PROVIDING staff with the right tools to enable them to work efficiently is an essential part of running a business and for every hour their equipment is out of order, that’s money thrown down the drain.
Therefore, if your staff need a company car to do their job, making sure that it’s reliable and in good condition is vital in order to protect your profits.
However, this doesn’t come cheaply, so it’s important to weigh up the costs of keeping a fleet against the amount of time and money you could lose by cars failing to perform. We take a look at some of the ways you could become more cost-effective.
Leasing your vehicles
Having your own assets is usually vital for a thriving business, but there are times when it’s worth questioning whether you would actually be throwing money away. Cars, for example, unlike property, depreciate over time so that the longer you hold onto them, the less they are worth. This begs the question of how to equip your employees with vehicles without wasting huge amounts of capital.
There is an easy answer: leasing. Although leasing vehicles means that you never actually own them, the business will not have to shell out large sums of money, which will hit its cash flow reserves and much of the responsibility will lie with the provider, rather than your business.
In the current uncertain economy, many businesses are opting to not only lease their vehicles, but also extend the terms as signing contracts for new vehicles is a luxury expense that simply cannot be justified.
Encouraging employees
Whilst exploring different ways of financing your company vehicles might be one very significant way you can cut costs, it’s possible to take some much smaller steps that will also help to reduce the overall expenditure.
Encouraging employees to treat their vehicles responsibly is one of the most important ways in which you could help to cut running costs. Not racing around, conserving fuel by driving sensibly as well as being aware of how to be more efficient are just a few of the ways in which employers are encouraging their staff to help them save money.
Selecting more efficient models in the first place as well as picking cars which fall into a lower tax bracket (due to emissions) won’t just help the planet; it will also help to preserve your bank balance.
