The Cyber Resilience Centre for the South West has a Home Office funded course and other support for you to secure your business.
Be a Joy Seeker
Marie Condo goes through homes clearing out anything that isn’t essential unless the client can honestly answer the question ‘Does this bring me joy?’
My suggestion is that we should do the same with our businesses. Weighing up profit and passion.
Some work we do because it is highly profitable but, if you’re like most business owners, there’s probably some work that barely breaks even. You can either stop doing it or find a way to do it more profitably, perhaps by automating it? This may be the nature of the work or the particular clients, so it is worth reviewing both each year.
Some work we do because we love it. Coaching is my passion, and I love seeing the result of my advice in clients reclaiming their work-life balance or taking holidays after making their businesses more profitable.
Ideally you would only do things that fall into both categories but sometimes they only manage one. Once you’re making enough money to cover your essentials I’d focus on your passion. If we do this, we will generally do a better job and be able to increase our fees.
If something is neither profitable nor enjoyable then you should stop providing that service or pass on that client. And you should carry out this review each year until you have a profitable business that you love.
Tax Tip – HMRC debt recovery
HMRC have long held the power to seize money from your bank accounts to recover tax debts over £1,000. They paused this during covid but last month HMRC announced that they would be resuming collections.
We therefore recommend that, if you have tax debts outstanding, you contact HMRC to organise a Time to Pay option. There are further details of how to contact HMRC here
If you cannot pay your tax bill on time: Setting up a payment plan – GOV.UK
This must be done by the tax payer and not their accountant.
Building a business can be as painful as walking on Lego
I read this somewhere last week and it is so true. Whilst there are great highs on the roller coaster of business there are also some real lows.
So what can you do?
When you identify a problem that is likely to recur in some form then it is worth spending time to make changes to prevent it. But sometimes the solution is not really obvious.
It may help to work through this with a coach, a colleague, or on your own by asking some simple questions
- What exactly is happening?
- When did this issue start?
- What is the impact?
- What changed recently that might have triggered this?
- Have we had a similar problem before? How did we resolve it?
- What outcome do I want to achieve?
- Is this realistic given any current constraints?
Here’s to using your Lego creatively instead of as an instrument of torture.
Business confidence monitor
The Q3 ICAEW Business Confidence Monitor is here and shows the increased tax burden are holding back business and economic growth
Tax Tip – Covid amnesty
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.
Accountant: therapist or dentist?
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
Tax Tip – Business entertaining
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.
Charge what you’re worth, not what your competitors are worth
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?
Tax Tip – Eating out
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
Main character energy
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:
- Looking after your own physical and mental health
- Having a clear direction
- Inspiring your team
- Providing yourself with the tools and skills that you need to execute your plan
- Promoting yourself as the face of your business
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)