Tag: accountant

Automation Cog

Automate, Automate, Automate

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Automate, Automate, Automate

The 21st century brings a new kind of technology that has not been around for past businesses. Online tools can help make business more streamlined, efficient and productive. 1 Accounts strive to adapt these new technologies to not only help our business but to help our clients too. With this blog I will talk you through how we have automated our processes to allow us extra time to help our clients.

Karbon

When we receive a new enquiry we start our process on Karbon. Karbon is a work flow program that helps our team work together and not miss any important deadlines. We assign an on boarding template to the enquiry. This includes pre-written emails that can be sent with just a click of a button. We have also used Jot Form to create secure forms for our clients to fill out with all the information we need. The links to these forms are included in our pre-written email. This leaves out any need for unnecessary work.

Practice Ignition

Once a prospect decides they would like to sign up with 1 Accounts, we then create a proposal in Practice Ignition. We love this piece of software. Our proposals are already set up, we just fill in any specific details and send to the client. Once signed Practice ignition automatically sets up the direct debit for our client.

Go Cardless

All our clients are on a monthly fee which is taken via direct debit in Go Cardless. This is set up through Practice Ignition and takes the monthly fee. Go Cardless means that we are no longer chasing payments and our ‘getting paid’ process is completely automated. Go Cardless will then generate an invoice into Xero automatically.

Xero

Once the direct debit has been taken Go Cardless prompts Xero to create an invoice to be emailed to the client. Our whole process is automated, eliminating the need for manual work.

We are working on ways to automate even more of our processes. Information requests for year end accounts and tax returns are now becoming automated so that we can receive information earlier to enable us to complete the work quicker. We are always looking for new ways to help automate our clients business’s. If you need help with this please contact jade@1accounts.co.uk and she will be sure to help.

happy new year typewriter

Happy New Year

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Happy New Year

The 6th of April marked the first day of the financial year. This brings a few changes to individuals and businesses.

The Personal Allowance 

The personal allowance (the amount you can earn before paying Income Tax) has increased from £11850 to £12500. This will lead to a small reduction in tax. For higher rate tax payers the allowance will increase from £46,350 to £50,000.

The National Minimum Wage

The national minimum wage has changed on the 1st of April 19.

  • For 25 years and older the minimum wage has changed from £7.83 to £8.21
  • For 21-24 years the minimum wage has changed from £7.38 to £7.70
  • For 18-20 years the minimum wage has changed from £5.90 to £6.15
  • For under 18 year the minimum wage has changed from £4.20 to £4.35
  • For an Apprentice the minimum wage has change from £3.70 to £3.90

Student Loans 

The earnings threshold has also increased for paying back students loans.

  • Plan 1 loans will rise from £18,330 to £18,935.
  • Plan 2 loans will rise from £25,000 to £25,725.

This will apply to all current and future student loans where employers make student loan deductions.

Auto-Enrolment 

The minimum amount for auto-enrolment has also increased. Employers now must contribute a minimum of 3% of the employees qualifying earnings (an increase of 1%). Employees must pay 5%. The total minimum contribution is now 8% (from 5%)

Preparation 

In preparation for the influx of personal tax returns we are preparing early this year. Our clients would have received an automatic email from Jade requesting information to complete their self assessment. This is not due to be submitted until January 2020, however we are aiming to have all tax returns completed by the end of the year!

Staff Only

Keeping up with the Employees!

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Keeping up with the Employees

Unlike the Kardashians it can be extremely hard to keep up with your employees hours, especially if your business is not office based. Here is our simple solution on how we can help you ‘keep up with the employees’.

The Problem: 

Many employees are paid by the hour and quite often employers have not invested in a clocking in system. This means employees are responsible for keeping their own paper timesheets. These are then given the the team member in charge of payroll to be inputted into the system. There are a number of things that could go wrong with this way of working:

  • The employee doesn’t meet the deadline
  • The hours are inputted incorrectly onto the system
  • The handwritten hours are hard to read and so takes extra time to decipher
  • The employee is away from the office and unable to bring in their payslip before the deadline.

All these things can create unnecessary nightmares for business. But it’s okay, we have a solution.

