General

This last week has been hell.  Leaving my office and setting up my desk at home seemed to flick a switch for me.

I was full of positivity and plans, and then depression set in.

I've been short-tempered, and falling out with everyone, including my mum.  

The future looked bleak.  I've been imagining the worst possible outcomes of everything and generally feeling that my work over the last ten years has been for nothing. 

Imposter syndrome has taken over and I feel like a fraud.  Two weeks ago…

Much of my business has been shaped by previous experiences in my working life.

My first role after leaving school taught me the absurdity of measuring time rather than results. I was an office junior at a local sawmill. I tended to arrive early, and as I was never a big tea or coffee drinker I often had no breaks other than my lunch, which I often cut short. I can still remember comments from the team about how quickly and accurately I worked.

I recall one day as I finished all my work, stand…

With the launch of the new dashboard, it looks like it'll be easier than ever to collect payments from clients.  Not just the monthly payments for your menu pricing plan, but one off payments for additional work too.

Here's a look at the video from GoCardless.

 

Bookkeeping, the task that most business owners hate, find painful, boring and time consuming.  In my experience, they try saving money getting it done by trying to manage it themselves, usually unsuccessfully, or they think their sisters, brothers, mothers, aunties or teenage children can do it rather than hiring a professional bookkeeper!  I believe that the reason for this is business owners see bookkeeping as processing receipts “data entry”. Where is the value in that?

This is becoming even …

Effective and clear communication is essential for maintaining a productive and harmonious work environment Here are 27 of the worst behaviours which cause communication to fail — and what you can do to prevent them from having a negative influence on your business. Bought to you by Clear Books.

1. Hiding information

Obviously, everyone doesn’t need to know everything, but if staff feel like a new bombshell is dropped on them every day, morale will decrease and, in turn, perhaps they’ll start …

A few weeks had passed since Claire had finished Stuart’s books.  She had expected to find her second client by now.  Surely someone had noticed all of those postcards she had put in the shops while out walking with Lucy?  Each day, while waiting for the phone to ring, Claire grew more and more worried.  Would she ever find another client?

Knowing that she would need to advertise, Claire called her local newspaper.  A small advert would cost her £80 a week.  It was quite a commitment for Claire, …

Claire felt an enormous excitement wash over her as she sat at her desk.  This was the first day of the rest of her life.  Having recently been made redundant, Claire decided that the time was right to start her own business.  She had been in finance for a number of years, and with a new baby, bookkeeping seemed like the right choice for her.  She could work from home around little Lucy, and the startup costs were low.

After only a few days, Claire had her first potential client.  It was a friend…

Blogging is a great way to take potential clients through the know, like and trust path. They can get a feel for not only you as a person, but also of your level of knowledge. It's a fantastic opportunity to show them that you're about more than just data entry.

One of the major problems of blogging is finding an appropriate image that wont break the bank. We've come to the rescue with 5 excellent sites of free photos. Most of these sites provide images that are totally free to use commercially, …

6 months on and Claire’s business was growing steadily.  She now had 7 regular clients all paying around £10 per hour.  Things seemed to be going pretty well, but having been so fixated with finding clients, she hadn’t really been keeping on top of her own bookkeeping.  As is so often the case, her own bookkeeping never paid so she would have to do it when she could fit it in.

Claire had kept the adverts running in the local paper, and with some other regular costs building up she decided that no…