by admin | Feb 1, 2016 | Accounting, Advisory, Amaranthine, Enterprise, Finance, Professional
Careful readers of our blog will have noticed, among the various important updates on topics such as security, budgets, and happy Christmases, an emerging theme has begun to … errm … emerge. In an earlier post (HERE), we picked up the gauntlet thrown down by our professional counterparts at KPMG and explained why Aiteo Consulting must be the accounting firm you are looking for. It’s definitely worth a read, and not simply because the Guardian Small Business Network described it as a ‘masterclass in blog writing’. @AiteoConsulting A masterclass in blog writing, well done! — GuardianSmallBiz (@GdnSmallBiz) October 23, 2015 In a follow-up post (HERE), which we can now designate as the second of a slowly developing trilogy, we introduced to you the idea of getting value for money out of your accountant – a task many find slightly more difficult than getting blood out of a stone. Your accountant should play the role of your finance director and should be central to your business. But what does that mean in practice? And if you hire us, how would we do it? So we come to the final step, and here’s hoping that, unlike the slightly more famous Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, we don’t actually end up with five instalments. So let’s talk about value. Value means different things to different people (diffr’n’t strokes for diffr’n’t folks and all that). And in order to deliver you a service that you value, we need first to work out together what you’re looking for and tailor our service accordingly. In order to do this effectively and efficiently, there is...
by admin | Jan 15, 2016 | Accounting, Advisory, Enterprise, Finance, Fugacious, Professional, Uncategorised
Confirmation of 2016 Member in Practice status from the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants....
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 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 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...
