Rising costs don’t only apply to domestic life, but commercial business will feel the pinch as well. Beginning at the start of the 2022/2023 tax year in April, you can expect to see increased prices for fuel, essential products and commercial services. Therefore, minimizing your business costs has never been more critical. But it’s not as challenging as you think.
Stay Under Higher Tax Rates
In many countries, you can keep business costs lower by ordering under a specific amount of certain products. For example, the red diesel price you pay can be kept lower if you order under 2,300 litres at a time. You pay only 10% VAT rather than 20% by doing this. Companies like Fuel Box can accommodate bespoke orders. Additionally, suppose your profits are more than £85,000. In that case, you must register for VAT and pay a higher rate than usual. No one suggests you turn away business, but you should monitor your VAT threshold to avoid charges.
Outsource Tasks Where Necessary
The costs associated with running a business can be high. The largest of which is usually employee salary. Even if you pay minimum wage, staff pay is likely to be very high. In most cases, it might not be possible to hire a skilled employee, such as an IT support technician, to manage your office computers. But you can outsource such tasks for a nominal fee. Managed IT services are a good example. You can select a package that suits you and pay a small monthly fee for cyber security, network administration and other IT related work without the overheads.
Embrace the Paperless Office
Even in today’s highly digitized world, paper is still widely used in business. Paper allows for memos, handbooks and critical documents like contracts. But like everything else today, you can replace paper entirely, and you can make your office completely paperless. Email and collaboration software are critical to this. Email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird are among the most popular, and most people know how to use these. Collaboration and management tools are a little more complex. Some of the easiest to use are Flock, Slack and Discord.
Ditch PPC and Blog for Organic Traffic
In the USA alone, the advertising sector recorded $150 billion in sales in 2020 and has grown since then. And this includes internet advertising such as Pay-Per-Click. If you engage in PPC ads, you know how costly they can be. But you can get free advertising from various sources via organic traffic. Social media is a great place to start since you can target specific demographics. However, SEO enriched blog content will drive organic traffic to your site if you provide relevant and helpful information concerning your business or niche.
Use Free Resources If You Can
As a 21st century business, it’s probably dependent on software to operate. And software licenses can become considerably expensive. Microsoft Windows alone can set you back a lot of money. But you should be aware you can get free software alternatives to some of the most widely used programs. For instance, you can use free Linux-based operating systems instead of Windows, OpenOffice rather than MS Office and Mautic over MailChimp for automation. Additionally, free antivirus software like Avira will work well enough for a small office.
