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Back up your small business data
February 26th, 2010
Just wanted to pass on a story that could save you hundreds or even thousands of pounds and a lot of trouble. We had call today from a client, who we do quite a bit of health and safety consultancy work with, who asked us for some advice because his pc had ‘gone funny’. I called round to see him on my way to a meeting and sure enough, the computer he’s used for about three or four years to keep all of his quotes, invoices, customer details, plans and pretty much everything else to do with his business, had died in a major way. “No problem”, I said, “just give me your back-ups and I’ll lend you a laptop until yours is back up and running”…..you can guess what’s coming next!!
Please, please, back-up your data
Fortunately, our man’s been very lucky – turned out not to be his hard drive, which has now been swapped into another machine and is working just fine – but the look on his face at the thought of losing years of work and important information just goes to show how important it is to make sure you can recover from losing your data. And the thing is that now it’s so easy and cheap to do, that there’s just no reason not to do it.
How would you cope….
If I said to you that tomorrow, I’m going to come and take your pc away and give you a different one with noneof your files on it, how would you cope? Those with a good back-up routine would probably say, ‘I’ll lose a days work, but it’s not the end of the world, should be up and running in a few hours’ -perfect. I’m guessing that probably over 50% of small business owners would be in big trouble!
Limited company or sole trader for new business start-ups – part 1
February 24th, 2010
It’s a debate that will probably never end, but I just thought I’d throw my thoughts in to the pot. Starting up a new business in the UK, you have a couple of options on the legal nature of the business. Option one is to operate as a sole trader – this essentially means that you, the person, are the company and by definition the company is you. You can call the business anything you like, but legally, you are just Joe Bloggs trading as ‘Joe’s shoe shop’. And here lies one of the main problems with sole trader status.
The bad bits about being a sole trader
As I said above, legally, as a sole trader you are the company. Therefore any claims (legal, financial, etc) against the company are against you, as a person, because in effect, the company doesn’t really exist – it’s just you with a different name. There are many stories around of sole traders losing their personal belongings (car, house, etc) because they didn’t have sufficient insurance when a claim was made against them – this could be for negligence, physical damage, incorrect advice or pretty much anything else – but the point is this, as a sole trader you are personally responsible for any shortcomings in the company. Another possible drawback about being a sole trader versus a limited company is the amount of tax paid and more importantly, how it’s paid – as a sole trader you have the tax liability on any profit made, not the company so the amount of tax you pay and when you pay it depends a lot on you as a person. Ok, final possible drawback – if you intend to sell services or products to other businesses (rather than to the public), some organisations will simply not deal with a sole trader – it’s hard to say whether you’ll be in this situation, but it’s worth checking.
There are a few other negatives that I just don’t have the space to go into here, but there are some positives to being a sole trader…
The good things about being a sole trader
Despite the negative aspects above, there are some benefits to going down the sole trader route. Mainly, they are around the simplicity of setting up and running the business. Essentially, there are no costs associated with starting your company, you just need to inform the tax man that you’re going to be self employed – and that’s it. No registration with companies house, no complicated documents to fill out, one phone call and you’re done. The other benefit is in the records and accounts you have to keep – like I’ve said, you are the company, therefore under normal circumstances, the only tax return you’ll need to make is the standard ‘self assessment’ form. You can easily do this yourself if you’ve got a reasonable grasp of numbers and an accountant shouldn’t be needed (but they might be able to save you a bit more money!).
Could apps be the death of the iPhone?
February 23rd, 2010
The iPhone has become the business phone of choice over the past couple of years, even though it wasn’t really designed for that in the first place. There are a couple of reasons for this – firstly, much as it annoys me to say this, it’s a very nice looking thing; secondly, it works spectacularly well – it just made everything else around at the time of its’ launch seem years out of date. And finally, the apps have built their own little world that everyone wants to be a part of; but could this be the biggest problem apple has ever had?
The new problem for apple apps
Apple have built a business model like no other – buy the phone from Apple, then buy your apps from Apple and obviously buy your music from Apple. Their technology has made it impossible (for 99% of users) to install anything other than Apple approved products on an iPhone and herein lies the problem – people don’t like to be told what to do and now we hear that Apple are beginning to remove some adult themed apps. Until now there was no alternative to the iPhone, but things are changing, and there are now more and more handsets that are almost there – and crucially, they don’t have the locked-up software of the iPhone. You’re free to choose where you get your apps (paid for or otherwise) and you can put any music on you like – no restrictions.
The new business model
So as the new handsets become more pupolar, the new world of apps is going to become much more Googleish – anyone can develop and distribute them without approvals from the handset maker and they’re mostly going to be free to use, but perhaps with some subtle advertising. And this could be the problem for Apple – you can’t compete with free..
Managing small business information
February 21st, 2010
Why do I need to manage information?
If you’ve ever worked at any level for a large organisation, you’re probably well aware of the amount of information that’s gathered about various aspects of the business. Sales targets; sales achievements; customer satisfaction; turnover; profit; competitor growth; cost of sales, etc, etc, etc. There are simply endless lists of information that get gradually filtered down as they rise up through the management chain, until the person at the top gets a simple summary about the position of the business and can therefore make informed decisions about what to do next. Well in a small business, you are the person at the top, but I’ll bet you don’t have a report waiting on your desk at the end of each month do you!! Well, perhaps it’s time that you did.
Information is king (well, second only to cash)
Knowing how your business is doing is the only way to decide how to grow or perhaps consolidate your business. As a small or medium business owner, you probably know roughly what your turnover is, but do you actually know how much profit you’re making and more importantly, are some of your activities or customers generating more cash that others – who or what do you need to concentrate on? You might have sent out dozens of quotes or advertising leaflets, but how many turn into a sale – could you be spending your time and money more wisely to generate more sales? These are just a couple of examples of how good information management systems can benefit even very small businesses and in the age of the internet and low cost software, there’s no excuse for not doing it.
The right system
Managing information in a small business can be a nightmare if you’re not using some simple tools to make it easier. From bespoke systems for slightly larger companies to a simple spreadsheet for small companies, there are many ways to manage your information and produce a more efficient and profitable company. There isn’t really a right and wrong way to do it, there are just easier and harder ways – the key is getting something that’s cost effective for your business – don’t spend thousands on a system that you’ll only ever use 10% of, but don’t fall into the trap of something that’s too simple and doesn’t give you the results you need.
