better to avoid left turns, cutting around 20 million miles out of their employees’ drives. Work with your staff to determine where time is wasted, and then find solutions to better use that time.
Set Up a Merchant Account
It seems like it might be an additional expense, but setting up a merchant account may be a better move than you think. If you are not already accepting credit cards, you may add another revenue stream to your business.
Beyond that, taking electronic payments allows you to avoid bad checks, which is yet another expense all business owners would love to cut. This can also streamline your transactions in general, allowing for fewer work hours spent going through transactions, managing your cash flow, and forecasting. Since many consumers now prefer to pay electronically, having a merchant account can even cut down on time spent counting cash.
There are many other ways to slash business expenses. Find what works for you and your business. When you and your employees are spending both money and time most efficiently, your profits will continue to grow, making your business the best it can be.