General

HMRC run regular webinars around the most asked questions by bookkeepers and other tax professionals.  They have helpfully provided us with a list of forthcoming sessions to share with you.

Capital Allowances and Vehicles

This meeting mainly covers the special rules for cars and vans. This is a popular subject so we are running two meetings.

Wednesday 18 January 11am to midday Register now for this meeting

Wednesday 18 January 1pm to 2pm Register now for this meeting

Basis Periods

This meeting will lo…

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Are you looking to develop your own bookkeeping practice in 2017?

Would …

I am often asked by my clients, many of whom are bookkeepers and accountants, why it is important to have tailored letters of engagement with their clients. Letters of engagement are the written contracts between bookkeepers and accountants and their clients to provide their services to their clients.

Why have a contract at all?

This is a question that is asked time and time again, and one I think should be addressed before we move onto the issue of why bookkeepers and accountants should have tai…

Many bookkeepers will want to help their small and micro payroll clients through the automatic enrolment (AE) process. If your client employs at least one member of staff then they will have AE duties to perform. If an employer has eligible jobholders they must act to enrol them into a qualifying AE pension scheme at the staging date.

If an employer has non-eligible or entitled workers, then the employer does not have to set up a pension scheme. Both non-eligible jobholders and entitled workers …

I have spoken to many bookkeepers over the years who would like to charge their clients a fixed monthly fee but are filled with fear.  I hope this short post will help you put those fears you feel to one side and look seriously at how charging a fixed fee could help your business to grow.

Most fears tend to come from a single area.  Bookkeepers fear that they will end up providing far more services than the client pays for.

Charging clients a fixed monthly fee is a fantastic way to:

• Earn more m…

One of questions I get asked most often is ‘How do I come up with a fixed price?’  When a bookkeeper, like yourself, stops selling their time and start selling their expertise this is the biggest hurdle they will face.  How do you remain competitive and avoid working for nothing.

One of the easiest ways to devise a fixed price, while still retaining the link to time, is to work out how long it takes you, on average, to deal with a client’s transaction.  You should include in this calculation the …

When you set up your own bookkeeping practice it is vitally important to get to grips with just who your ideal client is.  This will be determined a lot by how you want to work, onsite or offsite, hourly or fixed rates, locally or remote and loads of other questions you need to answer first.

If you don’t know who you are marketing your services to, it will be really difficult to find them, and very expensive.  You’ll end up with the scattergun approach which will leave you trying to be everything…

http://youtu.be/EpHbwGRhf4A

Watching this dog chase it's own tail is pretty funny....admit it. We all know that no matter how fast the dog goes, or how hard he tries he can never win, but...

we do it all the time

Hours are wasted every day chasing our tails with pointless tasks in our business.  We will then sit and wonder why we never get anywhere.  But why do we do it?  The answer is not as complicated as it seems.  We do it....

For the same reason as the dog above

We think that it's the right thin…

If you’ve watched some of my webinars, or read my blogs on fixed prices you’ll know that one of the things I talk a lot about is systemising your services.  But what do I mean?

By systemising your services I really mean creating a rulebook, it’s your game after all.  Not just the rules about how you do your bookkeeping but how you run your business.  If you’re anything like I used to be all of these rules are in your head right now.  But maybe like me, you forget some from time to time, or ignore…

Today we caught up with Kate Brown who runs the successful Stenson Office Services in Derby.  Kate had a varied career before becoming a bookkeepers with roles as diverse as working for Harrods and the British Army.  After gaining invaluable experience of small business finance within a construction firm, she set up her bookkeeping business in Derby four years ago.  She is a member of the Institute of Certified Bookkeepers and when she's not busy helping business owners with their finance she ca…