Standby Generator System Specialists, Florida Tampa serving Orlando, Jacksonville, Miami, Gainesville, Port St. Lucie, Sarasota

A Little Pro-activity Goes A Long Way

Managing a business takes a lot of work and attention to detail. If you are starting a new business or changing the location of your current business you have a lot of bases to cover. One of them is an emergency plan. Emergency plans are your go to guides when something unexpected arises. It might be a natural disaster, like one of our famous Florida hurricanes, or a man made mistake that affects your business. It really doesn’t matter what causes the shift from normal operation, you must be prepared to recover as quickly as possible and get back to business.

Power needs will be an issue. Every business needs electricity to function. You can guarantee yourself power with a standby system. Not every commercial property that you rent will already have one installed, in fact most won’t. This is because, as necessary as they are, standby systems represent an expense to your business. It’s understandable that you are trying to keep your costs down but every business needs insurance. You take out worker’s compensation insurance for your employees; you might even pay a monthly premium for disaster insurance for your business. Think about a generator like tangible disaster insurance that won’t make you fill out a million forms when you need it to get to work for you.

In order to properly plan for a disaster you should make a standby system a part of your business plan from the beginning. Expect to include it in your financials so that you can budget accordingly. Yes, you will pay for the equipment up front but ask your accountant how he or she plans to depreciate it. A generator is an asset and depreciation means that you can allocate the cost of the asset over the useful life of the equipment. In realistic terms this means that every month, you can reduce your taxes a little bit by reporting that you spent a portion of the cost of the standby system. It will take a little longer for you to realize the tax benefits but remember you are investing in your business.

Once the equipment is part of your financial plan you will see how easily it becomes a part of your disaster plan. Plan what you will need to have powered and make sure that your generator is hooked up to the breakers that power those areas. You will need to decide what is most important to your business. If you have a data center you will obviously need to make sure that your servers do not go down. Beyond that you will want to consider:

• Lights so that you and your staff can see
• Computers
• Cash registers (if you have them)
• Automatic Doors
• Elevators
• Any other equipment that is vital to your business

If you think about it, your emergency plan is next to useless without power. You will have to wait for the utility company to restore power in order to get back to work. Unless you are a gas station along an escape route, a hospital or a government building don’t expect to be near the front of the line to have your utilities put back on line.

Sources:
ACF
Financial Dictionary
Powered Generators.com
Core Services

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Hurricane Season Heats Up: Is Your Business Ready

Tags: ACF Power Systems, backup power, emergency plan, generator, standby system