Professional indemnity insurance is another obvious cover. It protects you from yourself! Or more specifically, it protects your business from negligence by you or your staff in dealings with clients – dealings which definitely would be considered large cogs in your business wheel. PI cover might not protect your business’s reputation but it could certainly help keep the business afloat by covering compensation payments and legal expenses.

Another big issue is with making sure your workplace is secure. If you work from a home office, you should have taken out special insurance in addition to your residential buildings and contents cover. If you own your own office or warehouse space then buildings insurance is vitally important. Likewise if you work out of a vehicle, you need to get commercial vehicle cover.

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These big issues are very important, and it would be unwise to run your business without covering them. What is less certain, however, is whether you could continue working at all without some of your smaller business assets.

Take your electrical office equipment for example. Buying a full set at a good specification isn’t cheap, and depending on the type of business you own it can equate to quite a lot of machinery including printers, scanners, software, audio equipment, fax machines, photocopiers as well as your computer and monitor. If it was stolen or damaged, it would be costly to repair and no doubt it would set your business activities back considerably.

If you are a skilled tradesman, the tools you use every day can be even more costly and vital. If any key items broke down or were damaged they would be expensive to replace and it might take a long time to order more from the manufacturer. Tradesman’s tools are also easy targets for thieves – especially when they are stored in signature white vans or garden sheds! Without these small but important tools a tradesman would be out of business.

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Shop owners would also be out of business for days if thieves broke in and stole stock, cash or damaged fixtures and fittings. If the shop needed a complete re-fit it might take weeks and would be very costly.

These small things can easily be overlooked in favour of the big issues when considering which business insurance covers to buy. This is especially the case when including them on the insurance policy would mean extra expense. However the protection of tools, equipment, stock and business contents is equally as important to the welfare of a business as public liability, employers' liability and buildings cover.

Adding this extra insurance to your business cover may seem daunting, but actually it can work out to be lower-cost when all the covers you need are incorporated into one policy. Simply Business offers a range of industry-tailored, all-in-one policies from leading insurers, providing an unrivalled choice of price and cover to owners of almost every type of business.

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This article was first published on Simply Business