hidden financial drains: the silent vacuum that’s killing your business
TRANSCRIPT
HIDDEN FINANCIAL DRAINSThe Silent Vacuum That’s Killing Your Business
You might think you know all about your
business’s financials...
...but what if there were some unnoticed money
sinks that are slowlykilling your business?
Learn about some common hidden financial drains and make sure every penny you
spend isn’t being wasted.
HIDDEN DRAIN #1
Website Hosting
The majority of small to mediumbusinesses can run a very successful website with inexpensive hosting that nearly every hosting provider offers.
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
Why pay $50 a month for a VPS or $200 a month for a dedicated server, when $9
a month hosting offers everything you need, and probably more?
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
Of course, ask your IT department and web designers if the hosting package
will be flexible enough for your business apps, but this switch could save
hundreds of dollars a year.
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
HIDDEN DRAIN #2
Internet Bandwidth
Does your business need 10 Mbps? 25 Mbps? 50 Mbps? Cable companies like to
make comparisons with their internetpackages based off of how many movies
you can stream at the same time.
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
Let me tell you, if you have a handful of employees streaming Netflix at work
and it’s overloading your 10 Mbpsconnection, you’ve got a biggerproblem than your internet bill!
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
HIDDEN DRAIN #3
UnnecessarySubscriptions
One financial drain for businesses issmaller cost subscription services that
were initially experiments, but thenyou forget about them and the
ensuing monthly fees.
John TurnerCEO, UsersThink
What catches you off guard is when they’re smaller costs, because the larger, more expensive ones stay top-of-mind, so when they don’t work you know to
cancel them.
John TurnerCEO, UsersThink
The main issues I see over and over again relate to software/subscription
services that our clients no longer use. We even had some who were paying for
the same software twice a month!
Gabe LumbyCPA, GabeLumbyCPA.com
To remedy the problem, I will havethe business owner create a separate
category on their profit and lossstatement for software expenses.
Gabe LumbyCPA, GabeLumbyCPA.com
Each month, we review the spending to make sure that the software servicesbeing paid for are actually being used
or are worth the monthly expense.
Gabe LumbyCPA, GabeLumbyCPA.com
HIDDEN DRAIN #4
Forgetting to CancelAccounts
We switched security system providers for our office to a better and less
expensive provider. Their customerservice and response times are much
better.
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
But, we forgot to tell the old provider we wanted to cancel. Many months went by before the mistake was caught. This was such a silly, easy to fix item, yet it went
unnoticed for months!
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
HIDDEN DRAIN #5
Management DoingLow-Revenue Tasks
Entrepreneurs can drain their businessfinancially by sending too much time on low revenue generating tasks, tasks easy
to delegate, and not keeping their key critical business numbers top of mind.
Dr. Roshawnna Novellus, Ph.D.President, Novellus Financial
By structuring time based on revenue,specialty, and strategic objectives,
business owners can generallyimmediately decrease wasted
expenditure by 20%.
Dr. Roshawnna Novellus, Ph.D.President, Novellus Financial
HIDDEN DRAIN #6
Transaction andMerchant Fees
Transaction fees can be a big financial drain that small businesses mightnot normally think about. On large
transactions, they can make a serious dent — you might lose hundreds of
dollars on a large merchant payment.
Marc ProsserPublisher, Fit Small Business
You can decrease these by encouraging buyers to use less costly payment
methods. That might be an ACH depositinstead of a money wire, or an electronic check instead of a credit card payment.
Marc ProsserPublisher, Fit Small Business
Plugging the Leak
It often takes a team of two or three people to find these hidden costs:someone from accounting to pull
reports, plus people from theappropriate departments to decide
if those costs are needed, can be cut back, or eliminated.
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
My advice is to set aside at least oneday per month where you and your
accounting team can go throughthe bills. Pull in the appropriatedepartments and decide if that
expense needs to be fixed.
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
When it comes to hidden expenses, the only sure way of fixing them is to shine light on them and tackle them one by one. It’s not going to be easy, but the
positive effects can be huge!
Ryan HullandPresident, Netfloor USA Access Flooring
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