Volumatic offers advice and solutions to businesses to help ease the strain of the Cost of Living Crisis

17 June 2022

With the Cost of Living crisis deepening by the day across the UK, the Government have this week confirmed that a support payment to help the poorest households will be paid on 14^th July, with a further payment due in the Autumn.

But while this is welcome news for those consumers hit hardest by rising costs of everything from groceries to household bills to fuel, businesses facing similar eye-watering rises in bills, rates and supplies are concerned that they are not seeing the same level of support.

Leaders of larger businesses, like M&S, Tesco and Wagamama have already expressed concerns about how the cost of living crisis will impact their customers and businesses, particularly when the next massive jump in energy bills comes along in the second half of 2022 – estimated to be an eye-watering 40%.

But while bigger businesses like M&S are confident they can ride the storm, for smaller, independent businesses, this next jump in the cost of living will undoubtedly hit hard – and could prove fatal for some, especially after the struggles of the past couple of years – with a survey by Nucleus Commercial Finance finding that around 1 in 10 small businesses stating they will go out of business in the next five years if inflation and business rates continue to rise.

Another recent survey conducted by Barclays - the Barclays’ SME Barometer survey – found that three-quarters of small-medium size companies are worried about the long-term impact of the cost of living crisis, citing rising inflation and soaring energy bills as the biggest worries.

More than a quarter of those businesses surveyed fear they will be forced to increase their prices as a result of the crisis, making them less competitive, plus many have reported they are also struggling to hire new staff, which hinders their productiveness.

What can businesses do to help themselves through the current crisis?

Cash handling experts Volumatic have been at the forefront of offering advice to businesses in recent years, joining forces with industry experts such as the Bank of England and Enryo to champion payment choice and the benefits of cash usage – as demonstrated in our Consumers Demand Payment Choice white paper, published in 2021 and our Cash 2030 conference that took place earlier this year, where industry experts met with retailers to discuss the future of cash payments and continued access to cash.

With the emergence of the cost of living crisis, we recognise that many companies need help, and despite the mountain of challenges UK businesses are facing right now, there are a number of things they can do to help ease the pressure.

1. Review your expenses – look at everything, from major expenses to the smallest costs incurred by your business. Try to reduce costs wherever possible and don’t be tempted to pay for things with credit. Use cash to help you budget your monthly expenditure.
2. Review your premises - If energy bills are your biggest concern, review your premises to see if they currently offer the most cost-effective solution for your business and consider alternative options.
3. Review your suppliers. Get quotes from other potential suppliers and then discuss pricing options with your current providers to try and get a price match or even a better deal.
4. Invest in technology – Not all jobs require additional staff or manpower. Investing in technology that will give you a huge return on investment and/or help you cut costs and make certain processes more efficient is definitely worth considering. Technology such as cash handling solutions, CCTV and self-service checkouts can all lead to efficiencies and cost-savings

How Volumatic solutions can help

As experts in improving cash handling procedures, Volumatic can offer businesses in the retail, leisure and hospitality sectors an opportunity to save both time and money with their intelligent solutions, as well as improving the efficiency of how their staff handle cash, replacing the huge amounts of time spent cashing up at the end of the day with more customer-focused activities.

Volumatic can offer a wide variety of intelligent solutions that are not only cost-effective in a short space of time but will also have a real impact on the way businesses operate. This will allow them to recoup some of the costs being swallowed by rising business rates and bigger bills and achieve the enhanced productivity they need.

A low-cost option could be our range of money counters. Our CountEasy range can reduce cash counting time to mere minutes and means less cash handling, fewer mistakes and less downtime. Or for those with the need to counter larger volumes of cash, our Friction Note Counters are perfect for the job – plus they can detect all known forgeries too and are approved by the Bank of England.

Volumatic also offers an award-winning all-in-one solution in the form of the CounterCache intelligent (CCi), which serves as a secure storage device, cash counter and forgery detector in one discrete device, meaning staff only touch cash once until it reaches the bank. In addition, all cash data is instantly available to the staff or head office for reconciliation purposes.

While these solutions cannot slow down the rises in rates and energy bills that will hit companies at least until the end of this year, now is the time for companies to be thinking about investing in smarter cash handling solutions alongside other key efficiencies that could really make a difference to their business and help them survive this cost of living crisis.