Common business expenses and how to manage them?

Let's begin with the business foundation: rented business premises. If your company offices or business premises are not personally owned, this means you are renting them, and rent is considered an operating expense.

You are required to pay rent at regular intervals to be in possession of that space, and rent is considered to be a significant expense. To save a little on the rent amount, you can set up your offices in estates that charge lower rents.

Another important yet common business expense is inventory and business utilities cost. Inventory is both the largest operating expense and the most significant asset on your balance sheet.

Along with this comes other operating expenses, which are counted under utilities. This is the expense made on buying daily use materials like computers, office stationery supplies, water, electricity, etc. 

Types of business expenditure also include the cost of human resources. This means the salaries and wages paid to the employees of the company in accordance with the payroll system.

This does not just end on salaries; human resource expense also includes bonuses, rewards, gifts, etc. Plus, if you outsource any work, the money given to those people is also an important-to-consider common business expense. 

Businesses have or specifically create a marketing budget because to stay alive in today’s competitive world, marketing and advertising are basic needs.

You can only sell your product when your target audience knows about it, and that happens through marketing. Hence, whether you choose to market and advertise online or offline, or maybe both, there are a significant amount of expenses attached to this category.

The revenue earned by your business is the basis on which you pay taxes. Understanding the taxes and taking advantage of the deductibles is how taxes are managed smartly.

So the GST/VAT and other income tax payables are also counted under types of business expenditures.  

Amongst other common business expense categories is business travel expenditure. It is not necessary that all businesses would have high travel expenses.

However, if your business does, it is advised to keep a track of all the aspects. Hotel stay prices, airfares, food and beverages cost, entertainment cost, etc. 

Insurance is a basic and one of the most essential requirements of a business. It is a safety belt for difficult times, like accidents, calamities, and financial emergencies.

Getting business and employee insurance should be the first thing done before making plans to generate profit. So, business insurance expense is again from the common business expense categories.

The first step towards controlling common business expenses is making a financial plan. Once you have your expense categories sorted, you need to sort out which expenses can go to which limits.

This can be done by evaluating your company’s needs and then setting a budget for each common business expenses category. 

You can plan your future expenses only when you have a base to compare it with. Using the managerial accounting process to leverage the base historical data, you can create forecasts to plan your future business expenses. 

Variable expenses are those which change over time and depend on the business's consumption of any products or services.

These vary with time. Hence, you need to anticipate your variable expenses as well to manage the overall business expenditure to a profitable limit. 

To plan and adapt according to modern times, your business needs smart tech solutions and software for management. Adopt technologies that help the business induce more efficiency, decrease expenses, and overall help in effective cost control.



It is not just technology that can help to reduce expenses and bring more uniformity into the system; your company’s employees are also an integral part of the process.

Hence, the employees who prove to be helpful in the process reward them. This not only encourages them to do more, but it also motivates the other employees to do the same.