Accounting & Bookkeeping
The last thing you want in your business is to have valuable time and resources tied up with routine bookkeeping and accounting.
That’s something we can do for you, either at your office or at ours.
We begin by discussing your specific requirements with you and then we set up appropriate accounting procedures and controls and ensure your accounts are kept fully up-to-date and in compliance with statutory regulations.
But we don’t stop there. We can also provide you with regular management accounts to keep you informed on essential areas such as:
- Cashflow
- Profitability
- Performance ratios
- Customer activity
- Credit control
- Budget comparisons
In addition, we can also relieve your staff of the burden of preparing:
- Payroll administration
- VAT returns
- Bank reconciliations
- Annual accounts
Call us today to discuss how we can help you keep your books in good order.
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Finance Business Partners
We believe in working with our clients rather than for the clients. For that reason, we consider ourselves as your finance business partners helping you to make financial decisions right for your business. We can assist you in key decisions about business growth and financial investment for the future. We begin by discussing your specific requirements with you and then we set up appropriate accounting procedures and controls and ensure your accounts are kept fully up-to-date and in compliance with statutory regulations.
But we don’t stop there. We can also provide you with industry leading financial management advice based on key financial analytics. Essential areas include:
- Cashflow and Profit & Loss Forecasting (Monthly/Quarterly)
- Budgeting (Creating a Yearly Financial Plan)
- Variance Analysis (Monthly/Quarterly)
- Key Performance Indicator’s (KPI’s) tailored to your business needs
- Monthly/Quarterly review meetings depending on requirements
- Customer Profitability Analysis
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Business Planning
Preparing a road map for your business
It is often said that, “Failing to plan is planning to fail.”
As a business owner you have no doubt been reminded on more than one occasion of the importance of business planning. And no doubt you agree that planning is important.
And yet probably you rarely seem to find the time to sit down and develop strategic plans but end up flying by the seat of your pants, trusting your intuitions and relying on snap judgments rather than adhering to a pre-arranged strategy.
Not that we would deprecate such intuitions. Experience has taught us that it is precisely this ‘sixth sense’ that many business owners and managers seem to possess that is the driving force behind entrepreneurship – and we have learned to take it seriously.
But the planning is important. Without sound analysis, clear projections, and well-thought out contingencies, businesses tend to become hostages to fortune.
Proactive management is replaced by reactive coping, and instead of following a well-thought-out plan, owners and managers are reduced to responding to unforeseen events or trying to catch up on missed opportunities.
Therefore, we encourage our clients to schedule regular planning sessions. We can help you:
- Formulate and implement long-term strategic goals
- Set concrete operational objectives
- Monitor performance and adjust plans accordingly
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Business Startup
Putting your new business venture on a strong footing
You want to start a business because you are an entrepreneur with a great idea and the vision to realize it.
And we’re here to help you do just that.
We want you to focus on what you do best – building your business – while we provide all the necessary background support.
Here are just a few of the ways we can help you get started:
- Preparing a comprehensive business plan
- Determining the best structure of your business: sole trader, partnership, limited liability partnership, or limited company
- Where appropriate, assisting with company formation and company secretarial duties
- Registering your new business with the HMRC
- Establishing relationships with banks, insurers, etc.
- Preparing cashflow projections and assessing finance needs
- Preparing and submitting finance applications
- General bookkeeping, VAT, and payroll duties
- Tax planning
- Management accounts
- Annual accounts and (where necessary) annual audit
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Company Secretarial
Assuring compliance with the Companies Act
The Companies Act requires companies to submit various documents within strict time limits. Not only is this a considerable administrative burden, failure to comply can result in potentially severe penalties for directors.
We can relieve you of both the burden and the worry by helping with your Company Secretarial duties. Our service includes:
- Preparing and filing accounts and confirmation statements
Maintaining statutory registers:
- Register of Allotments
- Register of Transfers
- Register of Members
- Register of Directors
- Register of Secretaries
- Register of Directors’ Interests
- Register of Mortgages and Charges
- Preparing and filing Companies House forms recording:
- Changes of officers
- Changes of registered office
- Increases in share capital
- Allotments of shares
- Changes of accounting reference date
- Preparing documentation for annual general meetings
- Acting as company secretary of your company (if required)
- Providing your company with a registered office address (if required)
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Company Finance
Finance is the lifeblood of any business. At every stage in its growth a business needs to maintain a balance between a positive cashflow and adequate working capital on the one hand and a reasonable return on investment on the other.
Directors’ drawings, shareholder dividends, and debt repayments need to be carefully orchestrated to ensure that the smooth running and continued growth of the business are not jeopardised.
Moreover, while proper provision needs to be made for possible external changes such as economic downturns or fluctuations in exchange rates or interest rates, and internal changes such as temporary or permanent loss of key employees, it is equally important that any finance raised by the business is made to work for the business.
All these matters require a keen, professional eye to develop and constantly adjust an appropriate and flexible finance structure for your company.
Then there are the special finance requirements for business expansion, mergers and acquisitions, MBOs, and MBIs. Preparing business plans and finance applications and identifying and approaching appropriate lending sources require expertise and professional insight if the best possible results are to be achieved.
Finally, there are the financial implications of ensuring a suitable exit route for the current business owners.
These are all matters on which our corporate finance experts are qualified to advise and guide your business.
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Company Recovery
Our approach to corporate recovery is summed up in the phrase, ‘Prevention is better than cure.’
The key to preventing business failure is to have the right controls in place to help identify areas of poor performance or early signs of distress in a business and to take appropriate remedial action if and when such signs appear.
