Managing Your Creative Business’s Finances
As part of our finance resources, we thought we would put together some techniques we have used to manage our costs at Blick over the years
- Analyse all of your expenditure and think about what value it adds to your business e.g. look at your marketing expenditure to see if you are actually getting results from your adverts and promotions, are any consultants you are paying bringing added value to your business, do you need all of the subscriptions you are currently paying for?
- Be strict with yourself about business purchases. Ask yourself honestly if the purchase you are planning to buy will add value to your business or are you buying it to distract yourself or make yourself feel better or like you are doing something useful?
- Streamline your processes and systems to keep your costs low/ to increase your profitability, do you actually need to do everything you are currently doing or can you cut some of it out? Can you automate some of your processes? What can you do yourself to save costs on outsourcing.
- Make sure your bank account is the best value and shop around to see which accounts offer the lowest bank charges
- Monitor your costs as you go along rather than just at the year end. Sometimes you will find you have been paying for a subscription for something which you haven’t used all year!
- Check any supplier invoices carefully to make sure you have only been charged what you were quoted and there isn’t any added costs which you didn’t agree to.
- Check with utility suppliers e.g. broadband, electricity, mobile etc that you are on the best tariff and haven’t been pushed into expensive out of contract tariffs.
- Make sure people actually pay you! Don’t feel bad to ask for what you are owed. Follow up on any overdue invoices by sending reminders and following up with personal emails and phone calls! If you find this too difficult ask a friend or family member to help you with this or just give you moral support!
