Guide to Cutting Costs to Increase Profits

Of course, one of the main goals of any business is to create profit. There are a number of different ways that this can be achieved, and it’s important to understand the different profitability metrics that can help to inform your business strategy and grow your business.

Many business owners look at increasing revenue as their main way of improving the company’s profitability. But another extremely effective method is cutting costs in your business operations to ensure a more profitable outcome.

However, it’s not always simple. You should aim to cut costs strategically, with consideration of the relationship between the cost and your company’s sales and profits. Keep reading to find out more about cutting costs to increase profits and the best ways to go about this.

Be aware of the different types of business costs

If you’re cutting costs to increase profits, it’s also important to be able to categorize the different types of costs that occur in business.

Costs may be direct, including wages and materials, or they may be indirect costs such as reconciling bank statements . In addition to this, there are operating costs, which include production, overheads and other day-to-day activities.

As well as these different types, you can also define costs as either fixed or variable. Fixed costs are those that always cost the same amount, such as insurance or loan repayments, whereas variables are those that may change, such as sales commissions and packaging costs.

An awareness of these different categories will help to inform your decisions relating to cutting costs.

Use an efficient system

One of the most important parts of cutting costs to increase profits is ensuring that you are using the rightaccounting system. Using automation means that you can easily keep track of your profits and expenses, which allows you to get a clearer idea of your company’s financial health.

A good accounting system will help you to calculate all the important metrics that can inform your cost-cutting strategy and help you make better decisions.

Set clear goals relating to profit

One of the most essential steps to building a strategy that will help you to maximize profitability is to determine exactly what your aims are. You can do this with the help of your past performance statistics. Take a look at youroperating expenses and costs, and identify areas where this could be lower.

With this information, you can set clear objectives for cutting costs, identifying specific areas that you would like to reduce and giving measurable targets to see whether you are achieving this.

The best ways of cutting costs to increase profits

Once you’ve got a better idea of how your business is spending money and what your objectives are, you might be looking for some concrete steps you can take toward cutting costs. Some of the best areas to focus on include:

• Your suppliers. Take a look at the costs of your materials and compare these to the average market prices. Can you find a better deal elsewhere, or can you haggle the price down with your current supplier? Reducing the costs of your materials is one of the simplest ways to drive profits.

• Examine your premises. Is the space well suited to your company? Are there ways in which you could get more out of the space? For example, some businesses choose to sublet areas of the premises, which can cut down on overheads.

• Cut down on production costs. Whether through reducing your labor costs or streamlining your production processes, there are a number of ways that changing your production can contribute to cutting costs.

We can help

GoCardless is a global payments solution that helps you automate payment collection, cutting down on the amount of financial admin your team needs to deal with. Find out how GoCardless can help you with one-off or recurring payments.