Every January I print the overheads on one page and ask which lines still earn their place. This year the list was longer than I would like, so here it is, line by line, with what I kept and what I cut.

The fixed lines

Rent on the studio, which I nearly gave up for hot-desking and did not. Software, which had quietly bred into eleven subscriptions, three of which nobody could name. Professional indemnity and public liability insurance. The accountant, who costs a few hundred a quarter and saves more than that in work I would do badly. None of these moved much, except the software, where cutting three tools saved a surprising amount.

The marketing line, and the one check I did

Marketing is the line I am least sure of every year. Before renewing the search spend I checked our figure against a plain guide to how much SEO costs in the UK, decided ours was mid-range rather than daft, and kept it. That is the whole story on that line; the rest of the page is cashflow.

What the page is really for

Overheads are a cashflow problem more than a cost problem, because they leave the account on their own schedule whether or not a client has paid. I size them against a quiet month, not a good one. The same logic runs through how I price a project, and the staffing side sits in people and cashflow. If you cross the VAT threshold mid-year, redo the whole page, because every net figure on it just changed.

Written by Isla Fraser. General business information, not financial advice; figures current for 2026.