In what canny ways are you currently saving money as a small business?

"As software has moved to 'the cloud' Business Owners will have noticed they are now paying monthly for the software we used to pay for once. You may not know about the 'open source' (read "free") alternatives. Office 365 is £80 a year when LibreOffice is free, SalesForce is £240 per user a year whilst SugarCRM is free, OpenSource phpList can run your mailing list for Free, GnuCash is a free alternative to QuickBooks and a lot more OpenSource solutions too."

A hugely untapped way to leave more money in your back pocket is to get proper protection advice. There are an awful lot of ways that you can insure yourself and protect your family through your company as a director rather than paying for life insurance personally. This saves corporation tax on your profit, and personal tax on the income you draw to pay your insurer. It's massively beneficial if your household budget is stretched by bills.

Switch from outsourcing your Marketing or Social Media, to doing it yourself, or getting a member of your team to do it. There is no one better placed to do marketing for a business than the people that work within it. So if you invest a little of your outsourcing savings into some marketing training or coaching with a reputable provider, then the quality of your marketing (coupled with your expertise of your business) will help you create even more leads and sales.

I run a skincare business and I save myself (and the customer) money by salvaging packaging from any post I have received and using that to package my orders. Packaging can often be quite expensive and the cost is then passed onto the consumer. This way we can reduce the cost for everyone.

Small businesses can use cashback websites too. Collecting cashback on all your spending from office supplies through to materials and trade supplies or web hosting can add up to meaningful savings over time. Doing this through a platform like Shop For Climate Change allows you to plant trees at the same time which ensures you’re doing something for the planet as well as the bottom line.

Freelancers and small business owners can tap into their own networks to save money and pick up some clients to earn more. - Swap business services for free over at The Swap Shop: https://theukswapshop.co.uk/swaps you may even form some interesting new business leads through fellow business owners! - Form a parenting pod to eliminate childcare costs and to keep working over the school holidays- parents take turns hosting kids at their house and parents put in a kitty for snacks, excursions and activities - Instead of passing up a project because you have a holiday planned, form a reciprocal agreement with another freelancer to share a portion of the work, so you still have money coming in while you sip mojitos in warmer climes - Encourage WhatsApp calls and communication when dealing with clients and colleagues abroad, it's free, and accessible when you are connected to WiFi - You are probably paying the Apprentice Levy, so make the most of it by getting another pair of hands on board to build your business. You contribute 10% towards the cost of training and assessing your apprentice and the government pays the rest (90%). This rate continues until your apprentice completes their training. - Buy an electric space heater for your office this summer in the sales so you can delay turning on all the radiators this autumn. - Request a deposit for any larger projects so you can manage your bills - Negotiate everything from your self-employed mortgage (has your loan to value changed?) to your delivery charges to electricity package (not all fixed deals are less expensive so do your calculations!).

There are any number of online marketplace websites out there, some good, some bad, some....indifferent. I use one called Silkpurseguild.com because there are no listing or commission fees, they have selected a payment provider with really low processing fees, they advertise my products without charging me AND early adopters get 12-month subscription-fee waiver. If I were using something like Etsy, which I often hear argued "has the footfall and reach", I'd have to increase my prices by a good 25 - 30% minimum just to cover the fees they take off the top, and still have to work like a demin to keep up with whatever their SEO/algorithm was doing or being changed to every five minutes. SPG suits me perfectly, since it's UK based, UK only sales, preventing the headache of dealing with international shipping post-Brexit. Added bonus, each seller is thoroughly and continually vetted to guard against tat-resellers which a lot of the much more expensive-to-join UK sites don't seem to care about. Then of course,there is the Not On Amazon page on Facebook, which helps so many people!

I’ve been creative in how to keep my costs down. I’ve created a 5 for 4 offer on my cards so that I save on postage and packaging costs and can get my cards printed in larger quantities saving me money per unit. And speaking of postage, I get my stamps from discounted postage stamp sites saving me between 10-20% on the cost of stamps.

Go green. That has been my money saving mantra. I swapped my fuel guzzling Audi A8 for an all electric Citroen EC4. This has saved me a small fortune in petrol as well as insurance. I also changed my laser printers for Epson Eco-tank printers. They are just as fast but the refills come in bottles so save me hundreds of pounds over replacement laser toners. Go paperless. As a Barrister I used to use a lot of large paper files for cases, often these would be multiple lever arch files. I have switched to using a large Tablet which enables me to view documents at about the same size as A4. Using a an electronic pen I can annotate and highlight to my hearts content. The saving in paper, files, stationary and disposal costs will more than cover the outlay in the first year.

Think about your timeflow as well as your cashflow. As soon as the first lockdown hit, my work disappeared overnight as it was previously all face-to-face training delivery. I had to very quickly reduce my costs and I’m still using the same approach I started to use back in March 2020. I don’t just focus on saving money, I also focus on saving time. I now regularly review where I spend money on business memberships and subscriptions, and I review where I spend my time and money networking. Some events I used to go to were great from a social perspective but rubbish from a work generation perspective. At the end of the day I’m running a business, so I need a return on the investment I make. I’ve stopped some memberships of groups that were mainly attended by people wanting to hand out as many business cards as possible. They’re paid to be there and do that, but they don’t want to know anything about you in return. I’ve also stopped going to most of the two-hour type of networking events I used to go to. They might only cost £20 each session, but they wipe out half a day by the time you’ve travelled there and back. I thought about what I could be doing more proactively with that time to build my business and move it forward. When I cost half a day of lost time at my actual charge rate it soon adds up to a significant number.