You may not realise this but more than 50% of subscriptions are charged in USD, meaning you pay 1-5% FX fees on transactions (depending on your provider). Let's looks at a concrete example: if you were paying A$200k to Amazon Web Services, you would pay the following in FX fees:
Domestic bank credit card
Airwallex
OFX
Wise (formerly Transferwise)
"Using services like Airwallex and Transferwise are a great way to save money on your foreign transfers. We saved over A$10k when sending money overseas from our most recent production run" Dan W - Financial Controller at Propeller Aero
Contact your business relationship manager to discuss their bank fees. There's always room to negotiate their exuberant rates, and even reduce them near zero for the right volume of transactions.
A financial accountant (5 years experience) could cost you the following these cities:
Consider your talent distribution. Can an employee be upskilled to accommodate two roles?
Hourly rates are very convenient to ramp up work whenever your business requires it, but they can remain hidden and slowly create a dent in your budget. Take the example of a senior engineer who earns A$850/day and works 5 additional hours per week. Those few extra hours could end up costing your business:
Track your subscriptions and monthly payments in a spreadsheet to forecast future expenses. Dependant on the size of your business, you may opt for a software manager like Hudled to do this for you.
Gain control of what subscriptions your company is paying for by creating dedicated cards, usually at no extra cost for every vendor in your software stack. If you lose the credentials or access, you can cancel the individual card and stop paying for the subscription immediately.
"We've taken our SaaS management to another level by creating a dedicated virtual card for each major subscription. This allows our finance team to cancel unwanted subscriptions by cancelling the card in just a few clicks" Scott M - Finance Director at Airwallex
Many subscriptions offer discounts of 10-50% if you lock into single or multi-year contracts. Determine what your most business critical subscriptions are for each critical function within your company: Email (Google workspace), Internal Communication (Slack) or Hosting (AWS/Azure).
Many subscriptions charge based on multiple criteria such as seats, “premium features” or number of contacts. For example, HubSpot charges approximately A$500 for 2,000 additional marketing contacts. By reviewing these contacts periodically, you can remove low quality accounts, e.g.: support@[company].com.
Consider whether supplier finance costs, discounts, insurance funding etc are worthwhile - eg. is giving a discount 2% for early payment valid in current climate.
"Cash is king in uncertain times so you need to optimise cashflows and obligations" Warwick D - Finance & Operations at Nutromics
Is paying a funding premium on your insurance policy worth the standard 6-9% given the surplus funds in your bank account will be earning you less than 1%?
You can use a tool such as Expense Check to compare, find alternatives and manage all your utility costs. Look at Carbon Neutral alternatives such as Powershop. You can manage consumption with a heat-map and reduce high cost items, e.g. electricity for refrigerators that your team isn't using can go up to A$400 / year.
Have we missed anything?
Let us know how you found ways to save in your company!