Most times, guidance for boosting profitability focuses on the biggest numbers in your business. But there are smaller, recurring expenses that all businesses have, but are easy to miss when you’re busy looking at the big numbers. And these can have a big impact on your bottom line.

Thomas Neubauer of ERA Neubauer Real Estate, Inc., also known as the financial management Czar, shared a few great ways to cut costs and boost profitability without making major changes to your core business.

  1. Insurance, such as casualty and liability. Rebid all insurance policies every year. Insurance companies are trying to stay competitive, creating a great opportunity to lower costs and premiums.
  2. Equipment maintenance. End contracts on non-essential equipment. Analyze what you use and do not use and then cut maintenance where you can.
  3. Copier costs. Take a look at how much your color copies are costing you and set (or reset) company policy or copier codes around usage to help track and reduce copier / toner – related expenses.
  4. Contributions. Set a policy around charitable contributions so that you stay on budget throughout the year while eliminating hard feelings if you are unable to contribute to all of the requests received.
  5. Telecom. Consider industry trends and pay for only what you need. Put more emphasis on personal devices and less focus on desk phones, as they often receive less use. And, employ computers and iPads which help people communicate sans long distance charges.
  6. Bank charges. Banks are seeking new revenue sources and are finding it via check processing fees, wire transfers, etc. Keep an eye on these as they can add up.
  7. Office supplies. Monitor what is used and not used then cut where you can. These too can add up.
  8. Marketing expenses. Spend wisely on effective and efficient marketing such as search engine optimization and other online, web-based marketing.

Many business owners shy away from making changes when it comes to some of these areas because they are afraid of push-back from their employees. Neubauer recommends his number one way to diplomatically watch expenses – set policies on each of the items above so that everyone in your company is aware and on the same page.

ERA Real Estate agents and brokers: For more great ideas, sign up to attend the ERA 2014 International Business Conference in March in Los Angeles.

And if you have something in mind that isn’t on the list above, please share it with us in the comments section below.

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles at FreeDigitalPhotos.net