Overhead or indirect costs are part of running a business—these cannot be eliminated in the process of providing services or creating products. However, there are many ways overhead costs can be minimised, especially in the accounting or bookkeeping aspect of the business.

The Internet age has allowed business owners to move their systems into the cloud, allowing them to reach more customers and be available most of the time. This growth also makes keeping up with doing your accounts more time-consuming—but luckily, accounting and bookkeeping has followed the shift and moved online. This opens tons of possibilities for taking more control of the financial aspect of the business, especially in reducing burden costs. 

Here’s an example...

The hospitality industry is ever-growing—pubs, night clubs, and restaurants owners may have multiple location to manage, difficult payrolls with casuals and multiple awards and lots of data flowing from a range of different platforms.

These businesses usually have very similar look and feel to their back office processes:

• Too many admin resources.
• Double entry of data.
• Systems not integrated.
• Owners are time poor.
• And a lot of paper and spreadsheets flying around.

Unfortunately, this results in unnecessary high internal overhead costs, and business owners delayed in getting real time important financial management information.

How to find the in your back office?

Tip 1 - Review your back office systems. Gone are the days that you need to have software installed on local devices and move to the CLOUD. Have a look at how flexible your accounting software is and can it integrate with your other platforms to remove data entry requirements.

Tip 2 - Review how important data is captured, what are the steps to enter data into your accounting software, and how many people does it require to perform these tasks. 

Tip 3 -Outsource the areas of your accounts that take up a lot of time, resources and really need an experts eye cast over it. Most common areas are payroll, accounts payable, bank reconciliations, and preparing your BAS.

Tip 4 - Do the numbers yourself. It want take long to work out what it is actually costing your in real dollars by having an inefficient back office v the costs savings through filling the holes!

So simply put, do some analysis on your current back office systems and platforms (or have someone do it for you), look to move some of your systems to the cloud e.g. your accounting software, remove data entry by integrating your systems and outsource certain arts of your accounts. You’ll be pleasantly surprised by the extra savings in your pocket.