What Is Selling, General & Administrative Expense SG&A? How to Calculate & Examples

That protects the business and its shareholders in a down market. Do you need all of that office space you’re currently using, or could you sublease some of it to another business? Are you being as efficient with your sg&a meaning electricity and heating costs as you could be? Think you could renegotiate your company’s internet and phone bill? Look through each of your business’ monthly expenses and make sure you aren’t overpaying for them.

It therefore has higher selling costs on its income sheet, but it also has higher sales. The profitability therefore increases as well, ofsetting those higher costs. Overhead costs include the costs of producing a good or service (e.g., supplies). Therefore, you must produce a good or service to incur overhead costs. RevenueRevenue is the amount of money that a business can earn in its normal course of business by selling its goods and services. In the case of the federal government, it refers to the total amount of income generated from taxes, which remains unfiltered from any deductions. SG&A expense depends on the structure of the company, whether the company has more fixed costs than variable costs and vice versa.

General and administrative expenses vs. Operating expenses

These expenses are sometimes referred to as operating expenses. Your general and administrative expenses are on your income statement.

Get full access to Controller’s Guide to Planning and Controlling Operations and 60K+ other titles, with free 10-day trial of O’Reilly. If you’re trying to get a better handle on your business finances, Bench can help. This means that 26.65% of every dollar XYZ Inc. earns gets spent on SG&A expenses. Sam Ashe-Edmunds has been writing and lecturing for decades. He has https://www.bookstime.com/ worked in the corporate and nonprofit arenas as a C-Suite executive, serving on several nonprofit boards. He is an internationally traveled sport science writer and lecturer. He has been published in print publications such as Entrepreneur, Tennis, SI for Kids, Chicago Tribune, Sacramento Bee, and on websites such Smart-Healthy-Living.net, SmartyCents and Youthletic.

What are some typical SG&A expenses?

A variable cost is an expense that changes in proportion to production or sales volume. Not many general and administrative expenses are variable; therefore, reducing administrative expenses is a difficult proposition. It is worth noting that depreciation and amortization expenses are noncash expenses. For more information about noncash revenue and expenses, read the section on accrual accounting later in this lesson. That’s still a high number by small business standards, but it’s not good enough if fixed costs are $900,000. A firm with high fixed costs is said to have high operating leverage.

• For example, once a product is sold, it must be packed and shipped.
• Your expense management software smartly captures the expenses in your organization and immediately routes them into your accounting system.
• The rent of the building is a fixed cost rest is a variable cost .
• Some of the best business accounting software solutions also offer free accountant training programs to help you stay up to date on the latest functionalities and take advantage of the software.
• G&A is part of SG&A expenses or selling, general, and administrative expenses.
• On the one hand, I suppose it’s a company’s prerogative what they decide to give to the people like CEOs who keep their business going.

G&A expenses include rent, utilities, insurance, legal fees, and certain salaries. Selling costs can include advertising, sales commissions, and promotional costs.

A plan to reduce costs

Peggy James is a CPA with over 9 years of experience in accounting and finance, including corporate, nonprofit, and personal finance environments. She most recently worked at Duke University and is the owner of Peggy James, CPA, PLLC, serving small businesses, nonprofits, solopreneurs, freelancers, and individuals. In this chapter, the planning for and control over the area of general and administrative (G&A) expenses are discussed. Firms must often reduce SG&A costs through cost-cutting moves, such as employee layoffs, when they grow too large without a rise in sales. The same might happen when sales drop for a long stretch of time.

After a merger, for example, businesses often focus on reducing SG&A by consolidating duplicative functions and reducing headcount. Some firms also manage SG&A by outsourcing functions or relying more on temporary workers. Brainyard delivers data-driven insights and expert advice to help businesses discover, interpret and act on emerging opportunities and trends. Investopedia requires writers to use primary sources to support their work. These include white papers, government data, original reporting, and interviews with industry experts.

And then you can monitor changes in this percentage, rather than looking at costs on their own. Every business will need legal assistance from time to time. From setting up your first employment contracts, to handling a tricky tax situation, it’s unlikely that you’ll have this expertise on your own. We’ll look at your expense management options later in this article. We typically think of these costs as being directly tied to sales. With intelligent AI codes, the expenses are classified into various expense categories so- you’ll know how much has been spent behind which cost in real-time.

They work with our client research team to get the answers you need to make informed decisions for your business strategy. Get your employees to use a dedicated receipt app to scan and keep track of all receipts. Keep a close eye on day-to-day spending with tools like Bench. The better you track daily spending in your business today, the less likely it’ll get out of control in the future. The SG&A to sales ratio (also sometimes called the percent-of-sales method) is what you get when you divide your total SG&A costs by your total sales revenue.

SG&A costs include any expenses related to the operation of the company but not directly linked to producing and delivering its products. Keep in mind that your general and administrative expenses may differ from other companies’ costs. So, yours may be higher or lower depending on your expenses and business’s needs. Let’s say you have $1,000 in rent, $250 for utilities, $100 for insurance, $30 for subscription fees, and $50 for office supplies during the month. Your total G&A costs for the month would be $1,430 ($1,000 + $250 + $100 + $30 + $50).

Some expenses that seem tied to one department, such as accounting or legal, can be considered administrative because they benefit the entire organization. The calculation of selling, general, and administrative expenses (SG&A) is a relatively straightforward process. The total amount of SG&A for a given period is the sum of all the individual expenses that comprise that category. There are a number of different types of SG&A expenses, but some of the most common ones include salaries and wages, advertising and marketing, office supplies, and rent. G&A expense is typically fixed, meaning that G&A expense does not fluctuate with the company’s revenues. G&A is typically incurred regardless of whether or not the company is selling product or services to its customers.