by | May 13, 2013 · 11:13 am

5 Reasons Why Your Business Should Have a Budget

5 Reasons Why Every Business Should Have a BudgetAs a small business owner do you have a budget for the next twelve months and if not why not?

  • It doesn’t have to be complicated. A simple budget is easy to put together and if you have been trading for a while you can use last year’s accounts as a guide.
  • By comparing your actual results to your budget as you go along you can quickly identify potential problems and take prompt action.
  • Having this simple management information will make you feel more in control of your business and will give you confidence when making financial decisions.
  • If you need to renegotiate your overdraft with the bank they will be impressed if they see that you have some decent management information.
  • The more you study the financial performance of your business the more scope you will see for measuring different aspects of it. In turn this will allow you to manage your business more effectively.

Westbury accountants can advise on all aspects of management accounting including the preparation of budgets and forecasts.

Nicola Pearson – Partner

Westbury Accountants and Business Advisors is an accountancy practice based in London. Westbury have been providing Accounting and Tax solutions to small and medium sized businesses since 1936. Talk to the team at Westbury on 0207 253 7272 or visit http://www.westbury.co.uk.

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by | May 7, 2013 · 10:11 am

What is a Service Charge Audit and when do you need one?

service charge auditMost property investors have heard of service charges and service charge audits, but do you know what they are?

Any property where there is a lease will likely have service charges. Service charges are the common costs of operating a building which are then recovered from the tenants. These include reasonable costs such as maintenance, repair and replacement of fabric, plant, and equipment and materials necessary for the property’s operation. This is for both residential properties and commercial properties.

The relationship between landlord and tenant is governed by the lease, and this lease will specify what expenses can be recovered from tenant. It is also this lease that will determine whether the accounts prepared summarising the expenditure and recoverability need to be certified/audited by an accountant.

In many cases landlords appoint an accountant to certify expenditure regardless of the requirement in the lease to add credibility to the amounts demanded from the tenants.

This is a very basic overview but service charges and service charge audits can be quite complex and generally require specialist attention.

One of our very long-standing specialist fields at Westbury is service charge accounts and service charge audits.  Do contact us if you would like further information on this service.

Sonal Thakkar – Supervisor

Westbury Accountants and Business Advisors is an accountancy practice based in London. Westbury have been providing Accounting and Tax solutions to small and medium sized businesses since 1936. Talk to the team at Westbury on 0207 253 7272 or visit http://www.westbury.co.uk.

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by | May 2, 2013 · 10:10 am

Donations Made Simple – A New Way To Support Charities

Our sister company, Made Simple Group, celebrated the launch of their new service, Donations Made Simple yesterday.  This service is aimed at Charities who want to leverage the power of the crowd to raise funds.

Donations Made Simple is a new way of supporting charities to raise awareness and vital funds, this innovative service blends the power of the crowd and the opportunity to easily share and amplify messages via social media. It’s a fun, simple – online charity prize draw.

Howard Graham – Founder of Made Simple Group – and Director of Donations Made Simple says…

“Given that donating to charities online is growing in popularity our model provides a way for charities to harness the power of social media and online sharing to fundraise – whilst providing a fun, simple and engaging way for people to donate to charity online.

The lure of a ‘prize draw’ – has always engaged us. From school raffle tickets through to the National Lottery – there’s no doubt about it – we’re keen to spend a few pounds to potentially win a big prize. The concept of a ‘Charity Prize Draw’ is a tried and tested one – with Donations Made Simple – we’re taking that concept online – and enabling people to share and amplify the noise via social media.

A key part of the Donations Made Simple process is that when you buy a ticket, not only are you donating to a worthy cause, but you are also in with a chance to scoop the prize. It’s win, win. And with this, our very first prize draw with Get Connected – 100% of the funds raised will be going direct to Get Connected.”

How Donations Made Simple works   It’s a very simple process.

  • The prize draw is created in collaboration with a charity – and a ‘Ticket Target’ (predetermined number of tickets that need to be sold to ensure the prize draw goes ahead) is set.
  • Prize draw tickets then go on sale – £5 for 5 tickets – and are promoted via the charity’s databases and via social media activity.
  • People buying tickets (ie: making a donation) are encouraged to share the campaign with their contacts via social media platforms and email too – to ensure that the Ticket Target is met.
  • Once the Ticket Target is met – the prize draw goes ahead – a winner scoops the prize and the charity receives funds. Simple!

