Abstract
The article discusses the issues of optimizing the costs of an enterprise during the crisis, the need to allocate several items of costs, the financing of which will have to be reduced. The coronavirus epidemic, plummeting oil prices and multiple turmoil in financial markets have disrupted what appeared to be resilient trends. And this is especially true in business. Prolonged quarantine, decreased sales, alarming mood, uncertainty - all this gives rise to fears for the future. Systematic and consistent cost management and optimization must become an integral part of the new reality. The purpose of the article is to substantiate methods for reducing costs and optimizing costs of an enterprise in a crisis and economic instability when making management decisions. In order to realize this goal, the following are considered: theoretical foundations of enterprise cost optimization; planning and implementation of measures to reduce costs; models for reducing cost items in the budget and its basic principles. As a result of the research, it can be argued that significant and sustainable cost optimization is possible only as a result of business process optimization. It is impossible to significantly reduce any particular type of expenses without changing anything else around. Therefore, it requires the transformation of all processes associated with this function.