New business owners face a host of challenges, but the most pressing is usually this: you only have so much money to grow your business, and to get more money, you need your business to grow. This means you have to spend wisely in the first few months of going into business, which might mean you avoid purchasing software or that you hire as little staff as possible. This approach is understandable; any time you buy one thing, you can’t buy something else. That all said, there are some things you want to consider when making purchases for your business.

The first thing to consider is how scalable the purchase is; will it grow with your business? There’s a lot of software out there that will let you use some of their features for free, then easily export your data into paid features once your business has grown enough that you can make use of those features. This kind of software is often an excellent choice for startups. Finding tools that will grow with your business is essential; you don’t expect to be in the same place a year from now, so your tools should be adaptable.

You’ll want to run a cost-benefit analysis on any tool you’re looking to purchase – equally, you’ll want to run one for any staff you’re planning to hire. One thing many new business owners fail to account for is the value of their own time. The appeal of not buying scheduling software, of building your own website, of doing your own accounting, or any number of other things, is that it doesn’t cost you money. But the problem with that thinking is that your time is money. Every moment you spend on something that isn’t your strong suit, you’re not growing your business in the ways you’re best at. Look at the most successful businesses; people in their C-Suite all have specialized roles with a number of people reporting to them, and they all have a lot of different software to help them. 

You’ll also want to consider the costs of not buying a particular tool. Does the tool do something no other tool can? Is the price of the tool reasonable compared to other comparable tools on the market? Should you not purchase the tool, how much time and energy will you have to spend on what the tool accomplishes? When your business grows, is it going to be more difficult to implement the tool? When you’re using a tool from the get go, its use becomes integrated in your business’s day to day. Changing management can be a costly procedure while choosing the right tool from the start makes integration seamless.

One often neglected tool for new businesses is bookkeeping services. Bookkeeping without the proper software and know-how is a tedious experience and exporting bookkeeping that was done by hand into a new software months or years after the bookkeeping was started is painfully time-consuming. Fortunately, there are excellent bookkeeping services in Winnipeg that you can get access to no matter how big or small your business.