Money Saving Business Tips From The Total Team!

With all the news about the cost of living crisis, interest rates rising, energy prices rising and very limited help for businesses, particularly the smaller enterprises – it’s easy to go into a panic about what business is going to look like in 2023.

However we believe at Total Guide believe in looking at the positives and offering helpful advice and support to get us starting the year with a spring in our step.

Here are a few tips to help with using money wisely in business as we go into 2023.

1. Look at how you get paid

• And ensure it’s agile and fit for purpose. Do you have watertight contracts with notice periods? Can you get clients to pay upfront seamlessly?
• Do you have invoices which a click to pay option?
• Can you offer an easy payment plan via a direct debit option.
• These simple tasks helps others with their cash flow, helps you with your cash flow. We all know cash flow is critical to business success. If someone offers you payment terms of more than 30 days – why are you still working with them?

2. Review all other costs 

• Are you paying for things you’ve not used or forgotten about?
• Even a few pounds here or there mounts up in a business. It could be a subscription you’ve not made full use of or it could be a group or organisation that you’ve paid membership for and you’ve not turned up.
• It may be not that the supplier doesn’t offer value, it may be that you’ve not used the opportunity at your finger tips. Be honest, are you going to use it in 2023? If not, then ditch it.

3. Renegotiate where you can 

• Sometimes you just accept that cost of services which come into your business – it could be utilities or telephony or even postal or delivery services which are vital to you – and it may be time to look at that, shop around and get on the phone to negotiate.
• It might not work however look at those suppliers which are part of big companies and see if you can get a better deal. Or find suppliers who can make you more efficient especially when it comes to energy.

4. Assess your premises 

• Is your office now too big? With empty seats and rooms?
• Is now the time to think about hybrid working or hot desking or slimming down the physical space you need?
• Can you offer co-working opportunities to generate a little more income if you are tied into your premises or they are your own property?
• Or can you all work smartly from home?
• Can you speak to your office supplier if you are in a small business complex and ask for a smaller space?

5. Look at meetings 

• Are you having internal meetings which are not adding value and are not fit for purpose?
• This can be relevant to a one person business or a much bigger business?
• Can you do meetings remotely, smartly, set a clear agenda or time limit?
• What meetings can you cut out so that you are more productive as a team. Be honest about time-wasting in huddles which lead nowhere both within and without the business.

6. Look at waste 

• Do you have kit you are not using?
• Do you just stuff unloved items in a store cupboard where they sit for years?
• How about upcycling, selling or donating?
• Reduce waste and reuse? It could generate cash or it could do something positive for someone else.

7. Look at paper 

• Are you paperless? Can you be?
• Paper can be wasteful and some companies have rooms full of paperwork or files which take up space and therefore drain revenue. If you’ve got a room full of files, that room has to be kept safe, it has to be heated – and that all costs money.
• Can you use a safe online document management system which will end all of that – it can bring significant savings of money and time when trying to find something.

8. Invest in the right people

• It will save you money in the end and drive income to have the best team around you to achieve your goals.
• This might be investing in someone to join your team or it may mean outsourcing to a supplier to provide expertise. What expertise are you missing which would help you move forward?

9. Look at your tech

• And get it as efficient and up to date as possible. This could save you time and money against the time it takes to keep old kit limping along.
• Also new tech is often more energy efficient – donate old kit to social enterprises which refurbish it. Or why not contact such a provider to see if they have better kit for you, if you can’t afford the latest IT?
• Talk to your accountant about tax advantage to investing in new IT.

10. Look at your financial support

• Have you had the same accountant for years and not given a thought to them being any good?
• Have you found out about benefits or tax changes from someone other than your accountant?
• At a time of economic flux, a good accountant can save a business thousands of pounds and are always a good investment. Therefore be honest – is your accountant any good?

11. Plan for growth 

• With your team and your finance support, look at ways to generate more income in 2023. This can take many forms – can you offer training in something?
• Can you productise something and turn it into ‘merch’ in some way? Can you add a product? Can you develop something new?
• Have you – or a team member – thought of something and never done anything about it? Now may be the time. Take active steps to looking for new ways to bring money into the business.

12. Collaborate

• Working closely with others in your sector or with aligned businesses is very important for support, consolidation and joint growth.
• Can you offer another service in collaboration with someone else – and you make a mutual agreement about payment?

13. Reassess ‘discovery’ calls

• Often smaller business owners will spend a lot of time on this, offering 45 mins or more for free to find out about each other. Can you reduce this time down?
• Do you really need an hour to get a steer on this? How about 15 mins only?
• Also if someone wants to ‘pick your brains’ over a coffee why not introduce a charge for that? At worst it will save you time and at best you will be paid for your time if the conversation goes no further.

14. Invest in upskilling

• For you as a business owner or for your team. Often you can identify gaps in a business but you’ve not taken the step in training your team.
• A trained team will bring in more money over time on a new product, system, process, better customer service, or something else. Good training has many benefits – it gives clients and customers confidence in your brand and it also shows staff that you care about their progression.

15. Stay visible

• Often marketing and PR is one of the first ways in which a company will cut costs, when in reality it should be one of the last. There are very few successful invisible businesses out there.
• By all means assess what you are spending your company money on – yet don’t panic and go ‘dark’. If your brand is not seen or heard from over the course of six months or more, it won’t exist for a modern buyer or potential buyer in our fast-moving tech-led world.
• Then when you re-visit this down the line you will find you have build your brand from scratch – which will cost you far more money. At worst, go into a ‘maintenance mode’ and at best invest more so that you become more visible than competitors.