MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 10: Book Travel Online

There is no need to use travel agents anymore. Go directly to the airline’s website for the best deals or to travel sites like orbitz.com, expedia.com, travelocity.com, cheaptickets.com. Kayak.com is a good site for fare comparisons. Rental cars, too, are much cheaper when booked on-line too

To become aware of deals on airline tickets, you can have Travelocity.com email you when fares to your favorite destination drop. You can sign up for this at their home page (www.travelocity.com).

Money saving tips for small businesses brought to you by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 9: Join AAA and Save

An annual subscription to AAA will cost you a few bucks, but you can easily save several times that amount each year through discounts on hotels, car rentals, restaurants, and dozens of other products and services. Check out the AAA website to preview member benefits (www.aaa.com).

This is a “no-brainer” if ever there was one. Sign up online (www.aaa.com) and start saving.

Money saving tips for small businesses by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 8: Send Faxes Electronically

Eliminate the need for a physical fax machine – and a dedicated phone line to boot – by using companies like eFax®, and MyFax. Electronic faxes are made possible through software which you download. Most of these companies will offer you a free trial version, just to get a feel for it.

Once installed, you can send and receive your faxes directly from your computer, over your Internet connection. Received faxes show up as email in your in-box. You send a fax just by printing your document to the eFax “printer.”

Various versions of the software and pricing plans are available, so you have to find an option that suits your needs and then figure out if it saves you money.

eFax Plus costs around $17 per month, and includes 130 pages incoming and 30 outgoing faxes. There is no extra charge for faxes sent to your local eFax number.

It will save you the cost of a fax machine, dedicated phone line, paper, and toner. Just as important, you can get your faxes no matter where you are, if you have a laptop with you.. That alone makes this service very worthwhile.

Search engine term: "fax software"

Money saving tips for small businesses brought to you by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 7: Use Legal Boilerplates

Every time you pick up the phone to call your lawyer, it probably cost you at least $100. The easiest way to reduce your legal bill is to use legal boilerplates. A boilerplate is simply standardized text for a specific kind of agreement, such as a licensing agreement. There are boilerplates for virtually every kind of legal agreement you can think of. Simply tailor the boilerplate to your specific need, and then have your lawyer review it. That way, your lawyer will spend hours rather than days on the agreement, and you’ll save thousands of dollars!

How do you get a legal boilerplate for your specific need? You can always call your lawyer and ask for one. (K-ching!! “That’ll be $100, please!”) Or, you can also find them in bookstores, or better yet, there are literally hundreds of boilerplates available for free on the Internet. Try WorkZ.com for common boilerplates.

Search engine term: "legal boilerplates"

Money saving tips for small businesses brought to you by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 6: Cater a Weekly Company Lunch Meeting

You probably have weekly company meetings. Make it a catered lunch meeting, keep it brief, and save!

How so? Let’s assume you have five employees. Let’s further assume each employee costs you roughly $25 per hour in salary, benefits, and overhead. Put differently, an hour of your five employees’ time is therefore worth at least $125 to you.

You can easily cater lunch for all of them for a total of $50 or less. Therefore, you actually save $75 worth of their time when you buy them lunch, plus you put them to work during that time going over company business!

It’s not only a good value for the company, it’s great for employee morale.

Money saving tips for small businesses brought to you by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 5: Cut Overnight Shipping Costs with PDF Email Attachments

If you spend a lot of money every month sending documents via overnight delivery services, here’s a great cost cutting idea:

Convert your documents into the PDF files, and send them via email attachment to your recipient. Your recipient will get it in seconds, and it won’t cost you a cent!

The idea here is that you have a document that you want to get to somebody over night. Chances are excellent that your recipient has an email address and a decent printer in their office. You can email them your document as an attachment to an email, and they can view it and print it out if necessary. Their print quality will probably be just as good as anything you print out and send them.

The trick is that they need to be able to view it and print it, and maybe they don’t have the same software you used to create it, or maybe you only have hard copy of the document.

That’s where PDF comes in. PDF stands for “Portable Document Format.” PDF is a file format that virtually everyone with a computer (Mac or PC, regardless of operating system) can could view and print. The format was invented by a company called Adobe® Systems Incorporated. Adobe gives away free software, Adobe® Acrobat® Reader, which everyone with an Internet connection has probably already installed. If not, then they can download it for free.

The trick is to convert your document to PDF so that you can send it, and they can view it and print it.

There are essentially two ways to do this; one way if you have the document already in your computer, as, for example, a Microsoft Word document, and another way if you only have hard copy of the document. Either way, you need special software to create the PDF.

If you have the document already in your computer, you will have to purchase a software program which, when installed, lets you “print” your document to a virtual PDF printer, with the result that you end up with a copy of your document in PDF format.

If you only have hard copy of the document, you will need to scan it into your computer so that you can convert it. If you bought your scanner recently, there is a good chance it will create a PDF version of your scanned document automatically. If not, you will need Adobe Acrobat Standard installed on your computer. You can then print the scanned document image to the PDF printer, as described in the previous scanner.

Once you have a copy of your document in PDF format, all you have to do is create an email to your recipient, and send the PDF document as an attachment.

The bad news is that it will cost you some money to purchase the software that creates the PDF files. You can find software on the Internet for less than $50 or you can buy a copy of Standard Adobe. Go to Adobe and try their free trial version of Adobe Acrobat. Regardless, if you do a lot of overnight shipping, this software investment will pay for itself in no time.

