Your Lake of the Ozarks Mortgage Lender: 4 Budget Stretching Business Tips

In today's economic environment, it's important for small business owners and independent professionals to pay better attention to their budgets. The first step is to find out where all your money is going. Keep track of all your expenses, big or small in a program such as QuickBooks. Then look through that expense sheet for anything that looks unusual, ineffective or unncessary. Now group all of your expenses into categories: Must Haves (rent, insurance, utilities, etc.), May Haves (updated furniture, technology upgrades, training, flights, hotels, etc.) and Non-Essentials. This will give you a good starting place for cutting expenses in a way that makes sense for your business. Here are a few simple ways to stretch your budget from the Intuit Small Business Blog!

1. Reduce Printing Costs

Not only have we seen paper and ink prices increase, you also have to factor in maintenance costs for the copier or fax machines. By switching to a cloud-based application, you can save on all these extra costs associated with printing. Advances in technology now allow us to send and recieve faxes via email as a PDF. There are also applications for signing documents online. Not only does this option save you time, but its a also a cost-efficient solution.

2. Stop Using High-Interest Credit Cards

Having a limited budget may mean using credit cards to incur expenses while you are waiting for clients to pay up. However, with variable interest rates on credit cards averaging more than 15 percent, there may be a cheaper way to access the funds you need. Nonprofit micro lenders often help small businesses with loan amounts of as little as a few hundred dollars. Interest rates on these loans typically start as low as 9 percent, are more flexible and are geared toward shorter-term borrowing.

3. Strategize the Professional Services You Use

Often times the costs of using accountants, lawyers and consultants are outweighed by the potential risks your business takes by not having the guidance of an expert. However, you can still stretch your budget by handing rudimentary tasks inhouse. Day to day accounting can be done using applications such as QuickBooks, while basic legal agreements can be facilitated by online sites.

4. Standardize Basic Operations

To keep expenses low, you can handle your own public relations. Another budget-strecher includes creating templates that make it easy for staff to perform a myraid of tasks, from product entry on retial sites to basic consumer service. Creating good processes can really improve efficiency as well as productivity without risking accuracy and performance. Using this tip will allow you to remian incrementally profitable, even in industry segments with low margins.

When you are done analyzing your finances at work, take the same prinicpals home with you. Are there areas in your personal finances that you could cut costs? For example, what is the interest rate on your mortgate? Have you considered refinancing your Lake of the Ozarks home? When it comes to your financing needs, Michael Lasson is commited to working with you every step of the way. He'll discuss financing options, offer competitive interest rates on your Lake of the Ozarks mortgage loan and back it up with the First Class Service you deserve! Now is a great time to consider purchasing or refinancing a home, so give him a call today at 573-746-7211 or send an email to mlasson@fsbfinancial.com with any questions you may have.

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