hidden financial drains: the silent vacuum that’s killing your business

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

https://www.netfloorusa.com/

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?



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.



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.



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!



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

http://usersthink.com/

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

http://usersthink.com/

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

http://www.cpaspringfieldmo.com/

To remedy the problem, I will havethe business owner create a separate

category on their profit and lossstatement for software expenses.



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.



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.



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!



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

http://www.novellusfinancial.com/

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

http://www.novellusfinancial.com/

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.



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.



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!



WORKetc. It’s more than a CRM.www.worketc.com

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