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Uncategorized / 56 posts found

How an accountant supports your business development

by M Tombs
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As your accountant, we won't just look after the financial side of your business, we can also advise you on the strategic side of your company, including the importance of business development as vital part of your growth plan. Business development (BD) is what helps your company move from slow, organic growth to fast-paced, hypergrowth. And it’s only by putting the right drive and expertise behind your BD that you can turn your strategic ideas into real success stories. So, how can we help you achieve this? Talk to you about your strategic goals The starting point for any kind [...]

Remuneration strategy – Salary vs Dividends

by M Tombs
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As an owner-manager, your chief concern will be making your business profitable and building up cash reserves in the company. But you’ll also want to be able to extract funds from the business too – whether this is via a regular monthly salary, or ad-hoc dividend payments. Salary vs dividends is the most common split, but there are a number of different ways of extracting funds from your business, all of which can have different tax and capital impacts – both for you personally and for the company as a whole. Because of this, it’s important to have a clear [...]

Are employee parties tax-free?

by M Tombs
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Not sure if your annual staff function is tax-deductible? Come and talk to us. We’ll explain the rules and can help you claim against your company party costs.
An image of a laptop showing a virtual meeting.

Managing projects in a remote team

by M Tombs
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We’re living in a world where remote and hybrid working are now the norm. Driven by lockdowns and the pandemic, businesses have been forced to adopt a ‘working from home’ approach. And this ability to work remotely has driven productivity and efficiency for some companies but can create its own challenges. Designing your workflows for remote working When a whole team, or even a percentage of a team, are no longer sitting in the same office space, there are some very specific considerations to bear in mind. How do they access the systems they need? Where is all the company [...]

Are you using your time effectively?

by mike tombs
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I came across an interesting concept the other day called Deep Work. It’s not a new concept or anything, fundamentally it just means working in a more structured fashion instead of getting bogged down by phone calls, meetings, social media etc. We are living in the age of distraction after all. This concept can help a couple of groups of people: Firstly, for people who are easily distracted by technology and ‘busy-work’, it is a way of staying focussed on what you should be doing. This cuts out on some of those late hours caused by procrastination and the like. [...]

Looking for a little more work-life balance?

by mike tombs
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If, like many business owners, you find yourself working too many hours a day and too many days a week, the ideas below may help you get things back under control. Prioritise - Categorise the things on your do-to list so you can focus on the right things. You can best do this on a grid with urgency at the top, and important at the side. Urgent and important things should be considered for delegation, or think how to avoid them becoming urgent in the future. Urgent and unimportant things can be thrown in the bin. Working in the ‘important [...]

Teamwork Makes the Dream Work

by mike tombs
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A good team is made up of a diverse group of people, with a mixture of personalities, skills and expertise. When the time comes to take on a new person, it’s vital that you put some real thought into who you’re hiring and why. Before you take on a new team member: • Know what gaps need filling – spend some time working out what roles you need filling and how they fit in with your business plans (both now and in the future) • Be clear on what you need them to do – ensure that any new role [...]

What’s your perfect price?

by mike tombs
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Pricing is notoriously difficult. We tend to undervalue ourselves, which inevitably leads to under-pricing ourselves. Under-pricing yourself leaves you having to work harder and longer hours, to maintain the same profit margin. Instead of managing as many customers as we can cope with, why not consider working with fewer clients, who pay who more? That way you can provide an excellent service or product to people who appreciate what you have to offer, without having to scrabble around working all hours for a tiny profit margin. The golden rule is a 10% increase to your prices will increase your profit [...]

Are you lonely?

by mike tombs
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Running a business can be a very lonely lifestyle. You probably went into business for a whole host of good reasons, and with a clear understanding of the problems that running your own business can bring you. But you might not have considered the loneliness. Endlessly making decisions by yourself, holding the sole responsibility for the consequences of those decisions can wear people down. This is not a sign of weakness, it is merely a reflection of the difficult nature of running a business. Every decision that you make will have a ripple effect of consequences. For example, the pound [...]

Working from home?

by mike tombs
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We are often quizzed by clients who are contemplating working from home: what are the tax consequences? And in particular, will I have to pay capital gains tax?   Capital gains tax   Generally speaking, if your business use is limited to allocating space for a home office, then as long as there is duality of use, no capital gains tax complications should arise when you sell the property. Duality of use means that your home office: doubles as a spare bedroom, or a storage space for domestic items, or is a study or has a similar non-business as well [...]