The Solution: 

These days most people own a smart phone. With Xero Payroll our clients have access to the Xero Me app.  With this app employees can fill out their timesheets on the go. This is then fired off to the office for approval. Once approved the hours are automatically put in the payroll ready for the next pay run. Employees can also view all their payslips and download them. It is a great tool and if you already have Xero Payroll, this app is free to use.

No errors, no delays and always on time!

You are not a bank

1 Accounts – You are not a bank

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You Are Not A Bank

As a small business, credit control can be a nightmare. Paul will tell you that when he first started running his traditional accountancy practice (Paul Donno & Co) he was pulling his hair out when he would do work, invoice the client and then not get paid. Unlike buying a product, paying for a service seems to have less urgency when it comes to paying. It used to take Paul on average just over 90 days for collection on 10 day accounts.

There is a group we belong to called the 2020 Group. One of the founders, a guy called Gordon Gilcrest spent some time with Paul to help his overcome this problem, he sat him down and said to him:

“Paul, you are not a bank. If people want a loan, they can go to the bank and they can pay interest on it. You are not a bank; you have credit terms, stick to the credit terms. If you give 14 days’ credit that gives them the right to pay within 14 days, not over days and pay you 50-60 days later”

This advice has stuck with Paul, and he re-evaluated his approach as a result. He spoke to the clients who were taking a long time to pay and advised them that they needed to change their ways. He also parted ways with a couple of companies.

When starting 1 Accounts Paul did not want these problems again. We set up Go cardless and have automatic direct debits taken every month. The direct debit is automatically set up when the proposal is signed. This saves time, money and chasing.

Here is our advice to you if you are struggling with credit control:

  • Look at your trading terms and ask yourself why you are offering credit, and if you do offer credit, want are your terms? Work out on average how quickly your customers are paying.
  • If you are lending money long term, that is for banks to do and not you!
  • Look at all types of money collection and do not put barriers in the way. Take credit cards, offer direct debit, provide alternative funding to customers
  • Remember ‘Turnover for vanity, profit for sanity but cash is reality’
  • It is no good tying up your money in stock that takes ages to turn over, measure stock turnover and don’t lock up your cash.
  • Don’t give extended credit, and if you do chase it hard, you have already paid for the goods sold or staff to provide services.
  • Without cash, you cannot make rational business decisions to move forwards.
1 Accounts helping the environment

Green is the new black – why go paperless?

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GREEN IS THE NEW BLACK

Trees. Water. Carbon emissions. Time. Money. The environmental impact of paper production in the financial industry is significant and yet completely avoidable. In an age where nearly everything is digital and in the cloud, we needen’t use so much paper. Using an online calculater we have esstimated that as firm we save the following per year:

  • 450kgs of Wood
  • 10,900 Litres of Water
  • £146.80K
  • 7000 hours

The Facts 

Worldwide the use of paper has risen by 400% in the last 40 years. The paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy in the world. Going paperless can help:

  • Save trees – Trees provide habitats for animals, covert CO2 to oxygen and help clean our water.
  • Save water – To make 1 A4 peice of paper it take 10 liters of water. Being paperless can help conserve our worlds water sources.
  • Reduce polution – Making one tonne of paper emits more than 1.5 tonnes of CO2 equivalent. Using elss will help reduce the number of pollutants in our atmosphere.
  • Fuel – Documents need to get from A to B. The transportation of documents burns fuel and releases greenhouse gases. Eliminating paper documents will reduce the  amount of fuel used.
  • Save time – Printing, stuffing, posting, waiting & chasing all takes time. By going online you can get your time back.
  • Save money – Paper, envelopes, ink and postage all costs money.Imagain being able to eliminate this cost.

How We Work 

Emails not letters 

In todays era most companies are using email, however some still use ‘snail mail’ to send important documents. We however send all our emails via Microsoft outlook. If any include secure information we will send via Karbon. Emails not only save lots of paper they also save the time and money it would take to post each client queries. The only letters we send are to HMRC and to send goodies to our clients.

Digitally Sign Documents 

All our Accounts, Tax Returns and engagment letters have to be signed by clients. We do this digitally. For our engagment letters we use Practice Ignition and for accounts, tax returns and any other documents we use Docusign. These products have made our life so much easier, no more posting to clients and then waiting for them to sign and send it back to us.

