Save on costs with Pay As You Go business

Pay As You Go phone services are already a well-established alternative to long-term phone contracts, but did you realise that the same principle can be extended to companies’ wider business needs?



One of the largest outlays when starting an enterprise is the cost of office and computing equipment. Computers, software packages, phone systems, printers, faxes and so forth cost a lot of money to buy up-front – but there are many companies now which will lease you all the equipment you need for a set monthly price.



There are several advantages to leasing your equipment. It frees up cash that you can then invest in other areas of your business, it allows you to strike an easier balance between your incoming capital and your equipment costs, it means you can upgrade your equipment with more ease and less expense, and it means you can afford to lease more equipment immediately than you could possibly buy outright.



Similarly, renting office space is another major cost, which many businesses are avoiding by doing away with it all together and working from home. Many serviced offices now offer meeting rooms or ‘hot desk’ offices that can rented out short term, so if you have an important client meeting, or need to get all your staff together for a major project, you can rent the space by the hour, day or week, without getting locked into a long-term lease. Renting office space also has the added bonus – for client meetings – of providing you with a space that’s often much more impressive than what you could afford on a regular basis!

Another such option is to go with a leased line package for your phone and broadband requirements. With a leased line, your business gets access to the web 24/7, but you only pay for the bandwidth you need – so if you’re having a quiet month, or are on holidays, you’ll get a reduction in your monthly bill.



Once you’ve got your equipment and communications pathways established, though, you’ll need some staff to start doing the actual work. Employing full-time staff can be expensive, especially for a bootstrapped start-up, and even with the current state of the job market, few people are willing to work for free, or below wage!



You can eliminate some of the costs of keeping a full-time staff, however, by outsourcing tasks to freelancers. If you’re in need of sales staff, accounting staff, copywriters, designers, administration staff – pretty much any kind of skill-set you could require – you can hire trained staff on a per-job basis, saving you money on the necessary extras of a full-time salary, such as pension contributions and holiday pay.



There are many other ways in which you can apply the ‘Pay As You Go’ ethos to your business activities – it’s a business model that’s no longer just for mobile phones, holiday homes and rental cars!