Love is in the air this month, with Valentine’s Day just here .. and now is the time to give your business the TLC it also needs.

Investment. Investment in a business can be many things. It can be your investment of time and energy in nurturing your business as it grows. It can be working on your operations, improving your processes and making yourself more efficient.

Investment is money. The business may not be generating you the income you were expecting, so investing some money into the business to spend on a marketing campaign, or buying that piece of equipment that will make the operation run smoother may seem painful initially. We are still at the start of the New Year, getting these investment ideas up and running will be worth it in the end.

Now is the time to take a closer look at your customer base, are you meeting their every expectation? Is there something you are not currently offering that could add value, or which you can use to up-sell to increase your sales turnover? A business which knows their customers very well, and manages their expectations always succeeds.

Marketing. Take a look at your marketing strategy. If you are putting time and money into activities that don’t work, then you need to stop them! Only spend money and time on what works for your business. Measuring the success of your marketing is a very important exercise that needs to be done on a regular basis.

Processes. Is there something you are doing that can be done more efficiently? The difference between profit and loss can often be a case of the process being too cumbersome. So, streamline your processes to meet the changing needs of your business. This will become increasingly vital as your business grows. If you don’t manage your processes – you are guaranteed to waste money.

You the owner. Make sure you are taking care of yourself. If you are busy and stressed you will not have the mindset to focus on your business effectively. Watch your stress points and take regular holidays. I still see far too many clients visiting me looking completely worn out. It’s not good for you – and it’s definitely not good for your business.

Your business is an investment for the future, feed it and it will grow.

This blog is intended for information purposes only and is only advice from past experience, you may have other suggestions of your own. It is not intended to be used to make all of your business decisions but as a guide only.

Improving your credit score

We are seeing an increasing number of our clients looking for mortgages and loans with their banks. It’s a good thing because it means that our client base is looking ahead at moving home, moving up the ladder by getting a more expensive house, or expanding their businesses.

As owners/directors of a business, your business and personal lives cross over, so these tips to get that dream house or expanding your business to meet your strategic goals will be similar.

The banks and finance houses look at a number of things when deciding whether to loan you money.

Can you pay it back ?

Do you meet their risk assessment criteria ?

What assets do you own ?

As a soletrader or Director of a Limited company your accounts to a bank are just as important as the personal income you are taking from the business.

They generally look at three years accounts, wanting to see that not only is the director taking an income, there is a defined growth year on year, the director is not taking out the complete amount of disposable profit, and keeping the balance sheet positive. This also needs to show year on year growth.

There are two main figures which are of high importance on a balance sheet ive discussed previously, the Net Current Assets, which is an indication of working capital, or cash in the business. The other figure is the overall total balance sheet value, this again needs to be positive.

The more money you wish to borrow the stronger the balance sheet and directors income needs to be.

This is not an overnight task but needs to be planned ahead over a period of time, but by putting in some self restraint and leaving funds or assets in the business you are over time improving your credit score.

Another scoring technique the bank uses is the amount of credit the company is taking and asking for. Whether is through credit with suppliers, a credit card, or a short term loan, ie overdraft. The bank will be checking your records demonstrating that you are being given credit by 3rd parties and are paying it back on time and within the terms of those agreements.

We have a number of clients who have been able to self sustain their businesses by not needing to apply for credit. This will unfortunately go against you if you are looking to expand. You need to be applying for credit every so often so that your credit history is gaining information. Even if you don’t need the money, and don’t want to pay any interest. You can apply for a credit card and just make sure you pay it off at the end of the month, you are naturally improving your credit score just by applying for the credit.

If you have an overdraft already in place its worth having a meeting with your bank manager keeping them informed of your plans for the future. We as a business put it into our routine to have a meeting every six months. As a company did this recently not only did the bank provide us with a larger overdraft than we had originally asked for, but as we had built up a good credit score, and were considered low risk to them they reduced the interest rate voluntarily by half for a much larger credit facility. It is definitely worth staying in touch with your bank manager.

