When looking at the various capital leasing risks, is leasing equipment an effective option for businesses?

Whether you’re a fitness trainer, chef, engineer, or mechanic, it’s everyone’s dream to take their trade and attached experienced to a new level as a business owner. Running your own company means you get to take your skills to the level of teaching others while guiding your business in a direction that you want.

Business owners get to set their own hours and schedule and can set up their business to do everything they want, but of course it’s not as simple as that.

When starting your own company, you’ll most likely be working 60+ hours a week trying to manage every little part of your business and make sure you’re providing the best service possible and drawing in customers.

After all, your business will need time to start making a profit, and you already deal with quite a bit of expenses when your company starts.

From affording your employee’s salaries to paying for a location and the utilities attached as well as stock and equipment and more, businesses have to pay for quite a bit just to get started, and they deal with quite a few fees from there on as well.

The Need for Equipment in a Business

Many argue that the more important expense in a business is equipment; many forms of businesses depend on equipment to provide the best quality service possible. For example, if someone was attending a fitness center, they want to be able to use good, effective gym equipment.

If a custom part needed to be made by an engineering shop or manufacturing plant, the equipment plays a big part in how well that piece comes out. Restaurants need good ovens and stoves and such to make good food as quickly as possible, and of course there are many other examples.

Many business owners see this equipment as a huge factor in their success, but looking at all of this hardware, they share a common problem: money. Affording this equipment upon start of your business can be extremely challenging, especially considering you already are dealing with so many other expenses.

Purchasing capital equipment is tough enough, but considering that kind of equipment doesn’t have the longest lifespan, it can get more challenging for you in the long run. Paying to replace the equipment within a few years of purchasing the initial hardware can be just as difficult considering your business is still trying to get on its feet and make a reputation for itself.

The bottom line is, you need a permanent, effective solution to getting equipment in your business, and you can get that with leasing. However, many business owners wonder about the various capital leasing risks associated with an equipment lease, which is understandable.

Purchasing your Company’s Capital Equipment

When looking at leasing compared to purchasing, it’s easy to see which is the better option for your business. Simply put, purchasing is bound to cause you problems with capital equipment.

You get funding by claiming equipment as a business asset, except it’s still going to be an expensive purchase with that funding. Loans don’t help because a loan is a percentage of the amount you’re being loaned.

You could have great credit and a very low interest rate, but at the end of the day it’s still a percentile of that large amount of money you are being loaned, meaning the interest you pay will accumulate fast. Plus it’s tough enough paying for the equipment, but paying to replace it in a few years can be even worse, especially if you took out a loan and haven’t paid it off.

You need a way get this equipment without dealing with scrambling funds together to make a large payment or dealing with a devastating interest rate.

What are the Capital Leasing Risks?

With equipment leases, you pay a flat monthly rate to get the equipment loaned to your business. You get other advantages like tax benefits and the ability to get equipment repaired, but the real advantage to leasing is that you are paying for the benefit of having equipment and not the equipment itself.

That means your hardware will get repaired for you if it breaks down over time, meaning you don’t have to worry about replacements. There are many advantages to taking out a lease, but many do worry about capital leasing risks.

If you are a new business owner, you generally have to put your credit on the line to get a lease; however, leasing will not harm your credit in the process, requiring only a soft credit check.

Leasing is a contract, which means that the lease can be beneficial or harmful to you depending on the lease you get. However, you’re not forced into one lease or another; you get to shop around and find the more ideal lease for you to minimize capital leasing risks.

To learn more about how the benefits of an equipment lease stack up against capital leasing risks, click here.