Financial crises are built into the economic system that keeps our world ticking over. The only thing that's certain is that it will come. Part and parcel of these periods is that companies less able to compete are left by the wayside. That just leaves the strongest and most adaptable businesses which can survive into the next period of growth. The current crisis is set to be one of the worst periods of recession in modern times, and you can guarantee that many businesses are going to go bust.Now, more than ever, it's crucial to do everything you can to stay competitive.

Reducing Expenses
The most common way businesses try to stay above water during a recession is to make cuts on non-essential costs. Often this involves getting cheaper supplies, reducing marketing budgets or even laying off staff. But there is a major downside to cutting costs in this way.They inevitably weaken your business. By this I mean your output and sales figures shrink, and your employees can end up becoming increasingly dissatisfied with their lot. Now I'm not saying anything new here. Often these risks are identified and managed in advance. But what if there was a way of cutting out expenses that REALLY are unneccesary, without adversely affecting your business at all?

Burning Money
You can pretty much guarantee that most businesses will have a certain amount of wastage in their expenditure. This, to an extent, is normal and you can't completely avoid it. But a lot of this comes from accounting inefficiency, especially when it comes to costs related to your fixed assets - such as equipment, machinery, computers, vehicles, and so on. You can keep these expenses to a minimum by identifying where the leaks are taking place. The thing that makes it a no-brainer decision is that this doesn't cause any loss in your business's output. Below are a few of the most common ways in which unnecessary expenditure on assets occurs in organisations:

• Not calculating depreciation on equipment. This can lead to overpaying on your taxes.
• Equipment going missing. The larger the organisation, the more of a danger this can be, unless you have a decent asset tracking system in place.
• Overpaying on insurance because you've wrongly valued your equipment.
• Unneccesary purchases. It's common for unneccesary equipment purchases to occur when there isn't proper tracking of assets in place.

You may feel like these are minor leakages in your expenses and addressing them won't make much difference. That attitude is extremely common amongst businesses small and large. When you add all those small costs, however, you end up with a potential lifesaver when margins are as thin as they are now. Just getting the right asset accounting in place could mean the difference between success and failure in 2009.