Search engine term: "create PDFs"

Money saving tips for small businesses brought to you by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 4: Audit Your Invoices

Credit card, medical, legal, accounting, insurance, and other bills frequently contain errors at your expense. Phone bills are notoriously error-prone, especially if at one time you had a lot more employees than you have now. In that case, there is a good chance you are paying for phone services that you don’t even use.

Believe me, the phone companies won’t bother to tell you if you aren’t using the lines they dutifully charge you for each month. In fact, they’ll probably make it hard for you to cancel those accounts once you figure out you don’t need them. Don’t be surprised if you continue to get billed for months after you cancel. You’ll probably have to talk to their “customer service” folks a few times before you finally make your cancellations stick.

The good news is that, nowadays, there are companies that will audit your telecommunication costs in exchange for a percent of the money they save you. Their service is free – if they don’t save you money, you don’t pay. Boy, don’t you just love deals like that?

Search engine term: "phone auditing"

Money saving tips for small businesses brought to you by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 3: Invest In A Broadband Internet Connection

Spend money to save money?? You bet. Your time is money too, right? How much time do you spend signing on to the Internet each day? How much time waiting for pages to display? Only a few seconds per page, you say. But how many pages do you bring up each day? Of course, if you don’t use the Internet very much, this doesn’t matter to you. But if you use the Internet as part of your work, you will undoubtedly save time, and therefore money, by having a broadband connection.

What is broadband? It is simply one of several different ways you can get a fast connection to the Internet. How fast? Probably at least 10 times faster than your dialup, modem connection. Another feature is that it is “always on”, meaning that you don’t have to dial-up to establish a connection, and take up an entire phone line while you are online.

How do you get a broadband Internet connection? Your phone or cable company will be only too glad to help you out. Call the customer service number on your statement.

How much should you expect to pay? It depends where you are (urban or rural), but chances are you can get one now for $25 per month. No more than $40 per month. You are probably paying $20 per month for your dial-up connection, so that incremental cost will be $5 to $20 per month. And it eliminates the frustration of waiting for pages to display!

Money Saving Tips for Small Business brought to you by iPrint

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 2: Outsource, Outsource, Outsource!

Outsourcing refers to the practice of getting other companies to take care of those things you don’t absolutely have to do yourself. Let’s face it – you need every minute of every day for selling and servicing your customers. You can’t afford to take on tasks that can be done better by others.

The central idea to outsourcing is that certain tasks can be done more efficiently, and therefore less expensively, by companies that specialize in those tasks. For example, it probably doesn’t make sense to have a dedicated Human Resource (HR) person on your staff if you have fewer than 20 employees. All the same, you had better get your HR responsibilities right, or you can be in big trouble. That’s where a firm that specializes in helping small business with HR comes in. Likewise, payroll services like ADP or Intuit Payroll Services eliminate the need for a dedicated Payroll person on your staff.

What kinds of tasks can you outsource? Here are just a few, for starters:

• Human Resources
• Payroll
• Accounting
• Information Technology (Networks, email, etc.):

You probably get the idea. If you have a job that you suspect could be outsourced, simply search for the task, combined with the word “outsource”, in your favorite search engine.

Search engine terms:
"human resources"
"payroll"
"outsource accounting"
"outsource IT"

Money Saving Tips for Small Business brought to you by iPrint.com

MONEY SAVING TIPS FOR SMALL BUSINESSES - Tip 1: Keep To A Budget

This first tip is probably the hardest thing for anyone to do, but the one most likely to save money in the long haul.

If you are like many small business owners, you are probably “winging it” when it comes to planning your expenses. You decide on a day-to-day basis what you are going to buy, and how much you are willing to spend.

That’s no way to run a business!!! If you don’t have a budget, you are being controlled by your expenses, not the other way around. If you want to control your expenses, and not be controlled by them, you simply must set up a budget and stick to it!

Your budget is your blueprint for the future. Next to sales, it is the key to profitability. If you make your sales numbers, it tells you whether you are going to make a profit. If you don’t make your sales numbers, it shows you where you need to cut back, and by how much.

Most importantly, it helps you maintain your cash balance. You’ve heard the expression “Cash is king”? Well, it’s true. If you run out of cash, you are done. How do you prevent that? You make your sales numbers, and you manage your expenses to a budget.

First of all, accept the idea that you are going to have to spend some time creating a budget. Schedule the time when you are going to do it. Suggestion: Schedule the first 2 hours of every day to work on it until you are finished. Start tomorrow morning.

Secondly, you need a tool to help you enter the numbers. A spreadsheet, such as Microsoft Excel, is the software of choice for most small businesses. Most spreadsheet software comes with budget templates for small businesses right in the box, or you can download them from the Internet.

Thirdly, you’ll have to do some research. You have to figure out in advance what you are going to spend money on. You weren’t born with that knowledge, right? How often do you use the phone? What is a reasonable expense for the use of it? What about rent? Cost of goods? Insurance? Professional services? Payroll?

Once you have your expense categories entered, and estimates for your monthly expense, you now know, perhaps for the first time, how much income you need to make to run your business. If you don’t think you can make that sales target, think about cutting back your expenses.

Finally, the hardest job of all: stick to your budget! Sure, you will have to adjust your budget as time goes by, as prices change, or as you find out about new expenses. But make those adjustments, reset your sales target, and try as best you can to stick to the budget!

What does this mean? It means this: if one month you find that you have to spend more for courier services than you budgeted, then deliver the package yourself! Or spend the extra money, but spend less on some other line item in your budget.

Stick to your budget, make your sales numbers, and you will have a successful business. Happy budgeting!

Money Saving Tips for Small Business brought to you by iPrint.com.