Tag: business planning

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Tax tip

Furnished holiday lets 

Back on 6 March the Conservative Spring Budget announced the FHL (Furnished Holiday Lettings) scheme but failed to included it in the Finance Act. 

On 29 July the new Labour government confirmed that they would proceed with this by publishing a policy paper and draft legislation. This is still not law but likely to become so. The key points are: 

  • Withdrawing capital gains tax relief on gains from trading assets 
  • Withdrawing corporation tax capital allowances  and allowing replacement of domestic items relief 
  • Restricting finance charges and interest to basic rate of income tax 
  • No longer including FHL income when calculating relevant earnings for pension relief 

There is anti-forestalling legislation to prevent advance action between 6 March 2024 and the effective date on 2025. This means that it is probably too late to take any action to mitigate the tax impact but please talk to us if you are affected. 

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How does your price compare?

Compare to what?

How would you compare the price of a dress from Primark to one from Prada? How would you compare the cost of a smart phone to an old flip phone?

Business owners might try to compare accountants’ fees because they don’t understand that there are very different types of accountants with different expertise offering a variety of services in their ‘standard’ package.

So how can you differentiate yourself from your competitors?


• Testimonials from satisfied clients allow you to demonstrate your quality. Encourage your clients to leave Linked In testimonials or ask them if you can use the lovely thing they just said/wrote about you in your marketing.


• Case studies allow prospective clients to picture themselves working with you. We don’t just fill in those pesky forms known as tax returns. Think about how you help your clients and then ask them to help with a case study. We use Angela at PR the Write Way – Getting you the recognition you deserve to write these for us.


• Awards. This one is tricky for me as I can’t enter the awards that, as an established accountant, I’m often invited to judge.


• Net promoter score. What percentage of your existing clients would recommend you to others? When did you last ask them? (Whoops, we need to get this up to date)


• Niche. If you have a niche you should share content specific for this audience to demonstrate your expertise eg I coach all sorts of business owners but about half of them are accountants so I my content (and 2 of my 3 books) at them.

What other ways can you differentiate yourself from your competitors?

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What do you value?

Struggling to write this today as I hide in a café in the village while a house clearance company dispose of 14 years of my life.

But I’m a natural optimist (and the future is looking very good once I’ve waved goodbye to the memories here) so it’s easy to see the silver linings.

I’ve always believed that people are more important than things and so it was a no-brainer that I would choose to run my first business on just 25 hours per week so that I could spend time around my kids as they were growing up. I also worked from home until the team grew beyond 5 people and we had to take on external offices in the next town.

Working on limited hours meant that I soon became an acknowledged expert on how to run my business as efficiently as possible and it’s something that I love to share with accounts and business clients through coaching and courses. Which is how my second business was born.

Seeing my possessions go out of the door (some to new homes via a charity, and some to the dump) is hard but they are just objects compared to the family, friends, staff, and clients who ate around my dining table or shared their dreams in my offices.

What are your most precious memories? Does your business allow you to do what you want to do?

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Doing business on Deep Space 9 

I’m a bit of a scifi geek and I love the Quark character who owns the bar in Deep Space 9. He has some great business traits. And some bad ones! 

The good news is that Quark tracks his KPIs (on an hourly basis which is probably overkill!).  

In Season 2 Episode 10* Quark has enlisted a musician to draw more visitors to the bar BUT the musician is so good that nobody is actually drinking or buying food. He talks about his indicators which feed into his projections which in turn lead to profits.  

In one of my businesses I track speaking events because the more I speak, the more enquiries I get for coaching and courses. In another I track networking and ‘coffee’ meetings as relationship building leads to more referrals. 

What lead indicators do you track in your business that you know will lead to more profits in time? 

*in case you want an excuse to watch it  

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How I manage to run three businesses (and still sleep 8 hours a night!)

People often ask me how I manage to run three businesses.

It started 15 years ago when I set up Hudson Business Accountants and Advisers to fit around my small children in just 25 hours per week. There was a lot of juggling parenting and business responsibilities to get the balance I wanted. I sold this business for 32% above average as it was set up to run efficiently without me.

Roll forward a few years and those small children have now left home for university and I run three new businesses

  1. Minerva Accountants does what you might expect: accounts, tax, bookkeeping and business (not just tax) advice
  2. Minerva Technology is a small fintech startup
  3. Hudson Business Advice is mainly me speaking, writing, and coaching other accountants and business owners how to run their own business more efficiently and profitably.

So how do I do it?
• I employ people better than me
• I am happy to delegate to these and other experts and subcontractors
• I invest in technology (hence why I had an idea for the tech business!)
• I choose clients that are a good fit for our services and don’t try to service unsuitable clients.

