Office Equipment

Office Equipment

If your office is growing quickly or if it just needs to upgrade to some new technology like servers and copiers or new furniture like cubes, desks and chairs there are alternatives available to just running out and buying all those things but not everyone thinks about it. The easy alternative is office equipment leasing.

At first you might thin it is better to simply own the assets outright but when you actually stop to think about it there are lots of advantages to leasing that are at least worth consideration before making a determination of which is actually going to work better for you in the long run.

With office technology for example, the total life of the equipment may exceed significantly the useful life of the equipment in your office setting but when you buy it you have to pay for the whole asset and not just the part you are using. What this means is that while you may outgrow your copier in just two years the copier itself can easily last ten. Therefore, you are stuck either trying to sell or trade in your machine in order to finance the upgrade. On the other hand, if you had a two year lease on a machine not only would you have been making smaller monthly payments and no down payment but you also would be able to simply return the machine in two years and move up to a better one with much less hassle.

Other office items like furniture don’t generally face obsolescence but as the size of your business changes chances are you will also move the office and there again if you have purchased all your furniture and furnishings you will have to move them and try to fit them in the new space or sell them off. With a lease you don’t have that problem.

These are not the only advantages of leasing, of course. You also generally have a lower monthly payment than you would with a loan because you aren’t financing the entire cost of the purchase but just the time period you expect to use the items. You also generally avoid a down payment larger than a first payment or sometimes a first and last payment but not anywhere close to what a loan requires in terms of a down payment.

Many times too with the office equipment leasing programs available you can secure a corporation only approval which is very helpful, particularly for small business owners because it doesn’t require a personal guarantee.

Probably the biggest benefit of leasing is that it have no impact on your current lines of credit and it allows the business to preserve its working capital to expand, meet a growing payroll and otherwise take advantage of opportunities that might be missed if a significant chunk of the cash coming into the operation had to be tied up in asset ownership.

Another overlooked benefit of leasing is the simplicity. The application process is both simple and fast and unlike many loan applications the entire process from start to finish can be completed in just a few days. A lease specialist can also easily wrap all your purchases into one package rather than going through various vendors who not only use their leasing arms as additional profit centers (costing you more) but it will also actually hurt your credit if you are running several applications through several vendors rather than using one consolidated lease.

It certainly isn’t true that leasing is always the best answer but it is true that taking a look into the possibility is not only smart but also a good way to ensure that you don’t miss any options that could be significant time and money savers.

By Matt Remuzzi

Article Source: ezinearticles.com