Forget chickens for goats, and other archaic methods of bartering. Barter is alive and strong, especially in today’s economy, and will be here for many years to come. There are a great many benefits to bartering as a whole, and numerous reasons why you should be using it, whether you own a business or not!

Conserves cash.

That’s right. Everytime you complete a trade transaction, you did not have to pay cash out of your pocket for that item. Cash is the life of a business, without a positive cashflow a business cannot survive, so by bartering you can conserve cash for the items you cannot trade for.

Gets rid of surplus.

Plenty of companies have surplus lying around that they cannot liquidate. This is stale merchanidse, that is only COSTING the company money. It is costing money in taking up space that could be used for sellable items. Things that won’t move in the cash world have every chance of moving in the trade world. So now you can get rid of the things you don’t need, by trading them for the things you do need.

Lowers downtime and unused capacity.

When a hotel room sits empty, it isn’t making anyone money (and in some cases is actually losing the company money!) With barter and trade, a company can fill the rooms with clients, and create trade dollars that can be used to purchase more needed items, making it a double win situation for the business.

Creates more customers.

What someone may not be willing to pay cash for, they may be willing to trade for. Many companies utilize leverage in creating trade dollars, therefore the $1 they spent, did not cost them $1 to create, so they are leveraging their time and resources into larger amounts, that benefit them better in the long run.

Creates cash sales and transactions.

Like in the example of the hotel, though they may pay for the room with trade, the room service, the valet and the numerous others ammenities they use in the hotel they pay cash at. Which is bringing more cash into the business than would have originally been there than if the room sat empty. These cash transactions of course help with the cash flow of the business and in turn help the business survive.

As you can see there are many benefits to barter, but this is just the start! There are many other ways trade can benefit a company or individual.