To find out more, visit Donations Made Simple.

Grant Pierrus

Westbury Accountants and Business Advisors is an accountancy practice based in London. Westbury have been providing Accounting and Tax solutions to small and medium sized businesses since 1936. Talk to the team at Westbury on 0207 253 7272 or visit http://www.westbury.co.uk.

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by | April 29, 2013 · 11:09 am

Tax Avoidance in the Caribbean

tax avoidance caribbeanYet another data leak has recently exposed the identities of thousands of people with funds in the British Virgin Islands (“BVI”) and the sheer volume of information that has been released is astounding.  The leak, we are  told, was more than 160 times larger than the US State Department cables published by WikiLeaks in 2010 and contained years of financial information about BVI private incorporation agencies and their offshoots in Singapore, Hong Kong and the Cook Islands.  There is, of course, nothing inherently wrong in keeping your money in any of these rather exotic locations, but one suspects that the principal attraction lies in their discretion.  Whilst a desire for privacy is entirely understandable, it is the desire for secrecy that is being questioned in the current climate and it’s not just tax authorities that are getting hot under the collar.  A British property developer was recently jailed for contempt for concealing assets in divorce proceedings, after apparently using a complex network of offshore companies to hide assets from his ex-wife.

As all this is going on, the UK has been busy negotiating agreements with the Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey to allow taxpayers with undisclosed assets there to come forward and make a clean breast of things to HM Revenue & Customs.  These follow on from the well-established disclosure facility with Liechtenstein and the more recent agreement with Switzerland.  However, some are questioning how the government can be doing all this on the one hand while on the other allowing jurisdictions like the BVI to continue as they do.  Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat peer and a former Treasury spokesman, said: “How can David Cameron keep a straight face calling for the G8 to make big business pay tax when we let the BVI use British law and British protection to suck in billions in dirty money?”  A fair point, well made, and I think this story has further to run as the information in the leak is disseminated to a wider audience in the coming months.

We await developments with interest!

Carl Barwick – Tax Manager

Westbury Accountants and Business Advisors is an accountancy practice based in London. Westbury have been providing Accounting and Tax solutions to small and medium sized businesses since 1936. Talk to the team at Westbury on 0207 253 7272 or visit http://www.westbury.co.uk.

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by | April 25, 2013 · 3:36 pm

Typing Shortcuts And Tips on Using Word

typing tipsFollowing on from our very successful blog post ”7 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts You Need to Know!“, we have a few more tips and shortcuts for you.

On the top right-hand corner of a Word document below the toolbars can be found an icon which, when you hover the mouse over it, reads; “View Ruler“. Clicking on this icon will produce rulers marked on the top and left-hand side of the document.  This ruler enables you to change margins and tabs manually.

Right-clicking in the document will give various options amongst which is the paragraph which will also allow you to change margins and tabs as well as alignment, which can be seen in the Paragraph section of the toolbar. With this you can justify, align to the right or left or centre your current text or parts of the document highlighted.

  • Ctrl + l Aligns the text to the left.
  • Ctrl + r Aligns the text to the right.
  • Ctrl + e Centres the words, sentence or paragraph, you’re currently typing.
  • Ctrl + j Justifies the text, i.e. evens the right and left margins and not literally justifying it, otherwise we might be in trouble.
  • Ctrl + k Insert Hyperlink box appears.
  • Ctrl + m Moves the line or paragraph you’re working on along to the next tab. If you highlight the document (Ctrl + a), then press Ctrl m, the whole document will move one tab along, giving a wider margin.
  • A double-click on one word highlights it.
  • A triple-click highlights the whole paragraph.
  • Ctrl + O opens the folders for you to choose which document to work on.
  • Ctrl + N gives a new blank page in another tab (i.e. you haven’t lost those documents you’re already in – they’re in other tabs at the foot.
  • Ctrl & Enter gives a new sheet below your document.
  • Ctrl + S saves your document.
  • Ctrl + W closes the document. You should then get a reminder to save your document.

Happy Typing!

