I was talking to a client recently about their business. They were explaining to me what information they wanted to see on a regular basis that they believed would help them monitor their business. The indicators he felt were key were Turnover (sales income), Profit, and Cash in the bank.

Without wanting to start an argument there and then, I realised that I have a lot of work to do to get the business owner to understand what he really needs to know, why he needs to know these things, and what he needs to do about things when they are not good.

I have often talked about the Balance Sheet being more important than the Profit and loss, and I still stand by this statement. The Balance Sheet tells you what you own, who owes you money, and who you owe money to. These three facts give you a far better snapshot of your businesses health than any other measurement.

Take cash in the bank as an example. It doesn’t include cheque payments to suppliers that have not cleared. It doesn’t tell you how much you are owed by customers, or how much you owe to your suppliers.

Profit is a nice measurement if you are the taxman, but it doesn’t tell you how profitable you are. Making more profit than last year might sound good, but what will you do if you are only making 10% net profit, when last year you made 15%?

Running a business requires focus on the future. A review of the past is helpful, but only if you do things differently as a result of the lessons you have learnt. If you are measuring your performance by the wrong indicators, do you even know what those lessons are?

Back in December 2010 I wrote about claiming expenses from your business relating to the business miles you drive (http://bit.ly/gh1s0t ).

Unless you drive in excess of 20,000 miles a year, you will be far better off claiming for each mile you drive, than to try and take a tax hit, or claim a percentage of your direct costs.

You may recall that, in the recent budget, the rate you can claim for the first 10,000 miles has increased from 40p to 45p. This gives you a potential extra £500 per year to claim.

If you use your own car for business purposes, you should be claiming expenses to offset the costs that you are incurring. As well as the fuel you use, you are allowed to claim for running costs such as repairs and maintenance, MOT, tax and insurance.

It doesn’t matter of you are self employed, or working for a company, as long as the miles you travel are for the business, and are not personal. The exception to this is your regular commute. You cannot claim for the miles driven to and from work, if you work at the same place most days. However, trips to the post office to buy stamps, to visit clients or suppliers, to visit business partners, or attend meetings are all allowable.

You may not know this, but you can also claim reimbursement if you use a bicycle to get around for business. A few years ago, the government introduced a mileage rate if you use your bicycle for business. A great way to stay fit, help the environment, and claim a tax deductible expense!

If you are VAT registered, you will need to collect VAT receipts for your fuel (not necessarily for the actual fuel you use), ensuring that the receipts are dated within your claim period.

I have created a very simple spreadsheet to help you calculate how much you can reclaim as expenses if you use your own car (or bicycle!). If you would like a free copy, please call or email me, and I’ll let you have a free copy.

As you will have seen on the news, the rate of VAT in the UK is to change from 17.5% to 20%.

VAT is an amount added by the supplier of most goods and services to what they sell, and which they must by law pay to the government. As individuals are usually not VAT registered, what we buy includes VAT, and is not reclaimable as it is to most businesses.

Offers by shops to cover the rise in VAT mean that they keep the sale price the same, but reduce the amount they get to keep after deducting the VAT they owe to the government. For example, if you buy a sofa before the increase for £500.00, the VAT due by the seller is £74.47; after the increase, the seller has to pay £83.33 to the government, meaning they are £8.87 worse off.

To most of us, the increase will mean very little, as the impact of adding 2.5% to the cost of a purchase is pretty small. For example, assuming no other changes to its price, an item costing £100.00 in the shop will be re-priced at £102.13. To incur, say, an extra £20.00 per month as a direct result of the extra VAT would mean you were spending £940 per month.

As an individual, it’s doubtful you will feel a financial impact from this change.

So although an increase from 17.5% to 20% sounds a lot, the only real winner will be the government. Some things never change.

If you use your own car for business purposes, you should be claiming expenses to offset the costs that you are incurring. As well as the fuel you use, you are allowed to claim for running costs such as repairs and maintenance, MOT, tax and insurance.

There are a couple of ways you can calculate how much you can claim. The simplest is to work out how many miles you drive, and use the official rates provided.

It doesn’t matter of you are self employed, or working for a company, as long as the miles you travel are for the business, and are not personal. The exception to this is your regular commute. You cannot claim for the miles driven to and from work, if you work at the same place most days. However, trips to the post office to buy stamps, to visit clients or suppliers, to visit business partners, or attend meetings are all allowable.

You may not know this, but you can also claim reimbursement if you use a bicycle to get around for business. A few years ago, the government introduced a mileage rate if you use your bicycle for business. A great way to stay fit, help the environment, and claim a tax deductible expense!

If you are VAT registered, you will need to collect VAT receipts for your fuel (not necessarily for the actual fuel you use), ensuring that the receipts are dated within your claim period.

I have created a very simple spreadsheet to help you calculate how much you can reclaim as expenses if you use your own car (or bicycle!). If you would like a free copy, please call or email me, and ask me to send it to you.

I read a report today that said we should have a cash reserve of about 6 months spending, “just in case”.

Money is a resource, a tool that makes things happen. Putting it in the bank is the same as giving it to the bank to let them do with it what they want to do. I am not saying we shouldn’t be putting some money to one side “just in case”, but I would rather the money is working for you, not someone else.

So how do you get money to work for you? There are many ways, depending on how risk averse you are, how quickly you want access to it, and how long you are prepared to invest it. Putting it in the bank represents the lowest risk, and the lowest return, investing it in stocks and shares is high risk, potentially high return. So what is in the middle? As a self employed person, I am always thinking of ways to improve my business and will invest in things that make me better. This might mean training, courses, attending meetings, or simply spending time with those who have wisdom to share.

