The Ultimate List of Cost-Saving Ideas for Businesses, Municipalities and Non-Profits

Published on Janurary 19, 2010

Learn 60+ proven ways to reduce your expenses

1. Implement an employee cost-saving suggestion plan - Reward useful suggestions with 10% of the first year's savings.
2. Get money back from utilities - 80% of utility bills have errors, and nearly 90% of telecom bills are incorrect. Utility bill auditors can recover past overpayments without costing you a cent.
3. Do away with contracted help – Shift the work to your existing employees
4. Implement Lean – Lean is a disciplined method for identifying and eliminating wastes in your processes whether it be services or manufacturing. Learn more at www.lean.org.
5. Conduct an energy audit - Professionals can visit your site to identify wasted energy and inefficient equipment. Even recomend shifting some production to off hours to lower your electrical bill. Contact your electricity and gas providers who often provide this service for FREE.
6. Do away with potted plant services – If you have hired a service to take care of the plants in your facility. Consider stopping the service or shifting the watering and maintenance to an employee.
7. Install programmable thermostats
8. Activate lights by motion detectors or turn off lights when not needed. Some disconnect lights from unoccupied areas of facilities.
9. Drug test everyone – and release those that fail the test, if you have a no-tolerance policy.
10. Implement a no-drug tolerance policy – then test all employee and release those that fail the test.
11. Have employees do outdoor maintenance
12. Switch the facility cleaning from a contractor to underutilized employees.
13. Use the less expensive labor of the disabled.
14. Sell your unused office furniture and cubical components – with some facilities downsizing, more is unused
15. Pay a fixed fee for cell phones - Rather than pay for cell phones, pay a fixed amount each month, say $50 for those that double as personal phones
16. Disallow purchases of alcoholic beverages for employees while on business trips
17. Reduce the level of approved hotel chains to use on business trips
18. Stop paying for breakfast when employees stay at hotels that include breakfast
19. Buy used software – Many online auction sites (like Ebay) have a good selection
20. Buy used everything – Ebay?
21. Use pedal powered tricycles rather than motorized vehicles at large facilities
22. Recycle more
23. Drink tap water – Or if people find it distasteful, provide flavoring powders
24. Stop buying disposable eating utensils, cups and plates
25. Insulate where lacking and stuff the cracks to reduce heating and air conditioning bills
26. Turn off computers, computer monitors and everything else left on over night.
27. Put out for re-bid your phone, data connection, yard maintenance and any other paid-for service
28. Go through you accounts payable and see what services you can move in-house to underutilized employees. Put out for re-bid all those you cannot do yourself
29. Stop paying training expenses – have knowledgeable employees teach each other. Teaching another person is the best way to cement or improve one’s knowledge. Use online learning or books
30. Automate processes economically
31. Solve root causes of task that are only correcting errors – then do away with the task and possibly the position
32. Move to a smaller office space by switching to smaller cubicles
33. Sell your used equipment and supplies you are not using – Ebay
34. Use heated seat cushions instead of space heaters.
35. Use both sides of printer and copies paper for non- customer facing documents
36. Refill printer cartridges rather than buying new
37. Buy the less expensive company cars, consider more economical brands
38. Implement a company fitness program to reduce health care costs
39. Stop procurement of all non-essential items
40. Extend the life cycles of durables like vehicles and technology equipment
41. Cease use of offsite storage – make a place on-site or consider disposing or selling it
42. Stop contracts to purchase non-essential services
43. Stop all non-essential travel – use the phone, video conferencing or Internet meetings (where documents can be shared between computers). Investigate Skype.
44. Request to re-open contracts and return to bargaining
45. Require employees to pay a percentage of cost of dental care
46. Eliminate, suspend or reduce any tuition reimbursement program.
47. Opt for a shorter work week – Require or allow employees to opt for a 37.5hr/5 day work week or a 36hr (90%) or 32hr (80%) /4 day work week with pay base on the lower hours.
48. Lease out unused office space as office condos or unused facility space as storage space
49. Stop paying non-essential association and membership fees
50. Stop paying for non-essential publications - magazine, newsletter and newspaper subscriptions (paper or electronic) – often paper subscriptions can be converted to electronic subscriptions for less or for free.
51. Reduce the limit or set one on daily food expenses during business travel
52. Encourage mass transit options on business travel
53. Downsize underutilized equipment – consider selling it and contracting out the service needed or renting it when needed.
54. Return your fancy printers and copier – use an outside printer and copier services when needed for large copies, prints or color
55. Subscribe to blogs for business cost saving ideas
56. Publish employee productivity secrets - Persuade highly skilled individuals, through awards and incentives if necessary, to divulge techniques that would help other employees. One way of communicating the skills is through the company newsletter.
57. Brainstorming cost saving ideas - Prioritize them by likely savings weighted against effort.
58. Train all employees how to look for and implement simple improvements - Get the book "The Idea Generator: Quick and Easy Kaizen". Trains all employees on how to look for simple, easy-to- implement improvements that they can make in their work area immediately, without seeking management approval.
59. Reduce inventory of supplies and components - Use a Kanban, a self monitoring and re-ordering mechanism that squeezes dollars of inventory back into cash. It is as useful for office supplies as manufacturing supplies.
60. Manage your own web site - Web sites take much skill to create and implement. But they take much less skill to maintain. Consider moving yours to simple providers like www.godaddy.com or www.intuit.com. Both known for easy editing and administration tools.
61. Re-visit your rate for personal mileage - Many companies revised upward their rates in 2008 when fuel prices peaked. Now is the time to take them down to lower level.

Feel free to share this list with other businesses, municipalities or non-profits looking to cut their costs too. Perhaps even your place of worship or fellow business executives. Share your cost saving ideas with us and we will add them to the list.