Business Advice
3 considerations for choosing a business partner
Too many small businesses start up as a partnership or company formed by friends or family without any real analysis of whether these are the people to make the company work. They may be nice people, good friends and enthusiastic but this is not enough to ensure the new business has a chance to make it. (However, if they are not even nice people and enthusiastic you may want to think twice anyway). There are 3 main considerations.
- Is this person experienced and skilled at an area actually needed by the business ? [Read More...]
Choosing business specialist suppliers for contractors
Businesses choose a number of different suppliers for a range of reasons, and the success of many small businesses may well rest on the decisions they make on using suppliers. Choosing a supplier on price alone is not always the best decision. For example, if your supplier is continually late this will have the knock on effect of making your product or service unreliable for your customers. So the business needs to look to use efficient suppliers. Also, there is a need to work with a selected and smallish group of suppliers so that the company’s business can be significant to them and put you in a position to negotiate good terms. On the other hand, relying on too few suppliers can leave the company vulnerable.
For some people working as freelancers or contractors instead of choosing to set themselves up as a limited company and deal with all the paperwork and administration that this entails choose to use umbrella companies as suppliers. In essence, umbrella companies act as an employer to contractors who are working under fixed term contracts. So instead of processing their own paperwork umbrella companies sort out tax and NI and the contractor is just responsible for submitting time sheets and expense claims, and then will be paid through their payroll system.
Business Finance
Zero-Based Budgeting ZBB
I was responsible for finance in a largish public sector organisation newly given financial independence. Until then over levels of budget were set at the organisational level and internally historical costs were used to chop up the budget to costs centres. On historical costs bases Department heads assumed they would get what they got the [...]
Can’t read the Balance Sheet figures ? Some questions to ask..
Here are some questions you may want to ask about balance sheet figures to show you understand the business Debtors – If this is a large amount you need to know who owes the money and whether there may be a problem of repayment. It there is a chance the debtor may default then this [...]
Business Law
Employment Law in your Business
The last thing that many small entrepreneurs think of when they have a great idea and set up their business is about the range of legal rights and protection that their future employees will be entitled to. Few small businesses have a HR Function. There used to be Personnel and now there are Human Resources, [...]
Two Employment Law Essentials for Business
In order to protect the rights of both employer and employee there are two areas of essential business documentation that all employers, however small, need to have. These are: Contracts with Terms and Conditions of Employment: All employees have to have these documents, signed by both employer and employee on, or within a short time [...]