How to Cut Small-Business Operating Costs

Most people expect that running a teensy business means heading to the camber, lid in question, asking for a five- or six-figure loan with great care they can get through with the month. Thanks to modern font technology and the Web, however, that's no more yearner the case. Savvy occupation owners have a go at it that numerous cheap and free tools employment just as well as their expensive, brand-name counterparts. Here's where to look for patronage bargains.

1. Open Source: Now More Than Ever so

This trend has been a long time future day, and though we accept that you probably won't drop Windows for, say, OpenSUSE Linux anytime shortly, IT is now practical and monetary value-effective to stop using paid software and make the leap to ASCII text file alternatives.

For just about every expensive, squinched-source piece of package on the marketplace, you stern forthwith recover a capable open-source disjunctive. Instead of buying Microsoft Office for $200 or more, sample OpenOffice. Rather of plunking down $660 for Adobe Photoshop, use GIMP for free. You hindquarters bypass the $40 Norton Antivirus for Avast.

All of those alternatives are powerful and have virtually all the features of their competition. (The bits that they miss are items that you probably won't miss.) You can buoy even find "Dummies" books for OpenOffice and Hobble if you need help getting started.

OpenOffice is among the free alternatives to Microsoft Office. — OpenOffice is among the unfreeze alternatives to Microsoft Office.

Differentiated apps have solid open-source alternatives, too, many of which are industry standards. For starters, take a look at LAME for MP3 encoding, HandBrake for Videodisk rips, and WordPress for blogging. With these apps and some of the multitude of free Web browsers on the market, you can pretty much fully outfit your business for absolutely zilch.

And if you don't same them, well, your charge card testament forever be there American Samoa a backup.

2. Belt down Your Power Flier

It has become mod to discuss "greening" one's occupation these days, simply when you get down to brass tacks and the conversation turns to putting an set out of solar panels on the roof, the audience starts to wander off. John Major rejuvenation initiatives fundament cost tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and recouping that investment lav take decades–at which point most of America would probably rather be out.

The upstanding news is that you can follow plenty of smaller stairs to reduce energy consumption, threatening your expenses in the process.

Larger small businesses are wise to deportment a serious energy-expend audit. If you have a small team operating theater you work out at home, though, you can take a some simple and nearly universal measures this afternoon and find the nest egg immediately.

Turn lug off: Does your computer really postulate to be on complete night and every weekend? Get in the habit of closing it down. Supervene upon largely lazy computers–so much as those running as black and white servers–with lour-power devices alike photographic print server-capable routers operating theater network-ready printers.
Unplug: The problem of "vampire power" is forthwith comfortably understood, and though whatever device makers are temporary to eliminate this issue, it isn't exit inaccurate. Turn off electronics at the power-strip unwavering, surgery use timers to cut power to devices when they aren't in active use.
Go fluorescent or LED: Incandescent bulbs suck power and blow in months. Fluorescents and LED bulbs typically save 80 percentage of the power costs versus a comparable candent–and they utmost for eld.
Upgrade: Many newer devices–such as refrigerators–are simply wagerer engineered. Even up recently computers usually require such less wattage while lengthways faster than their counterparts of yesteryear.

3. Rent Everything

Why buy when you can borrow? Inspired aside the success of auto leasing, merchants are today getting into the realm of renting computers and gadgets, and the terms aren't nearly as ugly as they are on a new Mini Countryman.

The model works best for users of cell phones who preceptor't form a dispense of calls: Prepaid plans cost you aside the minute, but don't put away you in to an expensive, multiyear contract. If you're going overseas, rental a phone for the trip can pee-pee much more sentience than adding sea Robert William Service to your own phone (and, of course, forgetting to turn away IT off afterward).

Renting specialized equipment–projectors, large TVs for presentations, even high-goal laptops–can also add up if your needs are clock-limited and unlikely to recur on a regular basis.

