Don’t blink you might miss it

Can you believe it, the first quarter of the financial year has passed and by gosh time has flown.

So, rather than waste any more time, click on the image above for a short video as to what we are discussing this month before you read on.

Watch the video here

Save me tax

We’ve previously shared the 32 ways to extract more value from your business whilst saving tax and recently introduced our “tax and growth discovery form” with a handful of clients as we gradually roll this out.

This form pulls out what matters the most to you in your business and helps identify where you are, where you want to be and then gives us the platform to see how best we get you there.

If you would like a copy of the form together with guidance as to how to complete this just click the button below.

Yes please, I’ll have a tax and growth discovery form

Make me more money

We keep mentioning the scary fact that only 1 in every 2,222 business owners exit their business when they want, with how much they want.

If you start planning ahead there now, get an understanding as to what your business is roughly worth if you sold it today and build out a road map to improve this, you will help beat the stats.

Yes please I would like a business valuation

Help me focus on what matters

Do you know who your top 10 customers are in terms of profitability?

Do you know what your top 10 supplier costs are?

Far too many business owners do not know the answers to the above two questions and when using cloud-based accounting software it is literally at your finger tips.

By then acting upon this information you can then start making decisions that increase the value of your business.

I don’t know but I would like to know

Improve my cash flow

It is interesting when you take a step back and reflect on how generations before us managed their cash and how times have changed; or have they?

A lot of the same problems remain but some of the old traditional methods have sadly been forgotten and whilst I am not suggesting we all go back to brown envelopes, jars or filling mattresses; the process is one where a lot can be learnt to make your current cash stretch further.

Head across to our website and read the blog whereby we share four tips around this that can be accessed here which clients of ours are already putting in place and it is literally changing their lives simply as a result of this same methodology.

Takeaways

  1. Ideally you need four plans in your business (all of which can drop out of the discovery form):
    • operational plan
    • financial plan
    • tax plan
    • retirement plan
  2. The day for planning your retirement was yesterday but today will have to do as tomorrow is too late
  3. Cash can go a lot further than you every imagined once you change the processes you use to manage it

Our wider impacts that you have contributed towards

Overall, we have now made over 2,119 “impacts” to date across 34 projects to date which for the month of March alone, including:

  • supporting young adult’s mental health
  • providing emergency relief support in Ukraine
  • 97 days of access to clean drinking water was provided
  • 4 days of housing being provided in Vietnam
  • helping fund business training programmes in Zimbabwe
  • 4 days of training in sustainable agriculture were given to villagers in Madagascar
  • 10 days of education were provided for children in the world

YOU’VE BEEN NOMINATED FOR OUR AWARDS!!!!

I am sure we can all agreed that 2020 has been a very challenging year and January is rarely a month to look forward to either.  However, we are looking to mix that up a little in 2021.

You’ve hopefully seen on our recent newsletters where we have mentioned that we are going to hold an awards evening in January 2021; yes you read right January 2021 in the midst of the time when many accountants would be doing nothing but tax returns we are also going to throw into the mix a night in/out for you.

Date is now confirmed as being Thursday 21 January at 8pm which will be held via Zoom with the link to follow.

 The evening will entail:
  • the awards
  • Cocktails making and tasting
  • guest speaker Stuart Mason, the author of ‘How to wreck your business’

We could not wait any longer though reference announcing the awards and the fact that you have received a nomination for one of the categories from our team so we would be delighted if you could attend, from home anyway!

So, here is a complete list of the categories and those who made the shortlist:

  1. Most organised client

Those who made the shortlist are:

  • Leigh Thompson (GotPurpose)
  • Chris Lucarelli (Cal Partners Limited)
  • Chevon McCracken (Keith Wilkinson Electrical Contractors Limited)
  • Ian Carlson and Mark Anderson (Cobalt Scaffolding Limited)
  • Mark Woodhall (Facility and Sports Club Development Limited)
  1. Person external to us that has made the greatest difference to us as a firm

Will be announced on the night.

  1. Software that has made the greatest difference to the lives of our clients
  • Float
  • Capitalise
  • Clarity
  • Futrli
  • Xero
  1. Clients that have smashed it in 2020 (not all just about the figures but have embraced the challenge and tackled it head on)
  • Calum Wilkinson and Chevon McCracken (Keith Wilkinson Electrical Contractors Limited)
  • Carla and Paul Sleeth (Northern Installer’s Limited)
  • Alison Reynolds (Reynolds HR and OD) Limited
  • Ian Carlson and Mark Anderson (Cobalt Scaffolding Limited)
  1. Digital client of the year award (client that has embraced technology the most)
  • Mark Woodhall (Facility and Sports Club Development Limited)
  • Alan Mertsch (Ashley Moore Furniture Limited)
  • Calum Wilkinson and Chevon McCracken (Keith Wilkinson Electrical Contractors Limited)
  • Carla and Paul Sleeth (Northern Installer’s Limited)
  1. Biggest referrer of work award
  • Claire Goodliff (Community Fitness Network, Norks Limited, Project Mayhem Limited)
  • Samantha Mitchell (SJM Lashes Ltd)
  • Stuart Moy (Arcot Grange Developments Limited)
  1. Non-client who has stood out the most

Will be revealed on the night.

