Once your business is up and running, all manner of tasks and challenges will appear and you may quickly find that you simply do not have enough hours in the day. Cash may be tight in the early days and your time is valuable. Many business owners fall into the trap of thinking that in the early days, business may be slow and they might as well use as much of their own time as possible to do the chores and administration.
Well, there is an adage in business that the owner should work ON the business rather than IN the business. This means sticking at what you are good at and getting help – either through employees, or from advisers – to do the non-core work whilst you oversee and run things.
As accountants the main day-to-day services which we can help with are as follows:
- Book-keeping: helping to set up an efficient but effective financial recordkeeping system. We can either advise on the setting-up of the records or you can use us to provide an outsourced book-keeping system for you.
- Payroll: if you run as a company and need to pay yourself a salary, or you employ others to work in your business, you will need a payroll system to pay wages weekly or monthly. We can do this efficiently at a price which won’t break the bank allowing you to get on with running the business rather than trying to learn a new skill which is highly specialised.
- VAT returns: if your business income grows to be more than the VAT threshold you may have to register for VAT and keep records which reflect the VAT in transactions and there will be quarterly returns to be prepared and filed with HMRC. This is a specialist area and one which can be costly in terms of penalties if done incorrectly.
- Company secretarial: if you choose to run your business as a limited company this brings protection from some financial threats but this comes with obligations such as filing annual statements and keeping records of statutory matters. With new data protection legislation now enacted the consequences of getting this wrong can be costly. We provide a fully outsourced service to provide this for you.
- Accounts: as a minimum the business will need annual accounts in order to determine the level of profits made on which tax is payable. We can help with this and can also provide more proactive help by preparing monthly or quarterly accounts and financial reports to provide you as business owner with the necessary information to make decisions.
- Taxation: as qualified specialists in all aspects of taxation this is certainly an area where we would advise all of our clients to leave it to the experts. Complying with tax legislation and procedure is becoming ever more complex and there is a whole array of penalties and interest which HMRC can and will impose if things are not done correctly.
As well as the above core services your accountant is the best all-round professional to call upon for any commercial or business query. It is always best to keep your accountant informed of anything you are thinking of doing or changing. A quick call to us could save you a lot of time and money.
Contact us today on 01246 276671 and we can talk to you personally about your ideas for running and growing your business successfully.
