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Welcome To Our January 09 Edition!
Greetings!
Happy New Year!
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The SME Loan Plan
With the unveiling of the £20bn loan guarantee plan, one really wonders how many small business' who were really cash trapped in 2008 , would have survived to benefit from this fund.
With many companies making losses, and the possibility that a large number of SMEs will still not be availed funding unless further underwriting is considered , Alan Duncan does have a point in thinking 'too little, too late, too complicated...'
Without doubt, the provision of funding for working capital is a much needed contribution, its just how many businesses will it help and to what extent? Lets hope that this plan will have much more impact that the VAT cut did.
If you would like to discuss ways of improving your working capital situation, e-FM might be able to help ,so call for a no-obligation meeting on 01582 516300
In this month's newsletter, we will try to address several issues that may affect the running of your business in 2009
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Late Filing Penalties Increase In February.
Filing penalties for companies that file their tax, VAT or Companies House accounts late are due to increase in February 2009.
Apart from the actual fee increasing, the minimum delay period has reduced from 3 months to 1 month. The implication of this is that companies have to be more cautious about the quality of their accounts before submission. Ideally, if a set of accounts sent to Companies House had signatures missing, they would be sent back to the company for amendment. Now, with this new change, the likelihood of missing the deadline when resubmitting corrected accounts is increased. This of course, will happen with other types of errors which may be found in incorrect accounts.
To make matters worse for defaulting companies , the penalties double if accounts are filed late in two successive years for companies with their financial year beginning on or after the 6th of April. This is applicable even if the accounts are only a day late.
One way to avoid paying penalties is to schedule reminders for deadlines well ahead of the due date. You might also want to inform your accountants of these dates and the need to prepare the accounts in time.
Penalties may be as high as £7,500 for defaulting companies; double that if late filing occurs in 2 consecutive financial years. This is a time we all want to save money, especially in controllable circumstances.
Wishing you the best this year!
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Cash Management Systems Limited (CMS) has engaged e-FM in the North West to provide a Finance Director and Accounting support package.
CMS is the UK's Premier Banking & Cash Management Consultancy and Software Provider, managing over £60m of cash every day for clients. For major retailers, they reduce annual costs of CIT, Banking and Merchant Acquiring by millions of pounds - all bottom line savings. Over the last 5 years alone, they have achieved bottom line banking cost reductions of £100 million for clients. Clients have included Exxon Mobil, Marks and Spencer, McDonald's, Tesco and Travelex amongst many other blue chip firms.
e-FM has been able to provide a part-time, more cost-effective solution to CMS' financial management than the previous full time employee model; in addition to also achieving improvements to reporting and financial management structures to support the business' growth in these difficult times.
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Cradle To Grave Masterclass
(The Employment Life Cycle) Part 1
 So many laws support, interrelate, or even contradict one another, that it is extremely difficult to understand and hang onto the basic principles in recruiting and managing people.
Astonishingly, employment law has developed and allowed the people in Britain today to have at least six rights which they could pursue to the Employment Tribunal before they are an employee, or even before have been interviewed! Those six are to be joined by others in the not too distant future. The existing six are concerned with discrimination on the grounds of age, race, sex, disability, trade union and (Northern Ireland only at present), religion/political opinion or persuasion. Therefore adverts should not contain any element, referring to these areas, which is directly or indirectly discriminatory.
But more of the law later. Why are you advertising? Recruitment advertising is usually for one of two purposes, to replace leavers or to increase numbers (presumably to cope with growth/increased production). It should only be done at the end of the thought process chain; it should not be that leavers are automatically replaced, like with like. Questions need to be asked first starting with, perhaps, why are they leaving and could something be done to persuade them to stay?
If they do leave - do you need to replace? Could the work be divided amongst a number of other employees thus saving costs. If some hours still need to be replaced (even all of them), is the replacement of a full-timer with a full-timer the best thing to do? Would two 20 hour, or four 10 hour workers, be more flexible and economic (especially if you can keep them below the income tax, NI, employer's contribution threshold). Should you consider outsourcing? Does this leaver offer the opportunity of re-structure, re-engineer working methods and system without problems of staff resistance?
Having explored these areas, then thorough checking and updating of the job description to ensure it is still relevant is required next. For contracts with service providers, referrals and testimonials are very important tools.
Part 2 of this article will be available in our next newsletter. If further information is required about employment law, kindly contact Matthew Travis of the Peninsula Business Services on 01618279915. For further information about meeting your short term financial management needs/accountancy services, kindly contact Gary Jesson on 01582 516300. |
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