Even where a business is in a relatively advanced state of distress, we still regard insolvency as a last resort and prefer to explore all possibilities of restructuring the business and setting it on a path to full recovery. Often this will involve refocusing on core business activities, introducing stringent cost controls, and setting clear profitability goals.
This approach, we believe, is in the best interests of all the stakeholders – shareholders, directors, managers, employees, customers, and suppliers.
If all else fails and the business must go into administration, receivership, or insolvency, we can advise and assist with this process and guide you through the financial, legal and regulatory implications of such a course of action.
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Corporate Tax Planning
We can conduct a full tax review of your business and determine the most efficient tax structure for you. Very often such reviews result in considerable tax savings, which show up as real improvements in your bottom line.
As with any other area of taxation, it is essential to be proactive and plan when dealing with corporation tax.
In this way you can:
- Minimise your corporation tax liabilities
- Make the most of any available reliefs, tax losses and deferment opportunities
- Ensure you meet all your CTSA deadlines and file your returns correctly, thereby avoiding any potential penalties
In addition to helping you with your corporate tax planning we can also represent you in any communication with the tax authorities.
Why take up valuable time and resources dealing with corporation tax when we can do it for you?
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Mergers & Acquisitions
If you are considering expanding your business through a merger or acquisition, we strongly recommend you seek appropriate professional advice and assistance to ensure your interests are best represented in any subsequent transaction.
Why not contact our M&A team? They can advise on and help with:
- Strategic planning to determine suitable acquisition criteria
- Identifying suitable candidates’ companies
- Conducting feasibility studies
- Developing a negotiating strategy
- Performing financial and operational due diligence
- Preparing the necessary financial projections
- Identifying potential finance sources
- Preparing and presenting finance applications
- Assisting with negotiations
- Assisting with post-acquisition integration
It is equally important to seek professional help and advice when disposing of a business.
We can help with valuing the assets, preparing the business for sale, finding suitable purchasers and negotiating the sale.
Above all, we can help you time the disposal to minimize your tax exposure.
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Payroll
Administering payroll is becoming increasingly burdensome for many businesses, taking more and more time and resources away from core business functions.
Fortunately, payroll can easily be separated from your other accounting activities and outsourced to a specialist agency such as our team of payroll professionals.
We can also set up an Employers’ Scheme with HMRC for you and we can advise you of whether employees should be added to the payroll or not and deal with the relevant forms/ submissions for you.
We can file all of your in-year and year-end returns for you with HMRC and provide you with P60s to distribute to your employees at the year end.
We offer a completely confidential and cost-effective service that includes:
- Starters and leavers
- Code number changes
- Customized and generic payslips
- Taxable benefits and P11Ds
- Company, personal, and stakeholder pension schemes
- Student loan recovery
- WFTC and DPTC
- SMP, SPP, SSP, and SAP
- Child maintenance orders
- Give as you earn
- Pay in lieu of notice redundancy
- Advice on tax and NIC payable
- Processing payments through BACS
- Dealing with employee enquiries
- Standard payroll reports
- Production of year-end P60s
- Preparation and electronic filing of forms
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
VAT
Value added tax is one of the most complex and onerous tax regimes imposed on business – so complex that many businesses inadvertently overpay or underpay VAT.
From April 2019, HMRC is introducing Making Tax Digital (MTD) as a part of its ongoing digitization program. This means it will become compulsory for all businesses with a turnover of over the current VAT threshold of £85,000 to maintain their VAT records digitally and submit VAT returns through MTD compatible software.
There is no impact on the frequency of returns nor the payment dates; this will remain unchanged. By April 2019 the software used must be MTD compatible and by April 2020 the software must be capable of exchanging data digitally with HMRC. Filing via the existing HMRC portal will no longer be permissible.
The ever widening scope of VAT, the constant stream of detailed changes to the regulations, and the ever growing demands of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) call for a trained professional eye to ensure that you do not fall foul of the regulations and do not pay the Exchequer more than you need to!
We provide an efficient cost-effective VAT service, which includes:
- Assistance with VAT registration
- Advice on VAT planning and administration
- Use of the most appropriate scheme
- VAT control and reconciliation
- Help with completing VAT returns
- Planning to minimize future problems with HMRC
- Negotiating with HMRC in disputes and representing you at VAT tribunals
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.
Making Tax Digital
Making Tax Digital for VAT requires VAT registered businesses with taxable turnover above the VAT registration threshold (£85,000) to keep records in digital form and file their VAT Returns using software.
It is increasingly common for business records and accounts to be kept digitally, in a software program on a computer or tablet, or in a smartphone application, or maintained through such a device and stored using a cloud-based application.
For more information view our Making Tax Digital page
Management Consultancy Services
The unprecedented internal and external challenges in the current business climate have revealed the Finance function capability needs to evolve to meet the modern-day organizational demands.
CFO’s and their teams need to move from ‘react mode’ to finding improvement opportunities and adding real value to the enterprise. The future agenda for finance is transforming to focus on how the finance organization enables enterprise value creation.
Working with CFOs, our team are providing insights and recommendations on people (behavior and culture), processes (efficiency and effectiveness), risk and systems and working with clients to deliver improvements.
We focus on assisting our clients with:
• Business Process Re-engineering and implementing internal controls
• Working with our partners to improve efficiency through implementing financial solutions
• Enhanced performance reporting and business steering capabilities
• Refocusing people to add value i.e. Business Partnering
Contact us today and receive your free initial consultation.