Management Consultants often say that if you employ someone who is good in a crisis, get rid of them, or you'll always have a crisis. The thing is that most businesses always have a crisis somewhere, and it's actually quite handy to have a way to deal with them. The best way to do this is to accept that they happen and make a plan.

Here is a new idea for handling crises. Become a Fire fighter.

Accounting for Success

Accountancy isn’t just about taking a carrier bag full of receipts to your accountant once a year, and receiving a large bill and a tax demand – or at least it shouldn’t be anyway.

Keeping proper financial records and controls is vital, not only for the continued success of your business but also to keep you out of trouble with the tax man, and in the case of a limited company, with Companies House.

Accounts don’t have to be difficult or complicated but they do have to be done with care and accuracy and they need to be complete. You can use everything from a simple notebook to a computerised accounts system to keep your accounts.

The thing to remember is that the more well-organised your records are during the year, the less it will cost you at the end of the year. If you arrive at your accountants with that carrier bag bursting with receipts, it will cost you more than if you send a set of computer generated accounts and a data file on a memory stick.

Accounting isn’t just restricted to records about what you owe and are owed, though obviously that is very important information.  A good accounts system starts even before you start your business with financial planning. A well thought out Budget and Cash Flow forecast can be loaded into a computerised accounts system so that you can measure actual activity against planned activity.

Even if you don’t have a computerised system, the headings that you use in your budget can help you work out how to record your income and expenses so that you can still do comparisons.

Once your business is up and running, you will be ordering and receiving goods and paying for them. You will be making things and selling them. You will be delivering services and billing them. You may have staff to pay, you may only have cash sales or you might sell on Credit. You might issue cash register receipts, or you might need formal invoices. If you sell on Credit, not everyone will pay on time and you will want to know who is late so you can send them a reminder.

You will also want to know whether or not you are making a profit and whether you have any money in the bank. You might also have stock and you will want to know how much and what its value is.

All of the above and more form part of a good accounting system and the knowledge this will provide will enable you to manage your business.

At this point, you are probably thinking “How on earth am I going to find the time to do all that as well as Selling and all the other things I have to do?”

Well, that’s where we can help. Your Office – Virtually can design and implement a system to suit your business needs and the help you manage it. We can do this in several ways:

Full Management Service – we do everything and provide you with information and advice
Partial Management Service – you do some things and we do others

Design and Implement only – We design and implement the system, train you and your team then provide support and guidance.

Give us a call today and find out what we can do to help your business fly and comply! 01472- 360865

Where to start? Give yourself the best helping hand in setting up your business and let YOV sort out the 'red tape'.

We can construct a business plan, register with HMRC, set up a book-keeping system, even purchase a limited company and provide templates for invoices, quotations, sales and purchase orders.

Think of it a business starter pack! There is very little guidance on how to achieve all of these steps and in which order to perform them all.

Did you know that it is unlawful to pay yourself a dividend unless you have the profits to do so?  It isn't to do with cash. You can allocate a dividend and not have the cash to pay it - that isn't unlawful. What you can't do is agree to pay yourself dividends when there are no after tax profits to cover them

So, you've decided to start your own business.

It's a momentous decision – how did you reach it?

Is it something you always wanted to do and have been planning for months if not years?

Or does it seem like the only way you can earn a living?

Are you in regular, relatively secure employment?

Or are you out of work with dwindling financial resources?

Or is your situation some variation of or combination of the above?

Wherever you are, take a couple of minutes to complete this check-list. Once you've answered every question, Click the DONE button. If something isn't applicable, Select N/R

[MADBLANKS GOES HERE]

These questions tackle some fairly fundamental issues about what sort of person you are and what you think running your own business is all about.

If you answered YES to Question 14, you probably aren't going to enjoy running your own business whatever your answers are to the other questions.

If you answered NO to all the Questions except 14, and YES to 14 you definitely shouldn't give up the day job if you have one, and if you don't, consider finding one immediately. To go it alone in this state would be insanity.

If you answered NO to Question 14 but NO to some of the other Questions; you need to get out there and turn all those NO's to YES's, except for 14 of course. What you will learn from the process will be worth its weight in gold.

You might think that Questions 9-12 aren't show-stoppers....but this is a mistake. Premises aren't always easy to find – especially when you need them. Ignore the rules and regulations and you could face ruin. Are all your neighbours friendly, or could one of them make your life hell? Do you understand what a limited company really is and your responsibilities as a Director? Don't leave things like this to chance.

If you don't know where to start and want to talk through how to turn the NO's into YES's, give us a call on 01472-697410. You get the first hour FREE and if we don't know the answer to something, we know someone who does!

Did you know that people were keeping accounts 7,000 years ago – maybe even before that. The earliest accounting records were found in Iraq and were made by the Sumerian's. They occupied a region that is now Northern Iraq around 5000 BC and were highly sophisticated.

They used a script called cuneiform pressed into wet clay which was then baked in the sun. Many of the clay tablets have survived and historians were hoping they would contain the Sumerian equivalent of a Jackie Collins novel. But when they were translated, they were found to be accounting records. People were recording how many jars of wine and cattle they had even then.