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Claire's Growing Pains

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…

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Adding Value to your Proposals - The Rules of Engagement

We are presenting a webinar in partnership with Practice Ignition on Friday 27th May at 1.30-2.30pm.

In this webinar, hosted by Practice Ignition, we will show you the HOW TO’s of automating your client engagement process and how you are missing out on easy revenue by doing it the old way.

We will also go into detail around how menu pricing has become the new norm and how you can convert your existing services to fixed or value based fees.

Make sure you stay to the end where we will be sharing valu…

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7 Apps That Will Increase Your Productivity

As bookkeepers, we’re always looking to systemise our work, and do the same in 30 minutes as it used to take us an hour to do.  Here is a round-up of some of my favourite apps for productivity and organisation.

 

17Hats

This is a fantastic all round CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and workflow software.  With just a little time setting this up it’ll handle all of your quotes, invoices, contact details, workflows and much more.

www.17hats.com $29/month

 

Trello

Sometimes you don’t need anything a…

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All Things To All People

My children are like most children. I want to give them interests and develop their social skills so that when the time comes, I know they can go out into the world and stand on their own two feet. I want to know that they'll have confidence to interact with others, and will have learned skills through their various extra curricular activities.

You know the stuff. Swimming on a Monday, football on a Tuesday, Cubs on a Thursday, badminton on a Saturday. Recently I've been wondering if, in my desir…

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Software Prices Comparison

We all know that most of the accounting software providers give discounts if you sign up as a partner to encourage you to offer that software to your clients. Whilst these prices may be mentioned on company’s websites it can be hard to find out what the discounts actually are. I guess this is because if Joe Public could see these prices they would want to know why they can’t get them direct. For bookkeepers however, it can be frustrating when you are trying to figure out what software solution i…

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The Dangers of Fixating on Small Issues

On 28th December 1978, United Airlines flight 173 took off from John F Kennedy International Airport in New York, making its way to Portland International Airport in Oregon.  It made a scheduled stop in Denver, Colorado before flying on towards Portland.

The flight crew on that day consisted of Captain McBroom, first officer Beebe, and flight engineer Mendenhall. Captain Malburn McBoom was a hugely experienced pilot.  One of the most senior pilots with United Airlines.  He had clocked up some 27,…

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Why Regional Meetings?

Our members are the heart and soul of The Bookkeepers Alliance. We understand that our members want to build relationships and network with other bookkeepers, both in their own locality and further afield. Our goal is to provide as many opportunities, over a variety of mediums, as possible to facilitate this.

Much of the work we do it online, but as The Bookkeepers Alliance grows we appreciate that there will be more of a need for face to face networking opportunities. To this end, we have dev…

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The Autumn Statement 2016 and what it means for Payroll

Chancellor Phillip Hammond delivered his first Autumn statement on Wednesday, here are some of the key points for payroll

Its good news for workers aged 25 and over as Chancellor Phillip Hammond announced the National Living wage will rise 4% from £7.20 to £7.50 effective from April 2017. The rise will represent a 30p per hour increase on the current National Living Wage.

The Personal income tax allowance is set to rise to £11,500 from the current rate of £11,000 with a further increase to £12,5…

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New salary sacrifice rules...

The new rules on salary sacrifice are coming into play on 6th April 2017 are you up to date on the changes? Here is a quick overview of what to expect,

Salary sacrifice for pension, Direct employer contracted childcare, Cycle to work, childcare vouchers, workplace nurseries and cars with emissions below 75g CO2 / km will all remain unaffected and employees will still continue to benefit.

Some of the benefits that you will see an impact on are Cars, Mobile phones, Workplace parking and white goods.…

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The 7 Deadly Sins of Auto-Enrolment

  1. Lastminute.com 
With over 1 million small businesses yet to reach their Auto-Enrolment staging date, it is essential to plan early.  Leaving it too late will not only create unnecessary time pressures but will increase the costs and could lead to a fine!  Unfortunately, 1 in 5 businesses now miss their staging date completely and as a result over 26,000 Compliance Notices have already been issued by the Pensions Regulator.
  1. Auto-Enrolment has very little to do with Pensions!
Although Auto…

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