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Bookkeeping, the task that most business owners hate, find painful, boring and time consuming.  In my experience, they try saving money getting it done by trying to manage it themselves, usually unsuccessfully, or they think their sisters, brothers, mothers, aunties or teenage children can do it rather than hiring a professional bookkeeper!  I believe that the reason for this is business owners see bookkeeping as processing receipts “data entry”. Where is the value in that?

This is becoming even …

1. Lastminute.com 

With over 1 million small businesses yet to reach their Auto-Enrolment staging date, it is essential to plan early.  Leaving it too late will not only create unnecessary time pressures but will increase the costs and could lead to a fine!  Unfortunately, 1 in 5 businesses now miss their staging date completely and as a result over 26,000 Compliance Notices have already been issued by the Pensions Regulator.

2. Auto-Enrolment has very little to do with Pensions!

Although Auto…

Chancellor Phillip Hammond delivered his first Autumn statement on Wednesday, here are some of the key points for payroll

Its good news for workers aged 25 and over as Chancellor Phillip Hammond announced the National Living wage will rise 4% from £7.20 to £7.50 effective from April 2017. The rise will represent a 30p per hour increase on the current National Living Wage.

The Personal income tax allowance is set to rise to £11,500 from the current rate of £11,000 with a further increase to £12,5…

Effective and clear communication is essential for maintaining a productive and harmonious work environment Here are 27 of the worst behaviours which cause communication to fail — and what you can do to prevent them from having a negative influence on your business. Bought to you by Clear Books.

1. Hiding information

Obviously, everyone doesn’t need to know everything, but if staff feel like a new bombshell is dropped on them every day, morale will decrease and, in turn, perhaps they’ll start …

The new rules on salary sacrifice are coming into play on 6th April 2017 are you up to date on the changes? Here is a quick overview of what to expect,

Salary sacrifice for pension, Direct employer contracted childcare, Cycle to work, childcare vouchers, workplace nurseries and cars with emissions below 75g CO2 / km will all remain unaffected and employees will still continue to benefit.

Some of the benefits that you will see an impact on are Cars, Mobile phones, Workplace parking and white goods.…

Are you worried that your website isn't doing its job? You see the visitors land on your page, but they never take up your offer of a free consultation? What's going wrong?

You know that if you could speak to to visitor you could explain what you do so much better than the words on your site. As bookkeepers we're great at converting people when we speak to them, and even more when we meet them face to face. So how do we do that?

First, you need to lose the free consultation offer. I've said i…

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Are you looking to develop your own bookkeeping practice in 2017?

Would …

HMRC run regular webinars around the most asked questions by bookkeepers and other tax professionals.  They have helpfully provided us with a list of forthcoming sessions to share with you.

Capital Allowances and Vehicles

This meeting mainly covers the special rules for cars and vans. This is a popular subject so we are running two meetings.

Wednesday 18 January 11am to midday Register now for this meeting

Wednesday 18 January 1pm to 2pm Register now for this meeting

Basis Periods

This meeting will lo…

I am often asked by my clients, many of whom are bookkeepers and accountants, why it is important to have tailored letters of engagement with their clients. Letters of engagement are the written contracts between bookkeepers and accountants and their clients to provide their services to their clients.

Why have a contract at all?

This is a question that is asked time and time again, and one I think should be addressed before we move onto the issue of why bookkeepers and accountants should have tai…

Many bookkeepers will want to help their small and micro payroll clients through the automatic enrolment (AE) process. If your client employs at least one member of staff then they will have AE duties to perform. If an employer has eligible jobholders they must act to enrol them into a qualifying AE pension scheme at the staging date.

If an employer has non-eligible or entitled workers, then the employer does not have to set up a pension scheme. Both non-eligible jobholders and entitled workers …