Tax office supplies are a necessity for every office, but sometimes, what you spend on them may greatly surpass your budget, inflating expenses and eating into your bottom line. While you can’t run away from taxes, something has to give.
The tradeoff you must accept in return for low-cost or “cheap” tax office supplies is usually low-quality supplies. Depending on your trade, this may damage your company’s reputation or brand image.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Discover seven effective hacks for saving money without sacrificing quality with budget-friendly tax office supplies below.
1. Negotiate With Suppliers for Discounts
Although discounts on tax office supplies are commonly used as a sales and marketing gimmick, many businesses can extend them to their frequent customers. Studies reveal that it is more profitable for businesses to retain clients long-term than try to acquire them, and savvy business owners and managers know this.
Not all businesses are quick to offer discounts randomly, but if you’re a repeat customer, they’re unlikely to turn you down. Some of these discounts may not be much, but you have to consider that your supplier is a business trying to be profitable. The small discounts will easily add up, helping you free up and redirect more resources to other urgent matters or activities with better return on investment.
2. Leverage Economies of Scale with Bulk Purchases
If you have enough resources, whether it’s sufficient cash flow or affordable credit lines, make it a priority to purchase office supplies in bulk, preferably from one or a few suppliers. While it’s not easily apparent, economies of scale can save you money on purchases, and the benefits extend beyond cost.
As a bulk buyer, you’ll be better positioned to bargain for better prices, terms, and even the quality of your office supplies. Since most office supplies have extended shelf lives, there’s almost zero possibility of loss or wastage, and you’ll free up time that could be wasted on recurrent purchase trips.
3. Conduct Regular Expense Audits
One way to check runaway costs from office supplies is to conduct frequent expense audits. This will help you identify the source of the hemorrhage in your business, and with this information, you can mitigate the losses.
Some loopholes in regular expense audits can uncover overspending, unoptimized supplier terms, procurement and disposal inefficiencies, etc. It’s not enough to simply audit your expenses on office supplies regularly. You must act decisively to remedy the damage.
4. Adopt Reuse, Refill and Swap Strategies
Most losses from tax office supplies expenses stem from wastage. A typical office employee can generate up to two pounds of waste paper daily. On the brighter side, you can recycle paper up to seven times without degrading its quality.
Make it a policy that employees should reuse any unutilized printing or copy paper in the office, and the same goes for printers and other available office supplies.
5. Compare Supplier Terms and Prices
Information is power in business. You’re missing out on significant savings if you’ve worked with a single supplier without comparing other sellers’ terms. As a professional or business owner, you know each business is different.
Some businesses aim to offer the best quality products at a slightly higher cost, while others cater to a premium market segment. Thus, you might buy office supplies from a business that offers its products at a premium, which results in higher costs that hurt your profits.
A simple search engine query or asking for recommendations from family and friends can reveal many suppliers offering high-quality supplies at a relatively lower cost. You might be lucky to end up with a supplier with a swap clause in their terms, which can save you unnecessary disposal costs or even loss in the case of unutilized supplies.
6. Go Green With Technology Whenever Possible
Save money by going green. Not all things have to be on paper, and you can always send the electronic version whenever you can; go paperless in your transactions with clients. You’ll be saving money and the planet at the same time.
Sometimes, you can do little to salvage losses from office supplies. One way around this is to fix the budget gaps for office supplies with savings from eco-friendly tech solutions that can bring in massive savings on your energy bills.
7. Create and Implement Cost-saving/ Acceptable Use Policies on Printing and Office Supplies
While many professionals and business owners consider purchase costs the reason for high expenses and losses with office supplies, the reason is sometimes much simpler. Unnecessary waste of office supplies can significantly rack up expenses.
Most of the time, this results from ignorance of resource-saving strategies, and in a few cases, it could be negligence or deliberate action to waste office supplies. Nonetheless, you can avoid all this by creating a policy that guides your employees on the acceptable use of office supplies.
Bottom Line
Tax office supplies are necessary for any office but can cause runaway costs and expenses. This can hurt your profitability. Low-cost office supplies are viable but not always ideal, as they can compromise your reputation and brand image. Using simple hacks like creating an acceptable use policy, implementing expense audits, and embracing technology, you, too, can save money on your tax office supplies without sacrificing quality.
