Just starting up a company? 5 financial

Just starting up a company? 5 financial admin steps to put behind you ASAP – http://bit.ly/rPbxas

New business for 2012? Win it now, the c

New business for 2012? Win it now, the clock is ticking – http://bit.ly/t5w0Qe

Hiring employee no. 1 is not an HR decis

Hiring employee no. 1 is not an HR decision, it’s a rite of passage. http://bit.ly/t2lXxm

5 ideas to ease the pain of #VAT http://

5 ideas to ease the pain of #VAT http://ow.ly/7a4Lj

#quickbooks training for people already

#quickbooks training for people already using it – the missing piece of a powerful jigsaw http://ow.ly/79roT

Exporting QuickBooks reports into Excel – 2min video tutorial

This blog introduces our Very QuickBooks video tutorial about exporting QuickBooks reports into Excel.

Reports in QuickBooks are very flexible and powerful, probably one of the top competitive advantages that the software gives its users.

But when you can export the reports you create into Excel, share them, graph them, PDF them etc. you take a quantum leap upwards in the benefits that QuickBooks reports can give you.

If you’re in London and your business would benefit from a half day of bespoke QuickBooks training that will improve your financial management, please call us on 020 7384 6800.

Michael

www.bluedotconsulting.co.uk

Don’t save the QuickBooks desktop – 3min video tutorial

This blog introduces our Very QuickBooks video tutorial entitled “Don’t save the desktop”.

Knowing which windows are open in QuickBooks is useful as it speeds up work. Equally, knowing how to close the windows, either manually or automatically when you close the program, is also very handy.

Have a look at our video tutorial and find out how it’s done. Learn a little about QuickBooks preferences and switching between single-user mode and multi-user mode as well.

If you’re in London and your business would benefit from a half day of bespoke QuickBooks training that will improve your financial management, please call us on 020 7384 6800.

Michael

www.bluedotconsulting.co.uk

Using top accounts and sub accounts in QuickBooks – 3min video tutorial

This blog introduces our Very QuickBooks video tutorial about using top accounts and sub accounts in QuickBooks and the impact they have on reports.

Top accounts and sub accounts are the tool to use to organise your Chart of Accounts exactly how you want it so that when you produce reports (particularly income & expenditure reports) in QuickBooks they convey the right information in an easy digestible way.

If you’re in London and your business would benefit from a half day of bespoke QuickBooks training that will improve your financial management, please call us on 020 7384 6800.

Michael

www.bluedotconsulting.co.uk

Filing forms at Companies House – a quick guide

If you are used to filing information with Companies House then you probably use the online tools that are available and it’s all very easy. However, if you only file information infrequently it doesn’t look so straight forward and the penalties regime can now make it expensive to miss deadlines.

If you run a private limited company there are two questions to address:

1. What needs to be filed?
2. How can filing be done?

What needs to be filed each year?

Annual accounts

Every year a company has to file its annual accounts and its Annual Return. We see many business owners assuming that they are the same thing, possibly because they sound similar. But they are different.

Your annual accounts comprise a Directors’ Report, Profit & Loss account, Balance Sheet and some explanatory notes. These need to be completed, approved by the directors and filed at Companies House within nine months of the year-end.

Small companies (typically those with sales below £6.5m, though there are other criteria) can file “abbreviated accounts” which do not include the Directors’ Report or the profit & Loss account and require fewer notes.

There is no charge for filing accounts and overwhelmingly most small companies file abbreviated accounts.

There are penalties for late filing, starting at £150 for being less than a month late and £375 for being less than three months late. File later still and the penalties rise to £1,500 and they are doubled if you are late two years in a row.

Annual Return

Officially known as form AR01 the Annual Return is a list of standing data including:

• Registered office
• Directors’ names
• Shareholders’ names

The Annual Return is drawn up at the same date each year, usually close to the anniversary of the company being formed and not necessarily bearing any relationship to the company’s year-end date.

