In case you have forgotten the value of a hard-earned penny we have put together a list of ideas to help your small business cut down on costs.

1. Don’t rent an office

Renting an office is usually one of the main expenses for a small business on a bootstrap budget. So if you’re serious about cutting down the costs, begin with this one. Besides, it’s so last season to rent your own office. Isn’t it much more fun to work from a trendy co-working space or a cozy cafe with Wi-Fi? By googling your way, you’ll definitely find at least one co-working space in your area. It can not only provide you with a working desk but also give an opportunity to network with other business owners and learn valuable insights from them.

You can also embrace the possibility to operate your business from the comfort of your own home. This will save you the commute time. Plus, a lot of purchases that you so far considered as household expenses can now be used for tax returns.

2. Hire a freelancer

Before you decide to hire a full-time employee to help you with the overwhelming amount of work, why not consider outsourcing some tasks to a freelancer? The internet has turned our planet into a little global village – the world’s professionals are now at a click away from you. Plus, it’s cheaper and faster to get the necessary work done.

There are great websites like Elance, oDesk and Fiverr that can instantly connect you with a freelance coder, marketer, designer or copywriter. While on Elance and oDesk you define the task, Fiverr works the other way around:,you choose among a variety of existing gigs. The upside is that it only costs $5 a task.

3. Use existing resources and tools

The good news is that today you don’t need to set up a separate infrastructure to start a new business. You can tap into the tools and resources that already exist. This can save you a considerable amount of money, not to mention the valuable time.

If you need a website on a budget, there are plenty of free or well-priced solutions out there that allow you to create a stunning website without any coding or design skills. If you want to sell online, why to build your own online shop if there are already simple and free solutions that you can use to create a shop right away. With Clerk, for example, you can set up a shop for free within 5 minutes and you only pay a small monthly fee.

4. Stop overpaying to your point of sale provider

If you run a business that accepts credit cards for your customer transactions, you pay various fees for your merchant account. Make sure that an offer from your merchant service provider is competitive and you don’t get charged for services that you don’t use. It’s often possible to negotiate a better fee per transaction if the volume of your transactions has increased.

You may also want to consider Square for processing card payments on your smartphone or a tablet. Square offers a card reader for free to small business owners and transaction fee starts at 2.75% per transaction and gets as little as 1.5% as monthly sales go up.

5. Use free business apps

For every software you pay, there are likely a couple free apps available online that could substitute the one you are using. Before paying for your next tool, check this list of 10 tools every entrepreneur should be using or have a look this long comprehensive list of free resource for all things business, marketing, design or coding.

6. Don’t waste your time

It might be a cliché but time is truly the most valuable asset we have. That’s why it’s important to reduce or eliminate as many as possible tasks that are not directly related to the business you’re running. Think of anything you can implement to save time because it will also save you money in the long run.

For example, every small business needs to understand what’s going on with their money but they don’t have to spend hours to go through all payments, transactions and expense claims. At Clerk, we want to make mail management as easy as possible for small business owners and travelers so that you can focus on the things that matter the most.