  1. New client of the year award
  • Gary Davis and Lesley Taylor (Team Build Construction Limited)
  • Daniel Bandhu (DMS Custom Install Ltd)
  • Alex Thompson (ACT Copywriting Limited)
  • Lisa Newman (Bellamie Hair Studio Ltd)
  • Edward Finnigan (Kelvinclyde Consultancy Ltd)
  1. Lifetime achievement award without the tears (long-standing client)

No shortlist for this one as this one has already been decided upon.

Also note

Note there will be a physical award that we will issue after the evening also.

We encourage you to share this everywhere as this is a massive credit to you so we have attached an image that you can use for social media purposes, attach to your e-mail footer and wherever else you want to put it.  Why not even copy us in and we will share them?

Do not forget the hashtag:

#awardsnottaxreturns #lockinnotlockdown

Support for your business. Returning to work. Mortgages.

We practice what we preach and have got ourselves well and truly prepared for the real storm that awaits as we face up to the challenges that lie ahead and are in a position to support you as needed.

We do now have three new members of the team that I’m sure you will all hear from in due course but also wanted to highlight some of the other changes that we are implementing over the coming weeks and months off the back of what we have learnt from lockdown and where we will be investing further in terms of time and resources:

  • We will; within our newsletters, be making our content more operational as well as financial based to assist you with the new challenges you are likely to face.
  • We will be issuing not just one newsletter per month, but as many as we see fit depending on announcements made to keep you as well-informed and up to date as possible.
  • Appreciating that not everybody will love the reading our newsletters and some would prefer something more interactive, we are currently considering the idea of fortnightly ‘huddles’ where we will have a dedicated hour for clients to join us and ask us whatever questions they wish.
  • We will maintain the idea of running webinars and are currently looking to run maybe one a month that will either be ran by us or an external expert from outside our field.
  • We will continue to update our resources page on our website; which can be found here for those that have not yet visited this, so if you miss anything you can go back and take a look at a time convenient to you.
  • Yes we have not started blogging as well to share our personal views and experiences as well so these too can be found on our resources page with one of favourites being the increasing importance of data.
  • We are in the process of fully rebuilding our website to again make this of more value and ‘future-proof’ for us and clients going forward.
  • We are also having some full customer-relationship software built to further tailor the content and support provided to you as clients and potential clients.
  • We are introducing new service offerings that we have already been providing during lockdown that we consider will be needed more than ever with one of these being the role of helping be your bank manager.  In the current climate, not everybody has a dedicated bank manager, but for those that do; including us, it has been invaluable and we will help breach this gap so we can support you when it comes to accessing finance.
  • In addition to our dedicated resources page, we have built out dedicated communication channels for specific support that include the following:
    • xero@gtaccountants.com – if you have any training needs or suggestions about content that you would like then please use this e-mail address.  Specific queries about your data within Xero should continue to be fed back directly to your client manager for a quicker and more tailored response.
    • funding@gtaccountants.com – should have any funding needs or questions then feel free to send them here and these can be picked up by our dedicated funding team.
    • enquiries@gtaccountants.com – we would ask that should you have any general comments, suggestions or even just improvements you would like for us to consider implementing, please feel free to share them here as we want to keep moving forward and improving so that we can do the same with our clients.

What I want to leave you with; at the bottom of this section, is that I remain cautiously optimistic about the future.  We must acknowledge that we are all at a crossroad or junction in our business journeys, and those that are looking optimistically ahead have taken similar actions to those above but tailored to their own businesses.

Have you done enough to prepare for what lies ahead?

Returning to work

One of our clients has kindly shared some recent work that they have been working on that might be of use for those returning to their usual place of work soon.

Feel free to contact Paul directly.

Mortgages

As the financial landscape right before us changes so rapidly, we have been chatting with mortgage brokers about what this means for those about to renew their mortgage this year and we are all in agreement that if this applies to you, then chat to your mortgage/financial advisor as soon as possible just to make sure you are prepared.

Gary Davis - Managing Director of Team Build Group

"They make the complicated understandable to the laymen which then allows me to make business decisions with confidence. I would recommend them to any client without hesitation."

Gary Davis – Managing Director of Team Build Group
 

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