Operating Expenses (OpEx)

Operating expenses, usually shortened to OpEx, are the ongoing costs of running your business that are not tied to delivering any one sale, things like salaries, rent, software, marketing and professional fees. On a profit and loss statement they sit below gross profit and get subtracted to reach your operating profit.

OpEx is where a lean founder's discipline shows. Direct delivery costs scale with revenue and are hard to avoid, but operating expenses are mostly choices, and they have a habit of creeping. Say you're running your books in Moneybird: the subscriptions line is where OpEx quietly climbs, a Notion workspace here, an Amplitude plan there, a hire that felt necessary, and suddenly your break-even point has climbed without revenue following.

Reviewing OpEx line by line every quarter, asking whether each recurring euro still earns its place, is one of the highest-leverage habits in a small business. The goal is not to starve the business but to keep every cost working. Lean operations beat large ones precisely because they refuse to let OpEx outpace the value it creates.