How could you manage your business more efficiently and profitably?

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Should I be a limited company?

There are all sorts of reasons for incorporating and most of these are unchanged but two things have changed or are about to change.

1.Corporation tax increases combined with National Insurance reductions mean that the level and which it is tax efficient to incorporate have increased to around £100k* profits

2.At the moment small companies do not have to publish full accounts at Companies House. In future they will need to show their profit and loss account. This means that sensitive commercial and personal information will be in the public domain. For sole directors their salary will be available for anybody to see.

There may still be reasons, tax and otherwise, why business may choose to trade through a limited company so personal advice is more important than ever.

*This is a guide and the actual level still depends on individual circumstances.

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What is a Clarity review?

We try to encourage all our business clients to have regular Clarity reviews. These can be monthly, quarterly or annually depending on the size of the business.

  1. We connect their Xero or Quickbooks to Clarity HQ software which analyses 7 key indicators that reflect profitability, productivity, and value of the business.
  2. This shows where their business is NOW
  3. We discuss where they want to be on each of the 7 indicators in the next 12 months
  4. We come up with an action plan on how to get there
  5. We have regular check ins to help them work through their actions. This is where Della’s business experience and coaching come in
  6. We celebrate clients getting closer to their goals
  7. We repeat with enhanced goals

It’s all about constantly moving forward

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90 day planning

A lot of businesses don’t bother with a business plan because things change and they’re out of date almost as soon as they are written. 

I sympathise.  

Although I do like to have a 12 month budget to check that I have enough money to pay the team and to reinvest in the business we rely mainly on a 90 day planning cycle. Things are usually fairly predictable for the next 90 days so we get together as a team. It’s the only thing we try to do in person as we all work remotely the rest of the time. 

We loosely follow this agenda: 

  1. Review KPIs for last period
  2. Check actions from the previous meeting
  3. Discuss any issues and solutions
  4. I share my plans to move the business forward for the next 90 days and we all agree what needs to be done step by step, and by whom. 

After the meeting 

  1. My PA, Kate, emails me with a summary and the detailed action lists for each of us
  2. I add my actions to my to do list.
  3. If necessary I allocate slots in my diary.
  4. Kate works through all her actions (much more efficiently than me!) and gently reminds/nags me to get on with mine 

The result is that, over the next 90 days, we make a lot of progress. Even if we don’t quite get around to everything the business has moved forward a lot from last quarter.  

It’s like my running – CONSTANT FORWARD MOTION, no matter how slow. 

If you’d like a copy of our budget workbook you can purchase a copy here or drop me a line if you’re interested in group or individual coaching to improve your own business.  

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HMRC do not make the law

HMRC do not make the law, they interpret it in the same way that accountants and tax advisers do. If we can’t agree on the interpretation then the courts will decide. HMRC is not the final arbiter. 

HMRC have all sorts of helpful information on their website for the public to read. This means that it is often dumbed down and vital points can be missed in the interest of simplicity. This means that Google and ChatGPT can lead to ‘interesting’ ideas from clients on how they can save tax which ends up with me correcting them by quoting chapter and verse of whichever act is applicable.  

Our clients work hard so we don’t want them to pay any unnecessary taxes but we also want them to sleep at night knowing that they have complied with all laws and regulations. 

Too many accountants just rely on the HMRC website and forget to check the correct sources. Proper CPD is really important to maintain professional standards and to give the best advice. We should be better than Google!  

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Software efficiencies

When you started up your business you probably ran it using a spreadsheet or a Word document. But now you’ve filled your time and you’re trying to grow you need better to software to ensure that everything runs as efficiently as possible. Here are some things that I use in my businesses:

Marketing – I use Active Campaign as both my CRM (customer relationship management system) and to email things like this top tip to our clients and prospects. Active Campaign links to forms on our website and to our scorecards.

Process management – Minerva Accountants has lots of beautifully repeatable processes so we use Bright Manager (formerly Accountancy Manager) to manage those processes, client documents, file client emails (so anybody on the team can see all the communication), and automated reminders. My coaching and consultancy business has fewer repeatable processes but it is much smaller so I manage my to do list on Trello

Cash collections – as far as possible we use recurring monthly invoices on Xero and collect payments through direct debit using Gocardless. Any invoice on Xero is automatically fed to Gocardless and, when payment is made, the receipts are matched to the invoices on Xero. Clients can also pay by card using Stripe which also matches the invoices. These save hours of debt collection time and bookkeeping in a small business.

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