Deciding whether to invest in business mobile phone contracts or using your and your employees’ personal phones is always a tricky decision.

And there’s lots to think about.

One of the main issues we hear about from customers is the price involved with buying dedicated business mobile phones.

Many business owners think allowing employees to just use their own phones is the best option because it’s cheaper.

If employees are using their own phones, then surely you don’t really have any expenses, right?

But that’s not often the case.

If employees are expected to use their phones for work, then the expectation is that an employer will provide the phones, or at least contribute towards the costs of contracts.

This is particularly true as we start to look more at remote and hybrid working.

In this blog we’ll look at the costs associated with using business phones compared to BYOD and help you figure out which is best for your business.

Business phone contracts vs personal phones

Simply put, business phone contracts are cheaper for you than using personal contracts.

And that’s because personal phone contracts are put together for individuals.

They’re not created with the expectation that they’ll be bought in bulk and distributed across a business.

Business phone contracts are.

So the deals they come with, and the additional software and support you get are built in and can be scaled as you grow your business to add more phones and contracts to your business easily under the same plan.

Whether it’s getting cheaper contracts for buying multiple phones, or being able to pool and distribute data across devices to avoid additional costs, investing in business phones is a cheaper option in the long-term.

Tax benefits of business phones

Many business owners view company phones as an expense.

But the reality is that business phones qualify for tax relief so you can actually off-set the costs of your phones by claiming for them in your annual tax return.

If you invest in dedicated phones under the name of your business, you’re able to claim the full costs of the phones and the contract.

However, if you use personal phones, you can only claim for part of the contract costs used for business calls.

And even then, there’s a lot of admin involved in trying to work out how many business calls have been handled on personal phones.

Repair and maintenance costs

If you invest in business mobile phones, you’ll typically get support as part of the contract, and this includes repairs and maintenance for any damage or malfunctioning software.

This means if a phone gets lost or stolen, or stops working properly, you’ll be able to get it repaired or replaced quickly at no extra cost.

On the other hand, if your employees are using personal phones and they get broken or lost, the costs to replace them or get them fixed could be high.

If you’re expecting your employees to incur the costs of repairing their own phones, there’s no guarantee they’ll be able to afford to get it fixed or buy a new one quickly.

This means you might have to take on the costs yourself, which will be more expensive than investing in business phones from day one.

It’s not just about the costs of the devices

Of course there are more benefits to using business phones than just the costs of the devices and the contracts.

And this is additional savings you’ll have and the extra money you’ll make by employees being more productive with the right equipment.

With business phones you have more control over the phones being used, the way they’re used and the applications and software used on them.

This means your business communications are unified and uniform across the entire organisation.

What this means is there’ll be less time lost to systems being incompatible or apps not syncing properly and work being lost.

When considering the costs of business phones, you should definitely think about the time and money you could lose in lost productivity by employees using separate devices and tools.

Find your best business phones contract with Communications Plus

Business mobile phone contracts can be a great investment if you can find one that suits your business’ individual needs.

Get in touch with us today and let us help you either choose your first business phone contract or see how much you could save by getting your business mobile phone from us.