If you have run a business for any length of time, then you will have accumulated recurring costs, often without realising it. These aren’t necessarily huge expenses which are clearly visible from your statements, but rather they are smaller, regular costs that often go unnoticed and can add up to significant amounts over time.
Here are some examples of these costs and how to spot and eliminate them:
- Subscriptions
We had a client who had been paying for 5 Dropbox licences for five years and hadn’t even noticed. That added up to a whopping £2,397 of unnecessary expenditure! Ensure you review your subscriptions – are there any that you should have cancelled but just haven’t got around to it yet?
- Stock
If you are a stock-based business, then the unsold stock is essentially cash just sitting in the warehouse – get this sold and release this cash.
- Employees
Are you overpaying your staff or are you over-staffed? This is often the highest cost to the business so it’s worth analysing this regularly.
- Utilities
Phone and electricity companies’ costs can creep up, and they rely on you not being organised to switch. Make time to review these costs and shop around occasionally – it can help save you thousands.
- Small business rate relief
You may be entitled to this and not know it. You are entitled to rate relief if your business has a rateable value less than £15,000 – so it’s worth checking it out.
It’s so easy to focus on the large items when looking at cash flow and rightly so, but the little things that are costing you thousands are worth looking at too.
