Business Support

• Do you know where you want to be in 10 years time?
• Do you know your personal and business goals?
• Does your business pay for your life, or run your life?
• Who is in control?

We spend time setting goals and ambitions with every client. They are so important to what you do and how you do it. If there are things you want, then we work out how much they will cost, and build a plan to pay for them.

By planning what you want you have the means to achieve your goals. A goal without a plan is just a dream – it will not happen unless you are lucky!

Our personal and business goals are typically interrelated – not always but they are for many people. Your earnings may be governed by how much you need. The extra holiday. Or private school fees. Higher income requirements mean smart planning to work out how you can achieve the extra income for least effort.

Goals change throughout your life, hence the need to revisit them annually. They may not change much, but any change needs to be included as soon as possible, to maximise the chance of it happening.

Cash is King! It is so important nowadays to consider cashflow – it is literally the life blood of our business. Yet most people ignore it completely. The balance in the bank may be important but cash flow management helps to tell you what the balance should be, so that when you compare it with the actual balance, what appears to be a healthy balance may actually be a problem (or visa versa).

Predicting cashflow can be notoriously difficult and time consuming, but modern accounting software and other add-ons are beginning to provide fantastic insight. We have been assisting with the development of one such product and can utilise it to see how you are getting on.

Every business should produce a budget every year, no matter how basic it may be. Budgets provide something to measure performance against, and help drive the business to achieve what you want it to achieve.

Research suggests businesses with budgets perform 15% to 25% better than those that do not. They seriously help you drive the business forward.

Budgets are often thought of as hard to prepare, but we can help you produce one in just a few hours, and summarise it on one page, so that it becomes an integral part of your business planning each year.

Businesses require business plans for a variety of reasons, and they can be found in a huge range of styles, from one page plans to thick volumes of analysis and paperwork.

The key point is that business plans should be living documents, with changes being made and adjustments as the journey takes place. Corrections for what has gone wrong, or well.

Few people will ever use a thick business plan once it has been prepared; it sits on the shelf gathering dust!

We prefer focused one page plans that can be stuck on the wall where you see them every day.

Your business plan may show you where you want to be in 10 years, in 2 years, and have the detail for the next 12 months. You could break the next 12 months down further, typically into 4 quarters or 90 day plans, give each quarter a theme, and then set out exactly what you are to do in that quarter to achieve you plan.

Occasionally formal business plans are necessary, particularly when raising finance, but they are changing, and requirements are changing.

We will spend time with you sorting out what sort of plan you need, who it is for, and how it can be put together effectively and efficiently.

The UK cycling team has out performed the competition in recent years by making loads of very small changes, which add up to a significant improvement.

We have a huge bank of small changes you can make to improve your business, and can tailor them to the ones that will make the most difference to your business.

We also have expertise in pricing, a key area in all businesses and one that is often ignored. Changing your pricing strategy can easily double your profits!

We also look at gross margins, as it is within the cost of producing goods or delivering services that often produces the best possible profit improvements.

Raising finance is changing rapidly. Our main high street banks do not lend in the way they used to, and they are often reluctant to lend without personal guarantees.

More and more finance is nowadays raised through on-line lenders, crowd funders, and other new organisations. They often link up to your accounts so that they can monitor financial performance, That way they can react quicker when things are not going as they should.

To some, warning signs may not simply mean a problem, but rather more support.

Modern lenders often need better financial information. Not just at the outset, in order to get the loan approved, but throughout the period of the loan. Cloud accounting and modern bookkeeping enable that to happen – quality bookkeeping with great financial reporting. Add real accountants who understand business to interpret the figures and give you insights, and you as a business owner can react quickly and smartly financial change.

Planning your exit is always difficult. And there are many options.

The most important advice is to keep your succession or exit plans under consideration every year, even if only a few minutes, as they must be planned for to maximise the benefits.

Tax is particularly important, as the optimum tax for buyers and sellers are usually opposite, and failure to realise the implications before negotiations start may make all the difference between little tax and a hefty tax bill.

Our favourite tool - Imagine we could compare your business with that of your competitors. Would that be of interest to you?

Well we can. We can compare your results with literally hundreds of similar businesses and look at 19 key criteria. Is your performance better worse or about the same as theirs? Using a traffic light system we highlight where they perform better, and we will work with you to get that improvement. After all, if most of your competitors do it better than you, you can improve. And it should be a relatively quick win – because they are already doing it!

We produce a comprehensive but clear report of these key areas for improvement.

Meetings with your accountant are treasure troves on value and useful information. We see so many businesses and so many great ideas, we can generally bring a few to each meeting with you. The more meetings we have the more we can help, which is what we want to do. Help you.

That is why we include an annual meeting with every client within our standard service offering.

Additional meetings are incredibly popular, and we know that hardly a meeting goes by when we cannot help with one thing or another. We can take away so many problems and solve them for you.

Regular meetings can be used to visit regular decisions within your business; to reassess your goals, long term and short term, to modify your strategy, to look at your best remuneration package, to begin preparing the business for sale. The list is endless.

Quarterly meetings is our most sought package. Some engage us monthly, particularly where we take on a more Finance Director role.