By Dan Matthews on Small Business – Advice and Ideas for UK Small Businesses and SMEs
Running a successful small business means ensuring you make more money than you spend, but this isn’t always an easy balance to get right. Seasonal changes in revenue and late payments can dwindle money coming in, while unexpected bills put a strain on money going out.
According to recent research by Xero and PayPal, 28% of small businesses owners describe cashflow management as a challenge, while almost the same number admit struggling to pay suppliers on time, creating a vicious circle of money arriving late.
But while an unexpected bill from your supply chain can cause sleepless nights, so too can costs you know are coming, such as your business energy bills, which are notoriously difficult to predict accurately and are too often underestimated.
This is not a problem to sniff at: for the smallest businesses, those with no employees, of which there are millions within GB, gas and electricity costs are among the biggest sources of expenditure after tax.
A question mark over costs
Figures from Smarter Business show the average small business consumes between 15,000 and 30,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) of electricity each year, equating to bills of