Expense | Marketing Minded

Business Expenses You May Not Have Thought About

When choosing to open your own business, you will quickly find that there are a lot of expenses that you may not have thought about. Knowing what you are up against, financially, before you choose to start your business is important. In fact, it can make or break your plans. Every business, even home based businesses, will most likely see the following types of expenses.

Marketing

Marketing expenses are the most common, and the most commonly looked over. Everyone knows that you need to get your name out there, and the sooner the better. However, most people do not realize what it takes to do this. Not only does it take time, but it can also take money. Whether you are printing fliers, putting ads in the newspaper, or choose to do pay per click marketing online, you will have some sort of cost associated with your marketing.

Utilities

Though you may have already thought about this, if you have a brick and mortar business, you may not have considered it for a home based company. Though you already pay for your utilities at home, you may find that, after opening your business, your utility bills go up. When you are working from your home computer, you may find that it is on more often than not, which can raise your electricity bill.

Supplies

Depending on the type of business you own, you may have to purchase supplies. Whether this is office paper to print your work, or stock for your store, this is an important expense. Many at home businesses also need to keep supplies in mind, for record keeping and more.

Filed Under: Business, Marketing Tagged With: Business, Expense, Marketing

Categorize Expenses For Better Recordkeeping

When starting out in a new business, or trying to expand your current one, you need to understand some foundational aspects of that business. One of the main things that you need to understand is how expenses affect your company. When you understand these expenses you can hopefully have a more successful business. In addition it is very important to keep track of these expenses for future budgeting.

Categorizing your expenses is a way that you can not only understand individual expenses, but it will make tax time easier as well.

Consider setting up a basic tracking and recording keeping system that comprises the following budget expense categories.

Staffing/Employees
This expense category will include salaries for any and all employees including full-time, part-time and contractor or freelance personnel.

Benefits
This category will include employee benefits such as insurance (both health and life), retirement plans such as 401(k) contribution and other such expenses.

Office Supplies
This business expense category should be divided into to separate subcategories — service and administrative. The service category will include things that will be used for a particular program, while the administrative supply category will cover basic office supplies such as paper and printer ink.

Promotions/Advertising
This category will include expenses for any type of marketing and advertising including online and print advertising.

Technology
Internet, telephone, computers, software and other similar technology costs would be covered under this budget category.

Travel
Expenses covering business transportation would be included in this category. Expenses ca include airfare, hotel accommodations and mileage costs.

Filed Under: Business, Marketing, Small Business Tagged With: Budget, Expense

Writing Off Business Expenses

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The ability to write off some of your business expenses at tax time is very important to just about every type of business owner — from the smallest company to the largest corporation. It is actually probably more important to the small business owner, because when expenses are properly recorded, itemized and deducted at tax time, it can make a large difference as to the amount of taxes that may need to be paid.

Here is a look at a few ideas and tips that can help you write off and take the largest deductions possible.

Track and record your receipts. It doesn’t matter if you have a small business with only a few employees or you are a sole proprietor, you will incur expenses. So anytime you spend any money on or for the business, save the receipt. Use a filing system of your choosing so all these receipts will be in one place when it comes time to file taxes. Many people find using an accordion file to be effective.

Understand what expenses are deductible. You will need to understand just which expenses can be written off and which cannot. Here are some of the expenses that are deductible:

Office equipment such as printers, telephones, computers, faxes and so on.
Supplies including paper, ink, staplers/staples, pens and such
Postage
Subscriptions including publications as well as software update services

Use a ledger or a log for recordkeeping. This logbook can be used for keeping track of expenses such a mileage. You can use a simple paper book or keep track of them using software.

Filed Under: Business, Small Business Tagged With: Business, Expense, Tax