Communication is at the heart of what we do. You may be surprised that many accountants are not great at communicating. We frequently hear stories about the broken relationship business owners have with their accountants and the root of this relationship break down is poor communication. They say that assumption is the mother of [...]
It’s 4am and you are having a nightmare. In it, you find yourself running down a long dark tunnel. You can’t see your hand in front of your face but you are trying to get moving. You feel this pressure to go forward as fast as you can, but you are conscious that, at [...]
Holiday season is over, traffic is back to normal and we are all back to reality. Holidays are a great time to reflect on your life and assess if things are working out as you had planned. I for one spent a few hours on holiday trying to assess things from a different point [...]
If you are considering a move to Xero, but are researching the other possibilities, then this post will help you. These days, the first decision when deciding on bookkeeping software is Cloud vs Desktop. So let’s start with Desktop There are many good desktop software products out there that will probably work for your business. [...]
I have serious mixed feelings about the upcoming referendum. I have listened to all the arguments, read the booklet that No. 10 kindly sent me and perused the various websites and while I am leaning one way, I am for the most part undecided. I can't help have an instant distrust of the fear mongering [...]
A recent story in the Kent Messenger caught my eye. It was the tale of Tim Hale, the boss of a Maidstone based business, who returned from holiday to find his company's finance department had sent £20,000 to a scammer! It turns out, whilst he was away, his finance department received an email, supposedly from [...]
Running a loss making business is easy, anyone can do it. Running a profitable business is much harder. In order to make sure your business is profitable, you need to take care of several key areas. Ensuring each of these areas are profitable will help the business to be profitable. CUSTOMERS & JOBS Ensuring that [...]
You know how the saying goes... You can't please all of the people all of the time... Sometimes, even with all the best intentions in the world, you are going to let someone down and make a mistake. Most of the time, people are understanding; we are all human after all. Often it’s not the [...]
One of things I find most annoying, is when I take on a new client and they tell me that their accountant has recommended that they use an excel sheet for their bookkeeping. Don’t get me wrong I love spreadsheets. If I didn’t, they would probably throw me out of the institute of chartered accountants. [...]
The most consistently ignored bit of advice I have given, over the last fifteen years, is to people about to go into business together and that is to get a partnership/shareholder agreement in place before they commit to a new venture. I can understand why they ignore it firstly, there is a cost involved and [...]
