by admin | Dec 22, 2015 | Accounting, Advisory, Enterprise, Finance, Fugacious, Professional
Whether you’re a customer, a partner, a supporter… …or one of those pesky spam bots that continually disrupts our Google Analytics… or even just someone we exchanged business cards with at Tesco… …may we wish you a very happy Christmas and a productive New Year! I heard the bells on Christmas Day Their old, familiar carols play, And wild and sweet The words repeat Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Till ringing, singing on its way, The world revolved from night to day, A voice, a chime, A chant sublime Of peace on earth, good-will to men! Then from each black, accursed mouth The cannon thundered in the South, And with the sound The carols drowned Of peace on earth, good-will to men! It was as if an earthquake rent The hearth-stones of a continent, And made forlorn The households born Of peace on earth, good-will to men! And in despair I bowed my head; “There is no peace on earth,” I said; “For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!” Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: “God is not dead, nor doth He sleep; The Wrong shall fail, The Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men.” ― Henry Wadsworth...
by admin | Nov 26, 2015 | Advisory, Enterprise, Fugacious, Professional
With the dust settling on the first Autumn Statement to feature a quotation from Chairman Mao’s little red book, practitioners and laypeople alike have been scouring George’s blue book for elephant traps. Here’s our take: Working Tax Credits – public finances ride to the rescue The OBR has forecast an improved position in the public finances, giving the government the wiggle room it needs to drop its widely unwelcome plans to bring in an early phase-out of Working Tax Credits. WTCs will be replaced in due course by the Universal Credit anyway so the Chancellor’s previous master stroke of phasing them out has been replaced by an even bigger master stroke of dropping the whole plan. A lucky Chancellor indeed. Boom! A big hit for big business Big business will pay the cost of an ‘Apprenticeship Levy’. The Treasury’s blue book suggest that the take from this will be a whopping round £3bn rounded up. To put that in perspective, that’s a whole 7% of the existing Corporation Tax take. But this is not a tax rise. Oh no. It’s a LEVY. (We hope you can see the difference too.) In the round, the levy will apply to larger firms with an annual payroll of greater than c. £3m. But as with other stealth taxes we think big business will take a little while to come to terms with the stomach punch they’ve received. Woah! A near thing for small businesses There is a complete muddle at the moment between the intersection of travel & subsistence rules, intermediary legislation, employment status and close company rules on dividends. From the Treasury’s populist perspective, tax avoiders are hiding...
by admin | Nov 19, 2015 | Advisory, Amaranthine, Enterprise, Uncategorised
We recently attended a crowdfunding seminar hosted by Startup Direct and Paul Grant of the Funding Game. Simon, our Business Development Manager, was sent to make copious notes. So here’s his take on the Five Points of Calvinism. Err, sorry. Crowdfunding. Point 1: TALK Spend your time in this pre-prep phase generating contacts and talking to possible investors and buyers. This will serve two purposes: Your potential investors will feel more involved and in sync with your idea and vision. Then, when the time comes, they will be more likely to invest because this is their project, too. You’ll get a second opinion on your product or service. You may be working on false pre-suppositions about your target market and what they want. This will help you to find out more about the problem you are addressing. Point 2: UNITE This is where your real preparation takes place. You must drum up the promises you got from Point 1 and unite this into a sizeable committed line even before you launch your crowdfunding campaign. Your should have at least 40% of the funding for your round pledged before you begin your campaign. This will give your pitch more credibility when you launch because so many people have already chosen to invest in your idea. Point 3: LURE Reel ’em in! Use your campaign design to lure the remaining 60%, and never skimp on the work you put in before the campaign. A few things to keep in mind: Your message should be clear and simple, should have a summary of where you are, where you are going and what you need...
by admin | Nov 5, 2015 | Accounting, Advisory, Amaranthine, Enterprise, Finance
In a recent post (HERE) we looked at a Guardian Small Business article on choosing your accountant, and explained why Aiteo Consulting simply must have been in the author’s mind as she wrote. Now, if there is any truth to the chorus of complaint which often follows the words ‘I tried to speak to my accountant and…’, we might have to admit that in most minds, value and accounting services go together like blood and stones. So a recent article, published in the same august organ (HERE – if you must – but do wait until the end if you can), begins to grapple with the thorny question of getting value for money from your accounting services. Now, before launching into our analysis, we would like to say this. When a major accounting firm launches a new nationwide service targeted to small business, and the Head of the aforesaid service manages to write a clear problem statement for a national daily without it in any way coming across as an advertorial, we can only applaud. If you do look carefully, you’ll see that the author is indeed Head of Small Business Accounting for … well you can read the article to find out. After all they haven’t paid us to advertise on here! Credit where it’s due though, and we believe the article represents an excellent contribution to the debate about value. So let’s take a look at some of these themes. Entrepreneurs often pitch their businesses without knowing basic financial information. To be fair, an evening in watching Dragons’ Den wouldn’t be half as much fun without the...
by admin | Oct 30, 2015 | Accounting, Fugacious
Aiteo Consulting presented and interviewed at @HiredGrad speed networking on 29 November at Cass Business School. Great to meet a lot of enthusiastic students and present with exciting companies such as @seedcamp, @6_tribes and @restorationp....
by admin | Oct 21, 2015 | Accounting, Advisory, Amaranthine, Enterprise, Finance
There have been a couple of great articles published in the Guardian’s Small Business Pages. So let’s look at the first one, which gives a few pointers on choosing an accountant for your small business. “Where’s the link?”, we hear you say. Well HERE it is, if you really must click right now, but we know everyone in life is busy, especially you, so we’ve extracted all of the questions the Guardian thinks you need to ask and listed them below. And, just to make things really easy, we’ve given you our answers before you’ve even asked. And as you’ll see, we like this article a lot. You could be forgiven for imagining that only our professional ethical standards prevented us from slipping the author a fiver to write it. Why? Well let’s see. Q. Are they regulated by a professional body? YES – we are. Aiteo Consulting is an accredited Member in Practice of the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA), the world’s largest and leading professional body of management accountants. CIMA has more than 227,000 members and students in 179 countries, all of whom work at the heart of business. CIMA also has very strong relationships with employers and sponsors leading research. And through CIMA’s joint venture with the American Institute of Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), we also hold the globally recognised designation of Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA). By the way, CLICK HERE for the public record. Q. Do they have PI cover? YES – and we’d be surprised if an accountant was operating without it, to be honest. Q. Can they act as your business partner? YES – and this is exactly...