By being better at what I do, I hope that the chances of needing a cash sum “just in case” are reduced.

It’s nice to know that there is money in the bank, but I can’t take it with me, and I would rather use it wisely while I can.

Most businesses operate with very little money in the bank. Some just operate perpetually on an overdraft, or with just enough to keep the bank manager happy.

To some, this is “situation normal”, and many organisations exist in this financially precarious state for months and even years. Having very little money is not a crime, nor is it always a sign of instability. Money in the bank is only working for the bank, think about what you could be doing with your cash to further your own business goals.

But when it happens to you for the first time, or if you walk into a role, or organisation, in a position of responsibility for the first time it can seem a frightening situation. Questions like “Will we be able to pay our staff”, “How can I please the screaming creditors”, or “The bank manager might pull the plug”, can keep even the strongest of us awake at night.

The first thing to do is not panic. Knee jerk reactions might further de-stabilise the organisation and, at worst, tip you over the edge.
Work out who owes you money. Chase it, hard.
Work out who you owe money to. I suggest you are open and honest with them. I would rather be thought of as a “slow payer”, than a “no payer”.
Take control – write down your realistic financial goals. Then write down what you need to do to achieve them. Then start doing those things.

Perhaps the best advice is to talk with someone who has been in that situation themselves (and survived!). It might not immediately solve your problem, but you might gain some strength, insight, and develop some tactics to help you pull through.

I read an interesting statistic recently. In ACE’s recently published 2008/09 submissions from Regularly Funded Organisations, combined ‘Contributed Income’ (sponsorship, trusts, donations, and lottery revenue partnership funding) fell by over £12.6 million (11%). But this was more than made up for by combined ‘Earned Income’ (ticket sales, workshop fees, merchandising, sale of books and magazines, etc.) which rose by £52.8 million (12%).

If you have read my blogs over the last couple of years, you will know that I hold a particular view of the “recession”; it was patchy, not universal. Its impact ranged from the catastrophic (if you were in house building, car manufacturing, or banking), to the liberating (with interest rates at an all time low, many households were between £100 and £150 a month better off). Public money was drying up, but private/personal money was plentiful.

Reliance on public funding has become an increasingly high risk strategy. I speak from personal experience as the ex-treasurer of an excellent provider of arts education which closed due to withdrawal of its core funding. Other organisations I know well are also starting to think the unthinkable – what if we can’t rely on public funding anymore?

So what is Plan B?

Well, I think public funding will become increasingly scarce, and with the hoops to jump through and numerous forms to complete, it will become harder to maintain.

There has been an interesting debate on LinkedIn to do with factoring as a way of improving cashflow. What caught my eye was a comment that said “payment terms has, and never will, kill a good idea”. I see this as a clarion call to every organisation that has a good idea – if it’s that good, someone will pay for it.

The balance sheet is more important to your business than your profit and loss statement.

The balance sheet tells you what you own, how much you are owed, and how much you owe to other people. Broadly speaking, assets are those things you own, or are owed, and liabilities are those things that you owe to others.

Liabilities include things like overdrafts, loans, and debts to other people (creditors). But are all liabilities bad?

Borrowing money means you have cash to do something with. If it costs you 5% to borrow £10k, and you are able to generate a profit of 7.5% through the activities you can make happen, then you are making a profit of 2.5%. Without borrowing the money you would have made no profit at all. So a loan can be a good thing, as long as you are making good use of the opportunity.

Investments in your business are liabilities. They represent the amount you have been loaned and, as above, you need to be sure you are making the most of the cash. Even “non-profit” organisations need to demonstrate that they are fulfilling their “non-profit” objectives. Is the cash sitting in the bank, or being used properly?

Liabilities also include Trade Creditors – money owed to your suppliers. It is important that you pay them within agreed terms, but don’t pay early if you don’t need to. This enables you to do something with the money.

All business owners and managers should know how much they owe to other people. Not just so they know how much they owe, but so they know how much cash they are sitting on that belongs to others and to be thinking about what they are doing with it.

I was asked recently if there is an easy way to calculate how much holiday pay a casual worker receives. For once, I was able reply yes; there is an easy way to answer a payroll question!

Since April 2009, under the Working Time Regulations 1998 (as amended), all employees have the right to 28 days, or 5.6 weeks, paid leave (including statutory bank holidays) each year.

5.6 weeks holiday, divided by 46.4 weeks (52 weeks less 5.6 weeks holiday) equals 12.07%.

A member of staff who is full time, or part time with fixed hours, usually has their holiday pay included in their salary. Unless it is otherwise contracted, casual staff, or those with irregular hours, have their holiday pay added on to their pay. Sub contractors (those not paid through your payroll) are not normally entitled to holiday pay.

So the simplest way to calculate how much a member of staff who works irregular hours is entitled to receive in holiday pay is to multiply their actual earnings by 12.07%.

For example, if a casual worker has worked 100 hours, they will have accrued 12.07 hours holiday. If their hourly rate is £10, they are entitled to £120.70 holiday pay.

It is vital that the holiday pay is separately identified on their pay slip, as it is illegal to include it with their basic wages.

So there it is, the easy way to calculate holiday pay for your staff who work irregular hours!

There are statistics and lies. Can a single number ever tell the whole story?

I appeared on BBC Radio Coventry and Warwickshire this morning, to give my views.

www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0062shx/Annie_Othen_28_01_2010/

I start to talk about an hour and 20 minuites into the programme…