Online Software 

All our clients use online accounting software, so not only are we paperless, we are helping our clients become paperless to. Gone are the days of manual books, paper records and bags full of receipts. With the online software we suggest to clients that they digitally send their invoices and request their suppliers to send their invoices directly to their Xero or receipt bank. This avoids the need for paper. We also use Xero and digitally send our invoices each month.

We love that being more efficent and saving money goes hand in hand with helping the envirnment and we love helping our cleints become paperless to!

should I employ a business coach?

Should business employ a business coach?

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Should Business’ Employ a business coach? – Absolutely!

A note from Paul

Over the years I have seen many people that say they are business coaches and I really would not trust them to deliver, especially those that are part of a franchise and just follow set procedures.

A business coach should understand your business, understand you and work to empower you to put your business in the direction that it wants to go.

Our first coach

My first encounter of a coach was about 20 years ago and the lady Gabriel Blackman-Shepperd was a life coach, she helped me to understand issue facing me at the time and my vision of the future, interestingly some of my vision at that time remains today.  Gabriel understood me and worked really hard to focus me.

Coming to present day I have used three business coaches, all of whom have had a significant impact on my business.

Tough Times 

Starting 1 Accounts Online was at a really difficult time, coming off of a terrible experience in my business career & my youngest daughter becoming confined to a wheel chair; I had lost a bit of the original spark I had and needed some guidance on where we were going.

The government had a great scheme in place where they funded a coach and I took on the services of Dominic Bowles who really helped me and my wife Jenni.

Dominic worked hard on the ethos of our business and his advise will always be part of our business regardless of changes.

Dominic helped us get personal and business goals which we smashed!  We also learnt  that family values are so important to Jenni and me and that this had to come through our business as well, something we had lost sight of over the previous couple of years!

Dominic has been back a few times since and we really value his input.

Pricing change

When we first started our Online business we had a specific business model that we identified would not work in the long term and this was based on price.  Price was OK to start with as it was only Jenni and me working from home but to move the business forwards I needed to really understand my pricing.

I signed up to a program with Mark Wickersham who is well known in our industry and via webinars and reading I started to understand pricing, my market place and the real psychology behind price.  This time spent with Mark was really important to us.

Once I had what I wanted I stopped the coaching and I think it is really important to know when you have gained what you need from your coach, but do not be afraid to return to brush up on your knowledge.

Skip to the present 

Our latest coach Heather Townsend has been a really interesting partnership.  I first met Heather at the Practice Excellence Awards where we won best New Practice in the UK, as you can imagine I was on top of the world and thought I knew everything.  Heather said that she would love to work with us and could really help us, at the time I really doubted that!

Six months ago we joined Heathers Millionaire Accountants program and it is really only today that I have seen real value in the process.  Heather no doubt will tell people that I am a really difficult person to recognise my achievements as my growth is never enough, she constantly reminds me that 62% growth last year is really good and yes I suppose it is.

Sitting back today reflecting on Heathers input to our business has been enormous.  With Growth comes pain and my real pain was systems and lack of robust systems to grow with us.  We started setting up Karbon four months ago and Jade (our practice manager and my daughter) has worked relentlessly in getting this right for us.  Karbon have also been a great partner in improving the software.

We have also changed our Tax and Accounting software to TaxCalc and the monthly saving has been over £800 per month, more than covering Heathers fees.

We have introduced daily team meetings, led by Jade and weekly full meetings led by Jade as well, these meetings have really helped to Gel the team together and our apprentices are now flying and having an important and significant impact on our business and our clients businesses.

We are also instigating our monthly management meeting with three of us focusing on driving the business forwards.

I also spend Wednesdays working from home and specifically working on the business, as a business owner this is so important to the business.

All of the above has been so positive on the team, our client service and the bottom line that we are looking forward to Heather and her team working hard to reach the goal we both promised our selves at the start of the process.

Top Tip – 

Chose your coach wisely, give them at least six months to prove themselves and re-evaluate what they deliver to your business.  Heather may not want to be but she is stuck with us for at least another six months and more than likely beyond!

 

1 Accounts New Website

1 Accounts launches new website

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1 Accounts opened its doors 5 years ago. As time and technology has moved on, so has 1 Accounts and so to celebrate our 5th birthday we decided to treat ourselves to a new Website! – Whoop!

