Minerva Accountants Bristol and Somerset
Fully digital Xero accountants for consultants & service businesses
HMRC have a new voluntary repayments scheme for individuals and business to return any pandemic scheme money with no questions asked. The window is open until December 2025 so, if you think you may have claimed too much covid support, we encourage you to contact us or to repay it now.
You can make a voluntary repayment here before HMRC start using less comfortable tactics in the new year.
When I set up my first accountancy business one of my old school friends, now living in USA, told me that a visit to her accountant felt like a visit to her dentist. As I’m one of those people who is terrified of the dentist (in spite of never needing treatment) I was determined that my business would be nothing like that.
When we had offices I invested in a decent coffee machine and we ensured that clients could charge their phones while visiting.
When we used to provide monthly envelopes for clients to send in their invoices for bookkeeping I chose some that felt quite velvety (even though they were four times the price of the others) so that clients would have a bit of niceness.
We send welcome gifts of chocolates from a local business (obviously we had to sample them first!) and birthday cards by a local artist.
Now we are busy building an app for clients to calculate how much tax they need to save and how much is available for dividends.
What can you do to make your clients’ experience smoother?
Business confidence monitor
The Q3 ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor is here and shows the increased tax burden are holding back business and economic growth
Business entertaining is not allowed for VAT or Corporation/Income tax purposes.
The only exception is staff entertaining. I’ve written on this separately if you want the detail but it must be below £150 per person per year.
Customer and supplier entertaining are never allowable and this is one of the many adjustments that we make when we prepare your tax returns.
Pricing is often difficult when you first start your business, and you may well have based your initial prices on what your competitors charge. But you soon learn where you sit amongst the competition.
At Minerva Accountants we charge slightly higher than others and have testimonials from clients that we are ‘worth it’ as well as other success stories. They might just say that we’re easier to deal with or perhaps quantify it by saying that coaching has helped them save three years in growing their business. There are also the silent testimonials when clients return with a new business or refer others to us.
So where do you sit in the hierarchy of your competition?
And is that reflected in your prices?
In order to increase your prices, you may first need to raise your services to a higher level or, if you’re already ahead of your competitors, you may need to differentiate yourself more to your prospects. As accountants we’re often seen as offering the same commodity service as any other accountant. People think we just fill in tax forms once a year and keep them legal.
But we can do soooo much more.
We can spend time learning about the business and identifying where profits are being left on the table. We can help clients to pluck the low hanging fruit. Or build a ladder to harvest the higher rewards too. This is where we get most satisfaction and provide most value. When we move beyond hassle-free accounts to more profitable clients.
First, improve the value of your offering, then promote it widely.
How can you differentiate your yourself?
The rules are different for sole traders and for companies.
Generally sole traders can NOT claim for eating out. Eating is not ‘wholly, exclusively and necessarily for the purposes of business’ because it fulfils the dual purpose of keeping you alive!
Employees of limited companies can claim if the meal is wholly and exclusively for business purposes. If business reasons require them to be away from home/office around mealtimes (so that they are unable to make their usual arrangements) then it is a reasonable business expense.
The amount they can claim for a meal will be agreed with their employer but should not be overly lavish and I would suggest limiting alcohol to one drink with the meal.
Entertaining is generally not allowed (see other Tax Tips on staff entertaining) for tax or VAT purposes
It’s time to be the main character in your story. Step into the limelight and claim it for yourself and your business
I often talk about your team but it is also important that YOU are able to lead them well.
This means:
I’ve written all sorts of articles on how you can improve yourself in all these areas so you can either search the website for these, read my books, or invest some of your hard-earned cash and sign up for some business coaching to help you with any of these. (‘Do nothing’ is also a very comfortable option)
If you work from home because you have no other premises, then you can claim £6pw tax free use of home allowance as a contribution to your bills.
If you use a substantial part of your home for business, then it may be beneficial for the director to rent part of their home to the business. (As this is a commercial letting it is not applicable for the rent a room allowance)
You should have a rental licence between the director and the company showing the agreed rent and the hours available. The rent may be set at the level of the costs. This rent will reduce corporation tax for the business. The director will then show the rental income and costs on their income tax return. If the rent = costs, there will be no tax to pay. If income exceeds costs, then the director will pay income tax on the profit but there is no national insurance.
Costs that can be included are:
There may also be some relief for mortgage interest (but not repayments so do ensure that you split the monthly charge)
The costs should be apportioned across the available space by floor area or number of rooms (excluding kitchens and bathrooms). You can choose the most beneficial method, but you cannot keep changing it. In practice it is often simplest to allocate the household costs by the number of rooms.
If the room is used full time for business, then when you come to sell your home, you may have to pay capital gains tax on this portion of the property. In practice you will probably only use the room part time. If your spare room doubles as your office 5 days per week then 5/7 of the costs can be claimed to offset the rent from the business.
Reply to this email if you’d like a spreadsheet to calculate how much you can claim
Hope fully you managed some time off (or have a break lined up) from your business without too much hassle.
When I ran Hudson Business Accountants and Advisers, I remember coming back from a holiday to find that my team had onboarded 2 new clients from new enquiries and already completed the work for one of them.
It was a very strange feeling to realise that, even though I was the face of the business and the one responsible for business development, my team could function perfectly well without me. Yes, it was what I had aimed for but, like my kids growing up and leaving home, it took a bit of mental and emotional adjustment from me.
How great to take a relaxing holiday without interruption and not come back to a disaster.
It also increased the value of my business when I eventually sold it as the business was its own entity and could function to the same high standards without me.
If I can help you to achieve the same profitable, work-life balancing business then please reply to this email and we can book a call to discuss the options from free to freedom.
If you are a sole trader or landlord with (combined) income over £20,000 per year you need to take action now.
You need to be keeping digital records (eg Xero or Zoho Books), up to date bookkeeping, and making quarterly submissions from April 2026* onwards. This means that you will be trying to figure out the new regime at the same time as completing your 2025/26 tax return so we recommend getting your bookkeeping onto software and up to date NOW so that you can complete your 2025/26 tax return asap.
*For those over £50kpa. There is a staggered start for those earning less than this.
Apologies, I’ve forgotten where I first heard this description, but according to Wham, at Club Tropicana drinks are free!
And many businesses appear to be adopting the same model. We often do it ourselves.
We give away free books, free webinars, free speaking gigs, newsletters like this, blog posts, free discovery calls, etc. Because we don’t value our time enough.
So this week I’d like you to work out the time and cost of everything that you give away for free. And then compare it to the number of new clients that you have acquired in the last 12 months. What is your cost of acquisition per client? Or per £1 of turnover?
Most of this fails to convert, not because it isn’t useful, but because we’re targeting the wrong people (if they’re relying on your free stuff they’re probably ‘tyre-kickers’ and not likely to pay for your prime products/services) or because we’re too British about money and sales to give a clear ‘call to action’
So here is our big, fat CALL TO ACTION
Accountants and bookkeepers: go to our website and choose one of our courses or book some coaching (individual is the best value but we have group coaching for those on a budget)
Business owners: stop wishing for a better business and book yourself a Clarity Business Advice session where we can pull up your numbers, identify where you can improve profitability etc, and send you away with an action plan (and maybe book some coaching too)