Whether it’s a large corporation or a small, family-run enterprise, managers often look for ways to reduce their operating expenses (OPEXs). That’s because higher costs eat away at a business’s profits or bottom line. One of the responsibilities of management is determining how to reduce operating expenses without affecting the ability to compete with competitors. Understanding operating expenses and how they impact your business are crucial skills. Use this guide to learn how to identify, track, and manage operating expenses to benefit your company’s continued growth and financial health. Every company has different operating expenses based on their industry and setup.

• Detailing your operating expenses can provide you with a wealth of information about your business, such as utility costs, wage details, and advertising and marketing costs.
• But the per-unit variable costs increase as the volume of output increases.
• While your business may initially appear to be profitable when subtracting cost of goods sold from revenue, the true test of business profitability comes when factoring in operating expenses.
• It also helps managers determine the price point for their products and compare the profitability of one product line versus another.

Remember, you have to incur the fixed costs, whether your business makes sales or not. Accordingly, there can be two possibilities to increase your business earnings. You can either increase your business revenue or reduce your operating cost. The $30 million in SG&A and R&D are the total operating expenses of our company.

Learn How NetSuite Can Streamline Your Business

Examples of variable costs include raw material costs and the cost of electricity. In order for a fast-food restaurant chain that sells french fries to increase its fry sales, for instance, it will need to increase its purchase orders of potatoes from its supplier. No, operating expenses and cost of goods sold are shown separately on a company’s income statement. This is because the cost of goods sold is directly related to the production of a product, as opposed to daily operations. Operating expenses typically include supplies, advertising expenses, administration fees, wages, rent, and utility costs. FreshBooks expense tracking software can help businesses efficiently track and categorize their operating expenses, such as rent, utilities, insurance, and travel expenses.

One of the best ways to determine current and future business success is by regularly examining your operating expenses and making adjustments when needed. While your business may initially appear to be profitable when subtracting cost of goods sold from revenue, the true test of business profitability comes when factoring in operating unlevered free cash flow expenses. Operating expenses are not directly related to the production of products or services, but instead reflect what it truly costs to open your doors each day. Operating expenses are the expenses that you incur as a business mandatorily. Generally, operating expenses are the expenses that your business has to incur mandatorily.

Operational Activities

Operating expenses are the costs that have been used up (expired) as part of a company’s main operating activities during the period shown in the heading of its income statement. Imagine trying to create a budget or financial projections without knowing what your operating expenses are. Detailing your operating expenses can provide you with a wealth of information about your business, such as utility costs, wage details, and advertising and marketing costs.

How to Calculate Operating Expenses?

However, doing so may have an impact on the quality of your business operations. As a business owner, you determine the fixed costs via contract agreements or cost schedules. These are the foundational costs incurred to carry out your business operations.

Fixed Costs and Variable Costs

It typically relates to recurring expenses such as rent, interest payments, insurance payments, and bank fees. Understanding the distinction between operating expenses and capital expenditures is essential for students pursuing accounting or corporate finance careers. It enables them to accurately analyze financial statements, evaluate profitability, make informed investment decisions, and effectively manage the financial health of organizations. However, non-operating expenses are the expenses incurred for reasons not related to the core operations of your business.

It is noteworthy that the same category of an operating expense can be either a fixed cost or a variable cost, depending on the situation. For example, the wage for a full-time office employee is a fixed cost to the company, while the wage for an assembly line factory worker can be identified as a variable cost. Understanding the distinction can help managers to better control the operating expenses while considering the timeframe. Operating expenses are the costs that a company incurs while performing its normal operational activities. Operational activities are those tasks that must be undertaken from day to day to operate the business and generate revenue. Operating expenses are different from expenses relating to, for example, investing in projects and borrowing.

To calculate the total cost, add the average fixed cost per unit to the average variable cost per unit. Trimming operating costs too much can reduce a company’s productivity and, as a result, its profit as well. While reducing any particular operating cost will usually increase short-term profits, it can also hurt the company’s earnings in the long term. For example, employees such as receptionists or secretaries may be compensated as part of administrative expenses. Postage, telephone bills, and general office supplies shared by all departments also typically are not classified as operating expenses.

Companies that do this do so because they believe that expanding their year-end operating budget might secure the excess funding they need for the next year. These types of expenses are better listed in a separate section than under the general umbrella of operating expenses, although many companies still operate this way. But operating expenses are a very necessary part of doing business and can’t be avoided, which means they can’t be eliminated altogether. Understanding what these expenses are can help business owners make smart decisions about which areas they need to slash. Operating expenses are important because they can help assess a company’s cost and stock management efficiency. It highlights the level of cost that a company needs to make to generate revenue, which is the main goal of a company.

If a company incurs relatively higher opex as a percentage of sales compared to its competitors, that may indicate they are less efficient at generating those sales. Get instant access to lessons taught by experienced private equity pros and bulge bracket investment bankers including financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel Modeling. You need to write off such capital expense over the useful life of the plant and machinery. Get instant access to video lessons taught by experienced investment bankers. Learn financial statement modeling, DCF, M&A, LBO, Comps and Excel shortcuts.

For example, Apple places “Research & Development” and “Selling, General & Administrative” expenses into separate buckets. Occasionally, OpEx can be consolidated into a single line item, but the standard layout is for the expenses to be broken out into multiple line items. Access and download collection of free Templates to help power your productivity and performance. Over 1.8 million professionals use CFI to learn accounting, financial analysis, modeling and more.

Operating expenses include the costs incurred by a company during its day-to-day operations to generate revenue. Now, the per-unit variable cost of production remains constant for a given level of output. But the per-unit variable costs increase as the volume of output increases. Overhead expenses also include marketing and other expenses incurred to sell the product. For the soda bottler, this includes commercial ads, signage in retail aisles, and promotional costs. These costs still remain if production is shut down for a short period of time.