If there’s a silver lining to a recession, it’s that it really focuses a business owner’s attention on cost control. However, all too often the lessons learned in a down economy are forgotten when good times return. For long-term success, keeping your overhead low and your profit margins high has to be a top priority regardless of whatever else is going on. But simply being a perpetual tightwad isn’t the answer. Often you have to spend money to make money. The key to successful cost control is understanding which expenses to trim and how to trim them.

While there’s no one-size-fits-all method to cutting costs, simply slashing all your expenses is not the way to go. Perhaps even more important than knowing which costs to reign in, is knowing which ones to spare. And in some cases, there are better ways to boost your bottom line or improve your cash flow than cutting costs.

The OPEN Forum Crash Course on Cutting Costs is designed to help you master the art of maximizing profitability. For seasoned business owners, it offers a way to test your cost-cutting savvy. For up-and-coming entrepreneurs, it delivers time-tested advice from the trenches. For middle managers with bottom line responsibility, it presents a roadmap for success.

Best of all, you are the boss of how you use this course. You can start at the beginning, middle or end. You can take the quizzes or just skip to the answers. You can opt for the badge or be content with your own personal enrichment. Or, if you prefer to just cut to the chase, you can click on any of the following resources that we’ve spent hours and hours judging as the best on the topic.

What to cut

• 6 Common Small Business Money Leaks And How To Plug Them
• Financial Benchmarking: How Do You Compare To Your Competitors?
• How to Prevent Employees from Stealing from Your Business
• 4 Ways To Get Vendor Discounts
• Free Advertising: The Magic of Getting Media Attention

How to cut

• 56,000 Money Saving Ideas From Uncle Sam
• Where To Save And Where To Spend
• Managing Costs And Saving Money In An Economic Recession Part III: How To Lower Payroll Expenses 
• Should You Cut Costs Like Barack Obama Or David Cameron?
• Creating Your First Small Business Budget
• How Do You Know When To Double Down Or Batten Down?

What not to cut 

• 10 Ways to Cut Cost and Keep Jobs
• Are Small Businesses Getting The Full Benefit From Employee Benefits? 
• Don't Let Your Cash Flow Go Down the Drain
• 8 Ways Telework Can Save You $20,000 a Year
• Take These Costs Off Your Worry List
• Top Five: Cutting Costs (video)

Cost cutting alternatives

• Why You Should Raise Your Prices
• Don’t Let Your Cash Flow Go Down the Drain
• How to Design Credit Policies 
• It’s Not Revenue If You Can’t Collect It
• SBA Loans Up 90 Percent
• Inventory: The Crucible of Success
• Pride and Productivity: A Win-Win Combination
• Building Customer Loyalty
• To Groupon or Not to Groupon: The Cost of Offering Deep Discounts 

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