Your own operational processes within the business. If you are giving credit to customers, make sure you are keeping on top of chasing the debt. Keeping your cash inflows at regular intervals this means to a bank that you are very active and have good controls in place, making you low risk to them. Next time youre reading your bank statement take a look and check not only the value of the cash inflows but the number of transactions. Frequent transaction is gold dust to a bank you are demonstrating large activity.

The cash outflows, if you are using an overdraft be sure to come out of the overdraft and into positive at least once a month. And never go over the overdraft. You will be penalised badly by the bank for doing so and can even have a much needed resource taken away. Remember an overdraft is very short term, it can be recalled and cancelled at anytime. I hope you find this article useful and use it a planning tool for your future, both personal and professional.

This blog is intended for information purposes only and is only advice from past experience, you may have other suggestions of your own. It is not intended to be used to make all of your business decisions but as a guide only.

For anyone who is looking at taking on a an employee in the next 12 months, then this article is just for you.

There is a good budget at the moment with assistance with wages for both apprenticeships and graduate schemes.

ACT Training is providing training and assistance to young people aged 16 - 24 years.  Take a look at their website on /www.acttraining.org.uk/apprenticeships-2

Paying £100 towards wages on a full time placement for the first six months, followed by £50 per week for the next six months.  There is also funding for training available.  Take a look at this website its got some useful information the helpline is good too.

Jobs Growth Wales again is offering placements for six months, paying the national minimum wages for the first six months.

website is wales.gov.uk/topics/educationandskills/skillsandtraining/jobsgrowthwales/?lang=en

Lastly the graduate scheme at Go Wales.  I recently attended their 10 year anniversary event, this organisation is actively seeking employment for students.  There are two schemes in place the placement scheme where the student stays with you for a six month placement and Go Wales supports the wages bill.  

Or you can have the taster sessions where the student get a small taster of your business which is great for if you have a project in mind to be finished, or are unsure whether you can employ a person.   The taster sessions are normally free of payment.

www.gowales.co.uk/en/employer

Think of this article as taking a look into the future and growing your business, you are also giving a young person the opportunity that you once had.  So go on what are you waiting for?

Thanks Nicola

I have recently been on a seminar for auto enrolment the new pension scheme which is affecting large companies now, but is being rolled out to all employers and employees over the next couple of years.

The timeline which keeps changing is

Small companies particularly

30-49 employees August 2015 to October 2015

Less than 30 employees January 2016 to April 2017

For your own specific deadline dates, go into the following link And put in your PAYE reference number.

http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/employers/tools/staging-date.aspx

I know these dates look so far away but they will be here before you know it, a letter will arrive on your doorstep one year before your staging date. You have a year to act, but as you can imagine just like Real Time Information if everybody applies for a pension scheme at the same time, which you and many thousands of companies will be doing. You could find yourself in the middle of a queuing system that could take you past the deadline date.

The financial advisors we use have told us that a pension scheme of this nature can take up to six months to be set up, so you really do have to be reactive and deal with it straight away.

This is not going to be like the stakeholder schemes there was no real policing of it and no real fine system. The government are very serious about this and will be issuing fines, one off fines of £400 and daily fines depending on your size of business of more than £50 per day rising to £10,000 per day for the larger companies.

We have a pension black hole which has been put off for many years, now is the time to fill the gap, this system is compulsory and to opt out is going to be very difficult. There some very serious rules that go with it. One of which is to not discourage members of staff to stay opted in. Heavy fines and prison sentences have been communicated more than £1,000 fixed penalty up to £5,000 for the larger companies not complying.

Each and every employer be it large or small, unlimited or limited companies will have to set up their own pension scheme that is compliant with the governments rulings. You can set it up yourself but it is advisable to use a financial advisor. Costs of which do vary.

You are able to set up these schemes ready for the deadline date now, and not have it go live until the deadline timings, worth knowing if you want to plan ahead.

There are some people who are exempt which are self employed with no staff, directors and some low paid earners, but you need to check the criteria nearer the time as this could change by the time 2017 comes along.

There are currently staged percentages for schemes already in place, rising to 5% for employees and 3% for employers by October 2018.

There will need to be changes to contracts of employment for every employee to take into account these new changes too.

I am sure it is not the best news to be hearing when times are still tough for a lot of people, but forewarned is better than not knowing at all.