Growth

Over the last 5 years 1 Accounts has grown dramatically. We have moved into a larger office, expanded our client base and gained 5 new staff members. The business has come on leaps and bounds from when Paul & Jenni were running the business from their home. It was clear this growth needed to be reflected in a cool new website.


Click here to see our team

Feedback

The feedback we have had from our clients over the past year, is that their new online software is giving them their lives back. We are freeing up our clients time so that they can spend more time with their families, increase their handicap or even go on longer holidays. We believe that time is unnecessarily spent doing your accounts when you should be out enjoying life.


Click here to see our clients feedback

Products 

Our old website has a heavy focus on Sage One. As our existing clients know we still use Sage, however we have now broadened our horizons and are now Xero Gold Partners. We are looking forward to expanding our expertise so we can offer our clients the best online accounting solution for them.


Click here to see our products

Services

You will notice that our services have changed. We are no longer offering the essential, full and premium service. We felt these names were boring and did not reflect our clients’ needs. We now offer services for a range of Limited Companies according to where they are at in their business journey.  Young Business, Growing Business & Rapid Growth.


Click here to see our services

The last 5 years have been a whirlwind and we can’t wait to see where the next 5 takes us!

“I have always enjoyed being an early adopter of technology and saw the potential of cloud based accounting from the very beginning. Starting a new company based solely on a cloud based service was a risk but I am delighted to say that it has paid off.

“We have carved a niche as experts in the online accounting arena and have formed solid relationships with the leading providers of online accounting software – Sage and Xero.

“We are using the technology to do things differently to a traditional accountant. No time sheets, fixed fees paid by monthly direct debit and we use the software to automate the compliance. We can then use the time saved to add value to the client’s business.

“This approach works really well, as can be seen by our growth over the last four years. I am confident that, with our talented team and investment in systems and processes, we will continue to go from strength to strength.”

Paul's new book

Boring to Soaring

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Paul's new book

Paul writes his first book

Our director Paul has written his first book. The book tells of how he started his business life as a young lad collecting golf balls from the local golf club, to building a business, merging a business and ultimately building the current business.

1 Accounts Online is a growing business that could be described as disrupting the accountancy profession.

What to call the book?

After asking friends, family and clients for title suggestions on Facebook Paul decided to call the book ‘Boring to Soaring’. This title seemed fitting to describe how the business has moved from the boring traditional world of accountancy to soaring into the clouds and changing the perception of the profession.

The book details Paul’s journey through business so far which has had some bumps and challenges along the way. Paul frankly speaks about his own mistakes in business and how he overcame them. Ultimately, when the chips were down, and he hit his lowest point in business it was both determination and the support of friends and family that he proved that you can bounce back stronger.

Paul also talks about his long and strong relationship with Sage UK. Like any relationship, it has been both challenging and rewarding working with a large organisation. Paul encourages smaller businesses to work with larger organisations and never feel like they are too small to make a difference. He claims that anyone can be a specialist or even a ‘thought leader’.

The book is aimed to help any business owner showing that whatever your business is, many of the issues and problems are just the same. The book has some key messages, tips and advice that Paul hopes will help small business owners to have confidence and grow.

The 14 key lessons at the end of the book include:

  1. Learn from your mistakes
  2. Be Nice
  3. Branding
  4. Outsource to Good Quality People
  5. Just say ‘Yes’ and feel the fear
  6. Know your numbers
  7. Go Online
  8. You are not a bank
  9. Collaborate with your team
  10. Social Media
  11. Never too late to learn
  12. Automate as much as you can
  13. Awards
  14. ENJOY

The most important lesson?

The most important lesson is to enjoy what you do and have some great fun on your journey.

Want a copy?

If you would like a copy of Pauls book please email boring2soaring@1accounts.co.uk

All proceeds for the book are being donated to Little People UK. This is a charity very close to our hearts. You can also donate to this charity by following this link: http://littlepeopleuk.org/ways-you-can-donate/justgiving

Looking to publish a book?

There have been many people that have helped in the production of our book, but I can’t thank the printers enough for their help and patience. If you are looking to publish a book please speak to Danny at Gipping Presshttp://www.gippingpress.co.uk/