Maureen Lock – Secretary

Westbury Accountants and Business Advisors is an accountancy practice based in London. Westbury have been providing Accounting and Tax solutions to small and medium sized businesses since 1936. Talk to the team at Westbury on 0207 253 7272 or visit http://www.westbury.co.uk.

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by | April 22, 2013 · 10:09 am

Could you benefit from the VAT flat rate scheme?

VAT-Flat-rate-schemeHMRC has a number of schemes to help small businesses save time and money when it comes to accounting for VAT.

If your business is VAT registered and has a turnover from taxable supplies of under £150,000 then you can apply to join the Flat Rate Scheme (FRS). A business must leave the scheme when turnover from all supplies exceeds £230,000.

How the FRS works

A business will issue sales invoices as normal with VAT at the appropriate rate. They then record this transaction as normal in their books and records.

However, for expenses the business no longer records the input VAT. All expenses should be recorded gross.

At the end of the quarter no reclaim is made for the input VAT, unless it relates to capital goods where the invoice total is over £2,000. Output VAT is accounted for by multiplying the VAT inclusive turnover for the quarter by the flat rate percentage that applies to your business as published by HMRC. You then pay this liability to HMRC and any surplus retained can be transferred to your profit and loss account as additional income.

The FRS would be disadvantageous for any businesses that normally find themselves with a net repayment from HMRC as they would not be recording input VAT and would therefore make no recovery of their input VAT.

Illustration:

Debbie, who runs her own travel agency issues a sales invoice for £1,200 pounds (inclusive of £200 VAT) and incurs an expense of £360 (inclusive of £60 VAT).

Under the normal rules Debbie has a VAT liability of £140.

As a travel agent, Debbie’s Flat Rate Scheme percentage is 10.5%. Therefore the VAT liability would be 10.5% of the VAT inclusive turnover which is £126.

The difference (£140 – £126) £14, Debbie would recognise as other income in her profit and loss account.

Before joining the FRS it is important to analyse your past records and seek professional advice so please contact us to see if we could help.

Jonathan Cohen – Audit Team

Westbury Accountants and Business Advisors is an accountancy practice based in London. Westbury have been providing Accounting and Tax solutions to small and medium sized businesses since 1936. Talk to the team at Westbury on 0207 253 7272; or visit http://www.westbury.co.uk.

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by | April 19, 2013 · 10:14 am

Four Reasons Why Age is No Barrier to Entrepreneurship

summlyA few weeks ago, it was reported that a 17-year-old IT whizz-kid had sold his ‘app’ business to Yahoo for a reported $30m.  This seemed to reinforce the view that it was the young technology-savvy who were the entrepreneurs of today.  But is this the really the case?

In an interesting article in the Financial Times in April, the journalist, Gillian Tett, pointed to studies which proved just the opposite.  Apparently a study in 2004 showed that during the 1990s the most common age grouping for entrepreneurs was 25-34.  But a more recent study showed that 34% of budding entrepreneurs were aged 35 to 44 and 29% between 45 and 54.  Only 18% were under 34.

But what is not too clear is the reasons for this.  So I suggest 4 possibile causes:

  1. Whilst the profile of the ‘model entrepreneur’ would seem to be someone with a fairly high level of tolerance to risk, typical of a younger more carefree person, perhaps those who start businesses when they are very young also fail quickly, and maybe the older take a more cautious approach and test their ideas more carefully ending up more successful because of it;
  2. It was found that quite a few entrepreneurs appeared to have tested out working in a larger environment before making the decision that they wanted to be on their own.  So they learned more corporate skills were more savvy about what is involved in running a business;
  3. Maybe the experience of working in the wider sector gave them exposure to many different types of businesses and helped them to generate and nurture their new entrepreneurial ideas.
  4. Perhaps having worked in other sectors gave them the confidence to go out on their own.

So maybe it is true that more new businesses are started by the young, but perhaps the latter have a higher rate of failure and the more successful entrepreneurs are those of more mature years.

If you are thinking about starting up, take a look at our Business Startup services.

Keith Graham – Managing Partner

Westbury Accountants and Business Advisors is an accountancy practice based in London. Westbury have been providing Accounting and Tax solutions to small and medium sized businesses since 1936. Talk to the team at Westbury on 0207 253 7272; or visit http://www.westbury.co.uk.

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