3 Reasons Maintenance Costs Should Always Be in Your Company’s Budget

Many businesses create a tight budget that allocates every dollar earned to specific categories. Some of the more common categories are marketing, rent or mortgage, insurance, employee wages and more. One expense that is easy to overlook budgeting for is property maintenance. You may have overlooked this important expense altogether, or you may have intentionally chosen not to budget for property maintenance. Instead, your strategy may be to wait until something is broken before fixing it. The reality is that maintenance costs are a critical component of any business’s budget, and these are three of the leading reasons why this is true.

 

The Impact on Your Customers

Your physical property location is an outward representation of your brand image. You may have spent a fair amount of money decorating your venue and creating a certain look. Your customers will notice those efforts, but they also may find it difficult to overlook burnt out or flickering lights, ceiling tiles that are chipped, a cracked window and more. These can give customers the impression that you do not care about your business or even that your business is not successful and profitable enough to maintain the building.

 

Interruption of Business Activities

When repair issues develop on your property, there may be an instant cessation of at least some of your business activities. For example, a backed up sewer line can result in sewage spewing backward into the building. While a reputable plumbing company can repair the sewer line quickly, the time to clean up the mess and deodorize your place of business add onto the downtime associated with this event. Keep in mind that downtime equates to lost sales. In some cases, you may lose several days of sales or more.

 

Expensive Property Repairs

Failing to properly maintain some components of the building can lead to expensive and unnecessary property repairs. For example, you ideally should schedule HVAC maintenance service on your climate control system at least once per year. This type of service erases signs of wear and tear up to that point, and it can help you to avoid unnecessary HVAC repairs for the next several months or longer. It can even extend the life of your system so that you can delay replacing it.

 

There is a cost of maintenance work around your place of business. However, in many cases, it is more affordable overall to keep the property well-maintained than to deal with repair costs and property restoration costs after a significant issue develops. Create a maintenance plan today for your business property, and ensure that you allocate necessary funds in your budget to keep up with the plan that you develop.

About the author

Brooke Chaplan is a freelance writer and blogger. She lives and works out of her home in Los Lunas, New Mexico. She loves the outdoors and spends most of her time hiking, biking, and gardening. For more information, contact Brooke via Facebook at facebook.com/brooke.chaplan or Twitter @BrookeChaplan

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