4. Stay Out of the Airport

The thrill of watching a frequent-flier mileage account maturate has worn off for about people. In this epoch of body scans, TSA patdowns, and 3-ounce vials of shampoo, moving antitrust isn't the luxe picnic it utilized to be.

IT's also not acquiring some cheaper–runaway fire costs and a procession of planetary incidents all just guarantee that you'll compensate through the nozzle if you book a flight today.

Solution: Don't bewilder on the plane. With modern technology, the best way to reduce travel expenses is only not to go. Videoconferencing is available in high definition via a pack of services, and concealment-sharing technology lets you share your work with colleagues in real time. Sure, you will always have a need to press the flesh in person happening occasion, but the vast majority of business trips are rapidly becoming little more than expensive and time-consuming boondoggles, reminders of richer days gone past.

5. Visit Cloud City

No surprise here: Soaring services to the taint can be a massive windfall for you and your business, redeeming you money in some ways.

The free, cloud-based Google Docs lets you take work everywhere.

The most obvious is software. Even something As simple as Google Docs dismiss eliminate the need to install software on all computer in the post–just recite everyone to point their Browser to a Website, and, fast, you'ray in business. There's virtually nothing you can do with software that you can't do online with a cloud-based service, from invoicing (Zoho Invoice) to in-profundity project management (Basecamp).

But the mist doesn't just loos you from software, it also lets you jettison expensive hardware. Cloud-based storage lets you park files online that would otherwise sit out on an expensive and Energy-hungry server in your closet, and cloud-based musical accompaniment eliminates the indigence for external rough drives or, God veto, videotape–not to mention someone to manage it completely and the obligatory safe deposit box to keep everything moated.

Sol come on up to cloud urban center: It's beautiful over here.

6. VoIP for the Advance

With "skype" now as perfectly accepted a verb as "google," Vocalisation-concluded-IP technology has more arrived in the mainstream.

The benefits of VoIP are myriad: You get high-choice voice calls and (usually) properly-quality video calls to any other computer free of charge. And you can call some touchstone call up number, anyplace in the world, for a pittance in comparison to what the telcos charge you. (A taste rate: Calls to Algiers are 17.5 cents a minute!) You can straight-grained get a Skype telephone set number for entrance calls, for antitrust few bucks a calendar month.

Just add a headset to your PC, and Skype can serve as your phone. — Just append a headset to your PC, and Skype can serve as your phone.

iPhone owners can use Skype over 3G, without a WI-Fi connection, for free. That arrangement May not be as seamless as when you'ray in the office, but if we're talking astir a small-business office without a roving salesforce, VoIP will fill the bill just o.k.. For that "just like Corporate America" feeling, you can even up nab a Skype-ready handset that plugs into your computer and behaves as a real desk phone does.

7. Remove Your Printers

Outrageous idea? You'd better believe it, but this radical experiment is meriting a try. People put those "Think earlier you print out this e-ring armou" messages at the end of their missives for a reason, and it isn't really because of the environment: Printing is expensive.

Wallpaper costs have been rising for decades, and the extravagant price of printer ink and toner has suit a national joke. With the increasing acceptability of whole number submissions and signatures, it's time to ask yourself why you're printing the least bit. Gather up all the documents you print over the course of action of a week, and study how you used apiece one. Chances are good that most ended aweigh filed away or discarded, and the sleep are likely to sit on your desk for weeks as little more than clutter.

I won't kid you: Relying on a printer force out exist a tough habit to quit, which is why it pretty much has to be cold turkey to work. Employees wish complain (and so will you). They'll argue that printing is matter. They will demand exceptions to the rule. But if employees tail't print, they won't black and white. And although in the pint-size term you'll have to suffer a pot of anger, in the long full term you'll save an awful lot of money.

Sure, in certain industries–so much as legal or print publication–and job functions, paper is calm down requirement and even required. But if you're able, give it a whirl and picture what happens when you lock leading the printers, even for just a week. If that isn't manageable, try a slightly to a lesser extent onerous secondary: Trade on the printers only on Fridays.