Be prepared and plan for it in your budgets, you need to be thinking about how you will pay for it, be it pay freeze, increasing prices, or absorbing it into your normal overheads.

The full details are on page

http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/employers/planning-for-automatic-enrolment.aspx

This blog is intended for information purposes only and is only advice from past experience, you may have other suggestions of your own. It is not intended to be used to make all of your business decisions but as a guide only.

You might think this is an odd article for an accountant to put together. But in fact its very relevant as without marketing your business there are either no or limited sales in your business, which will have a financial impact on your future.

As part of our development of our own company I have been spending time with marketing experts, and reading up on marketing techniques to build up knowledge of this very tricky area of business.

Im sure that an expert on marketing will also have more to say about the subject than I am covering, but thought I would share some of the marketing tips that have helped us develop.

Point 1

The Mission Statement

This is basically your reason for being in business in the first place. This is about goal setting. If you want to be the biggest social enterprise in the country, then put it in your mission.

Ours is ‘Supporting Your Business Growth’

We not only prepare financial accounts, we also work with a number of businesses in developing their companies into businesses that sustain active growth.

What is your mission?

Point 2

What Business Am I In?

If you don’t know what you do, it’s going to be difficult to tell anybody else about your amazing idea.

Think about this very carefully put together a 30 second spoken script to point out the benefits of someone buying from you.

Unique Selling Point, why are you different, why should I buy from you?

You are now a walking talking advert for your business everything you do from now on with have an impact on it.

Point 3

Who Is My Target Market?

Whenever a business first starts up, there is always the impression that the services or product will suit everybody. Unfortunately quite often that is not the case. You need to tailor your marketing to that chosen market, to enable you to sell better to them. You will need to do market research, feedback forms can help with this. By asking your customers questions about what you’re doing you can develop this further.

Point 4

What Is Marketing Budget?

The majority of businesses have a very limited budget for marketing and have to do a lot of leg work themselves, and choose as much free marketing as possible.

Examples of marketing possibilities

Door to door

Leaflets

Brochures

Networking

Website

Sign writing a vehicle

Paid advertising online (pay per click)

Magazines

Newspapers

Referral Schemes

Social Media

Whatever your chosen marketing strategy, there is not one thing that will be enough to market your business you will need to spend a great deal of time doing a variety of any of the above. There is no quick answer to this as everything takes time to develop, marketing is no exception.

Point 5

Self Sacrifice

With anything you want to develop and grow there is a point when you need to nurture. Certainly if you have a limited marketing budget, there is a real possibility that in order to grow your business you will need to sacrifice salary to increase your marketing budget, and allow your business to develop into something much bigger than if you had left things as they were. This may need to be done from time to time too, every business runs in stages, and when you reach your limits to that stage, you have to feed it again with investment.

Point 6

How Do I Manage Working And Marketing?

You’ve now got your customer base but it’s not quite enough to make a living, or you’re looking to grow the business, but time is of limited availability now. As a business owner you need to be putting in a minimum of 30% of your time to marketing and looking for the next prospect. The risk of not doing so means that when you have done the work directly in front of you, and you will then see gaps in your diary, or cashflow, which then with limited time needs to be filled quickly, or you’re on stop.

If you have employees, then you need to be delegating their time to working and you need to concentrate as much as possible to marketing your business. I am never without my business cards, as conversations can happen in the oddest circumstances. Pass your cards to friends and family who’s to say they can’t do a little promoting on your behalf too. Consider outsourcing. We use a company for our marketing strategy and our website, they have proved to be imperative to our business development and have also freed up my time immensely.

Point 7

Tracking Leads And Conversions

As soon as you start marketing your business you need to know where every lead is coming from, and to also track your percentage sales conversions from those initial leads. Your marketing budget is very precious so don’t waste it by not tracking, and making sure that your money is spent on advertising that works.

Point 8

Have Fun

Marketing is not a chore have fun with it, let your customers see your personality.

As the saying goes ‘People Buy From People’. So let them see who you really are, it might surprise you and take you to where you want to be.

Happy Marketing!!

This blog is intended for information purposes only and is only advice from past experience, you may have other suggestions of your own. It is not intended to be used to make all of your business decisions but as a guide only.