How to avoid last-minute overheads during Diwali?

If you don’t make an estimate now, you will find your business expenses ballooning in no time this month. Diwali brings so much cheer and joy around that you are bound to lose track of your business finances. Well, the festival of lights comes every year. What’s so surprising? You would ask.

Yet, you will find your budgets escalating by the day. How can small and medium businesses keep the last-minute Diwali overheads in check? Lets find out.

Clever makeovers for office

Does your office really need a painting or you can manage with a little cleaning? Focus more on things you really need in the office such as furniture or a storage cupboard or a filing cabinet. As for decorations, make use of innovative and inexpensive solutions such as using wall decals, or changing just cushion covers or rugs instead of buying new ones. Create competitions among the staff to come up with less expensive ways to decorate their cabins or spaces. This can sometimes save a third of your makeover costs and still give you the desired result.

Office parties

You can easily ditch hotel parties by organising more personalised office parties for your staff. A small pooja ceremony on the morning of Diwali or a pre-Diwali get-together would spread more warmth and also shall save you a tonne of expenses.

Make a list of ‘baksheesh’

From your building watchman to the hair-dresser around the corner or the tea supplier, you will have a lot of knock-knock at your office door this season. Make a list of people who you really want to donate to. Make a conscious selection, it’s your business expense not your personal or use funds from your personal accounts. Either ways, make sure you have a planned list.

Realistic bonuses

That’s a tough one but really make sure you are giving away not only fair but also realistic bonuses to employees. Don’t get carried away from the Diwali sales figures. Cut a few of your expenses if possible to make room for Diwali bonus.

Don’t swipe at will

Don’t be tempted to deal with some of your business overheads during Diwali with your credit card. Use your debit or credit card judiciously and keep a track of your expenses on bank statement. You can do this easily from accounting software such as Giddh where all your bank accounts can be linked and then re-visited.

Shop online

If you are sending Diwali gifts to clients or prospects, buy corporate and discounted gifts online to save costs of delivery. You may come across very good deals. Keep a track of your promotional section of your gmail, you will easily find players selling Diwali gifts at reasonable costs. Look out for offers in general during Diwali and see if you can get money-saving deals.

Create a separate Diwali overhead

With software such as Giddh, you can create groups and sub-groups under any particular overhead. If you create this overhead this year, it would guide you for next year as well. All this data would be saved on cloud so there’s no problem of storage or space. It would also help you make a realistic estimate of expenses, profits and growth.

If you are someone who needs help with the right kind of accounting this Diwali, feel free to call us.