6 recommendations to decrease small business expenses in 2020? Streamline operations: Move from pen and paper to a digital time clock, job scheduling, and digital forms and checklists – this is a total game-changer for your business. Streamline training: Your employees need to be pros as quickly as possible and you definitely don’t want to lose hours on training, you want your new hires to hit the ground running. With training material available on their mobile phone, employees can learn at their own pace and always have access to courses to build their professional skills. Create quizzes to ensure your employees understand the content covered.
While there are many ways for a business to cut costs, not all of them are as forward-thinking and sensible as others. In this blog, we examine some ways that small businesses can save during the coronavirus crisis, as well as some other ways businesses should avoid. It’s important to look at the challenges presented by the pandemic as those needed to change your business for the better. This can help you to prioritize the changes you’ll need to make savings.
Relay to your employees that staying in business is the most important thing. Without the business, everyone would be out of a job, so you need to decrease salary or make them part-time. If your business has an excellent culture, they will understand. Explain that this can and hopefully will all be temporary. Also, see what fixed costs can be delayed and audit your variable costs. – David Fabi M.D., FABMVMNT During a time of economic strain, it’s imperative that you trim as much wasteful spending as possible. I’ve found that by conducting an expense audit, areas of wasteful spending can be easily identified and curbed. Whether that’s overspending on shipping for an e-commerce business or allocating too much spend to PPC for an online services provider, there are ways to reduce costs. – Chris Cashin, Parcel Consulting, LLC
Finally, it can be useful to focus on incremental increases. Start with small goals, and then slowly grow your goals each month. This will give you the chance to measure how easy it is to achieve each goal, so after a few months, you will be able to create a realistic financial forecast for your business. Over time you may notice that your budget starts to increase, and when this happens, you can consider paying discretionary expenses. Read more information on Reduce business costs.
Another way of reducing the costs of your business is by hiring freelancers and contract workers instead of full-time employees. It is apparent that one should hire full-time employees for the core functions of their business. But when it comes to hiring employees for the site functions, it is highly recommended that you hire a freelancer or contract worker. Not only does it save you money, but you get a better end product as well. For example, If you need to design an infographic, why not hire a freelancer rather than a full-time employee?