This article references case studies and data published by Cetaris, ResolvePay, and BetterCloud.”
This legally covers:
● Warranty reimbursement results
● Invoice-error statistics
● SaaS waste percentages
Every business leaks money somewhere, whether it’s in slow drips or steady streams. The hard part is figuring out where these leaks are hiding. Between vendor errors, unused services, lost warranty opportunities, inefficient processes, and unreported expenses, companies often absorb losses because nobody has the time or tools to trace them.
It’s time to reclaim money your business shouldn’t be missing and tighten the systems that allow it to happen in the first place. With the right tools and systems in place, even money-conscious organizations can recover significant costs.
1. Start with warranty reimbursements
One of the most overlooked opportunities to recover costs is warranty reimbursement, especially for companies that rely on equipment, maintenance, or have a lot of tech assets. Businesses often assume that warranties aren’t worth the paperwork, but that’s not true. For example, this Cetaris case study shows how a company tripled its maintenance warranty reimbursement simply by implementing stronger tracking and structured workflows.
When warranties are tracked, it’s easier to submit claims and recover substantial amounts of cash on parts, labor, and equipment failures that would otherwise become silent losses.
If you don’t currently have a warranty tracking system in place, start by collecting all of your existing warranties and service contracts to find out which ones are still valid. Document which assets are under warranty and what’s covered. Don’t leave anything out, even if it’s just a water cooler or laptop. Everything adds up.
The key is to tie your maintenance events to warranty records so you know what work is eligible for reimbursement. You can do this easily with a digital warranty tracking application that integrates with your maintenance tasks. Once that’s in place, all you need is a standard process that enters each new warranty into the system so nothing slips through the cracks.
2. Scrutinize your invoices for billing errors
Vendors make mistakes that can cost you money. It might be an incorrect invoice amount, duplicate charges, subscription errors, unnoticed price increases, hidden fees, or an overcharge. Businesses that regularly audit invoices uncover a host of hidden costs that would otherwise go unnoticed.
Make it a point to audit recurring vendor invoices every quarter and monitor every auto renewal that posts to your account for price increases. Some contracts for online services will automatically renew at higher rates or include new “standard” service fees that you never agreed to pay. If you find an increase and it’s too much, you might be able to cut costs by choosing a different service.
Vendor audits are essential for maintaining accuracy. Even completely honest vendors make mistakes.
3. Get your subscriptions under control
Businesses tend to accumulate a large number of subscriptions without realizing the cost. It happens with software, automation tools, analytics platforms, backups, cloud services, and even task management tools. Many businesses waste between 20%-30% of their SaaS budget on unused or redundant subscriptions. Often, these tools overlap in terms of features and can be condensed, while others can be eliminated.
To cut unnecessary costs for subscriptions, make a list of every subscription service you pay for, whether monthly or yearly. Categorize them and see what overlaps. Cancel anything you don’t currently use, figure out which ones are worth keeping, and get rid of the rest.
4. Implement better expense tracking and enforcement
Employee expenses, corporate credit cards, reimbursements, mileage, and supplies can cost a lot when they’re not strictly tracked. Small purchases that don’t require approval, multiplied across team,s can turn into major expenses fast.
If you’re not currently tightly controlling these types of expenses, it’s time to start. It makes sense to require approval for purchases over a set dollar amount so you don’t have to track minutia, but there should be a cap on how much can be spent without approval. For example, if purchases under $50 don’t require approval, you could end up with 75 smaller purchases this month that total more than $3,000.
By allowing purchases under $50 without approval, but limiting unapproved department spend to $300 each month, you can drastically reduce unnecessary spending. Once that $300 threshold is reached, all purchases need to be approved regardless of the dollar amount.
Reclaim the money you don’t know you’re losing
Instead of cutting your budget deeper, first try finding hidden opportunities to recover costs from things like warranty reimbursements, vendor invoice mistakes, unnecessary subscriptions, and uncontrolled budgets. By tracking expenses and enforcing policies, you can recover a significant amount of existing revenue from leaks you never knew existed.
