Category Archives: Cost Savings

Local Enterprise Office Marketing Grants

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Is your website looking dated, doesn’t work properly on mobile phones and is generating little or no revenue for your business? If so, why not avail of a Local Enterprise Office (LEO) Trading Online Voucher (TOV) to give your online business a kick-start. If you want a new website or to redevelop an existing site you could be eligible for a grant of up to €2,500 (50% of the development costs) to overhaul your website and get it working for you. A TOV offers small businesses and retailers the opportunity to apply for match funding to […]

Small Businesses Benefit From Interest Rate Cut

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From 1 July 2016, Microfinance Ireland is offering a 1% cut in its interest rates on loans to small businesses. Microfinance Ireland (MFI) was set up in 2012 as a not-for-profit lender designated to deliver the Government’s Microenterprise Loan Fund. MFI provides “micro-enterprises” with access to loan finance of between €2,000 and €25,000. This can be a helpful option to businesses in getting finance. What is a micro-enterprise? A micro-enterprise is any business with less than 10 employees and an annual turnover of less than €2M. MFI will consider applications from start-up as well as established […]

Business Management – Accounting In The Cloud

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Over recent years as internet speeds and reliability have increased, we’ve all seen a big move towards storing things in the ‘cloud’. Music cloud Think about music. Now instead of buying music in a physical format and building up a collection over time, we pay a monthly fee and stream our music from a supplier. Why? Because it’s more convenient and we get immediate access to a vast library of music that we can access any time from our phone, tablet and computer. Video cloud Or what about video and television? Now we can subscribe to […]

Time Management – Three Simple Ways To Make More Time

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The stresses of daily modern life and running a business or doing a job effectively mean that most of us struggle to get enough time to do everything. So here are 3 ways to create more time for yourself. Not everything stated will work for everybody, but try them out, customise them and see what works for you. Accept That You Do Not Have Time For Everything For many of us, we take the view that if we can only just clear all our tasks we will be able to relax. We defer pleasure or relaxation […]

Data Entry Time Saving – Datamolino Trial

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If you or your staff spend what you consider excessive time on entering the data from invoices into your accounting software you have probably wondered if there is an easier way. Advances in technology mean that automated assistance is possible. One provider of this kind of service is Datamolino and we have recently taken the opportunity to review their software. What Do They Do? Datamolino is an online service that involves Optical Character Recognition (OCR) of invoices. It will recognise the data from scans or pdf files and automatically put it in a format that can […]

Lower your foreign exchange costs easily

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We have partnered with TransferMate who can save you time and money on your international payments to suppliers by offering better exchange rates, lower transfer fees and faster payments. The company is a licensed European Payment Institute with offices worldwide and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland. Over 35,000 companies worldwide use the TransferMate service every month. TransferMate aims to eliminate bank charges and senders/receivers fees. It offers better exchange rates than banks and zero fees for transactions over €5,000. Irish banks offer a limited online platform whereas TransferMate provides a 24 hour online […]

How to Improve What Matters Most With the 80/20 Rule

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A problem many of us have is too many measures and, consequently, too much to improve. We need to prioritise, but we somehow don’t do it well enough. Here’s a method to focus on what really matters most, that has over 116 years of proof that it works… In 1897, over a century ago, an Italian economist called Vilfredo Pareto made the discovery that 80% of the wealth of a population was owned by 20% of that population. The Pareto Principle, or 80/20 rule, is a pattern of predictable imbalance that keeps popping up in all […]

How to Save on Printing Costs

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Very simply just use compatible ink and toner cartridges. For over the past two years we have used compatible cartridges and have experienced no problems or loss of quality with our printed materials. The price differences can be substantial. For personal printers the ink cartridge costs us €5 whereas the average shop price is about €11 – 120% higher. For shared printers the toner cartridge costs us €80 whereas the average shop price is about €210 –210% higher. The above comparisons exclude VAT. Feel free to call John Lane of JDC Media Europe Limited on (083) […]

The Big Switch – Will This Save You Money?

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One Big Switch launched in Ireland this month with the Big Energy Switch, a campaign to unlock group discounted electricity and gas. This national group switching campaign is the first of its kind in Ireland, and is a campaigning technique pioneered by One Big Switch globally. Oliver Tattan, an Irish entrepreneur who has spent the best part of the last decade building businesses that drive competition and better consumer outcomes in the Irish health insurance market, brought one Big Switch to Ireland. He saw that as the financial crisis slowly receded, Irish consumers were facing an affordability crisis, […]

10 Ways to Reduce Utility Costs

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Significant savings can be made if you examine your utility usage and costs. Cost reduction ideas include: Offer incentives to staff for energy saving ideas Reduce the temperature setting on thermostats over the winter months and with air conditioning increase during the summer months. Install time clocks to control lighting, air conditioning and heating systems. Have staff power off computers when they leave their desks by using a specially installed off/on button. Have staff turn off fluorescent lights when they leave a room for more than 15 minutes and incandescent lights if gone for more than […]