Although there’s no fine or penalty for filing the Annual Return late, if Companies House don’t receive it in good time they will threaten to wind up your company if it is not filed soon.

The Annual Return has a filing fee of £14 if it’s filed online and this rises to £40 if it is submitted on paper!

Ad hoc filing of forms

The annual accounts and Annual Return are the two documents that must be filed every year.

However, there are other documents to be filed when important changes are made to a company. For example when directors are appointed or resign and if a company borrows money and there is a charge placed on its assets. There are also forms for changing your company’s name.

It’s important to keep up to date with your company’s filings, but how best to do it?

How can filing be done?

You can see which forms are available to be filed online and also get a list of the paper versions from the Companies House website. The paper versions usually exist as PDF files that you can fill in on your computer and print them for signing and posting.

However, as you can see from the different fees for filing Annual Returns, Companies House is encouraging companies to file online and this is the nub of a recent initiative from Companies House – the Protected Online Filing or PROOF service.

PROOF Service

Companies House offers its PROOF service as a way to file online and reduce the risk of fraud. If you sign up to PROOF certain forms can only be submitted online to stop fraudulently signed paper forms being submitted.

This is fine, but sometimes, especially where it’s important that a person is seen to have signed a form (in a dispute, for example) it might suit everyone that a physically signed form is completed, copied and submitted in the post.

I’m not sure what the take up of PROOF has been but I suspect that the lack of choice about how you file documents might put people off.

Online filing

The administration of filing a form online is that you need to obtain from Companies House a Security Code and an Authentication Code. Using these codes you can access the Companies House online filing system and file what you need to. Where you need to pay a fee you can do so by credit card or, like we do, open an account with Companies House, charge fees to the account and settle it once a month by direct debit.

Annual accounts filing

Provided your accounts have not been audited, you can file your annual accounts online via the Companies House website.

Nevertheless, it will usually be much, much simpler to ask your accountant to do it. Our accounts preparation software allows us to file clients’ accounts online once we have received the physically signed copy and the whole process is quick, clean and doesn’t allow room for data entry errors. It’s very much the path of least resistance.

Conclusion

If you have a company you will need to file documents at Companies House. That’s not going to change.

Try to do as much online as you can, not least because where there are fees (Annual Return or changing your company’s name) it’s cheaper. It’s also much quicker and gives a more professional impression of your company to anyone, such as a potential investor, doing a company search.

The Companies House people are incredibly helpful when you ring them, so if you find yourself needing further help with Companies House filing, why not give them a call on 0303 1234 500?

Michael

www.bluedotconsulting.co.uk

Health warning:

Our blog is intended to be a broad-brush look at a subject that offers insight and information to the reader. It is not a substitute for taking professional advice on an issue that is specific to your business.

Make profit your first cost

As uncertainty, doom and gloom begin to settle over the UK economy again, businesses will want to do everything they can to secure profitability. One way of thinking about your business that will help is to make profit your first cost.

The thought process is very simple and here is a recent example we gave to one of our clients in the retail sector:

Let’s say that sales in the next twelve months will be £750,000 and that the business achieves a 40% margin on its sales.

The gross profit from £750,000 of sales will be £300,000. This means that if they spend £300,000 on overheads there will be no profit.

However, if the owner of the business wants to make a profit before tax of £60,000 then pencil in £60,000 as the first overhead cost and then figure out how to spend only £240,000 on all of the other overheads such as staff, premises, marketing etc.

By budgeting on this basis your profit for the year is baked in to the process very early on and you have to take action, NOW, to control your other costs so that the profit you want will be yours, provided that you hit the sales and margin targets.

Most businesses in their budgeting process have profit as the final answer because they think about revenues and costs first – profit (or loss!) is the balancing figure at the end. It’s totally reliant on everything else.

By treating profit as your first cost you turn the normal thought process on its head and the costs, which you have most control over, become the variables to be addressed in order to achieve the profit you want.

Michael

www.bluedotconsulting.co.uk