When you are busy and know you have money coming in it can be tempting to avoid the question: Is my business truly making a profit? You start a business with a purpose in mind and achieving that requires profit whether the aim is to support your family through to changing the world. Often the purpose is undermined because the business owner does not know enough about how to create the profits they need.
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Each business will have a set of company values and a company culture that is adhered to by the majority of their employees. It’s important as the boss and the business owner to set these values and culture as they need to go hand in hand with your business brand and image. Although these are internal matters, it helps your employees stay in tune with your business brand. For example, if you are preaching gender equality, your company values and culture need to reflect and support that.
A company retreat can seem like a pre-paid vacation to some and yet another work obligation to others. Companies today are recognising more and more that company retreats are highly valuable for the morale and overall productivity of their employees. At the same time, companies that have never run a retreat before may not be entirely sure where to start.
Readers Question: I do fostering and am classed as self-employed and I have an accountant that deals with my accounts and also my personal allowances with the tax office. I am thinking of running a property business – buy to let and set up a limited company. Will I need a different accountant to deal with my small business company hence 2 accountants?
History has a habit of looking unfavourably towards individuals and corporations who don’t hold up to the scrutiny of modern morality. This is evidenced by the demonisation of all slave traders, colonisers and sexual exploiters of history, who often were simply doing what was ‘perfectly legal’ in their period of history.
It’s fair to say that cruelty-free is having its moment. From animal welfare and non-animal testing to veganism, increasing numbers of people are demanding transparency from businesses in terms of their practices.
Most small business owners will have heard of Making Tax Digital (MTD), but what exactly is it and what does it mean for your business? It’s been a hot topic in the world of finance and accounting since the government announced its plans in the spring 2015 budget. There’s no shortage of information and tax advice relating to MTD, and in fact, it can feel like there is an overwhelming amount. For those of us who aren’t financial experts, it can be confusing and hard to understand exactly what the obligations of small business owners will be under the new rules.
In the latest survey carried out by Instantprint, it was found that the East Midlands, Leicester topped the list of places for millennials to start a business. The research took into account what is important to millennials, their core values and the challenges they face when it comes to starting a business.
PPC, or Pay-Per-Click, is an extremely valuable advertising technique that is especially cost-effective and streamlined making it most useful for small businesses. As a small business owner, you are, naturally, always searching for ways to cut back on costs whilst remaining highly competitive. Being able to guarantee a sort of success with your advertising campaign can be one way to do just that.
The prospect of quitting your day job and becoming your own boss can be very appealing and is the most common reason for venturing into franchising. If you are considering taking this step yourself, there are, however, several things you should be aware of right from the start. Although it may not seem that way, the decision to buy a franchise can quickly be regretted, if you don’t realise the challenges and nuances it entails, since underestimating them can have severe future consequences.
Every eCommerce brand has a goal to increase traffic and grow revenue. It can be incredibly frustrating when the campaigns you painstakingly develop start pushing more leads to your eCommerce store but fail to generate the expected sales.
It is time for the Government to address the destructive impact of late payments on the UK’s small businesses says Inna Kaushan the co-founder of Solna.
Migrating to a new eCommerce platform is widely considered to be a costly and time-consuming practice that carries a significant level of risk when not carefully managed. It’s that fear of what could potentially go wrong—like lost sales or taking a hit to organic search rank—that hold merchants back from switching eCommerce platforms.
Many business owners still feel that investing in workplace safety will have a negative impact on productivity and finances. But the truth is, a safe workplace is often a more productive and profitable one! The work environment can have either a negative or positive effect on the quality and quantity of work that employees produce. It can either promote a place that invites employees to want to be there, or it can be a place that they cannot wait to leave at the end of the day.
Readers Question: I have a trading company with a high level of retained earnings. Rather than liquidate, I am thinking of taking £500k in dividends (grossed up to £555k) and then making a donation to the charity of say £500k (adjustable for tax efficiency), which would extend my basic rate band by £625k. Am I correct in thinking that this combination of dividend and charitable donation is a tax efficient way of charitable giving, in the sense that I would avoid the higher rate dividend taxes?
Often when you read advice online about the best ways to undertake consumer research and where to look for insights, suggestions hinge heavily on paid tools. But if you’re working with a small budget from the get-go, being advised to add several monthly subscriptions to your overheads probably isn’t feasible.
Look, we’ve been there. You’re focused on delivering a project. Then another. Then something enormous comes along and takes up your time. Before you know it, the year’s up. And then it suddenly hits you that you’ve got a self-assessment return to file, and you’ve got absolutely no idea where to start.
Giving back to the community and giving to charities has become a core part of most small business culture. From the Federation of Small Business (FSB), a ‘Small Business, Big Heart’ was published highlighting the ‘giving back’ attitude of small businesses in the UK. It is, therefore, the time for the Government to deliver on the National Insurance Contributions manifesto promise (NIC’s), which consisted of a year holiday from the NIC’s for small businesses.
The reason why you started your business is because you want it to be an empire. Simply put, you want it to become one of the most successful enterprises around. Your dream is to dine with renowned entrepreneurs in the globe or appear in the next issue of Forbes Magazine as one of the wealthiest people in your country or the world. However, to earn all this, you need first to encourage your employees to be the best version of themselves. You need to enhance their productivity so that you cannot only make them happy but also more efficient in their jobs. But how do you do this?
It is not about how much money you have, but how you spend your money. Funnelling vast amounts of money into failing marketing strategies won’t improve your company’s revenue streams. Sometimes the most effective marketing solutions aren’t the most expensive ones, but the most creative ones. Managing the costs of each and every activity during a marketing campaign can be quite difficult, especially if you don’t have a detailed plan on how your marketing budget should be spent.
