Insights
How much should you budget to spend on marketing?
How do you keep control of marketing spend in a growing business? How much should your business be spending on marketing? Is it an investment in the future or just a cost? Marketing spend is a difficult sell to accountants - there is no way of guaranteeing that it...
Creating a Cost Conscious Culture
What’s the most effective way of controlling spending in your business? Previously I have talked about whether or not a budget is an effective tool to control spending and concluded that it’s not. A budget is a tool for building an overview of strategy and assessing...
Budgeting for real life
Budgeting for real life is a never ending challenge: most likely you’ll be wrong, the only uncertainty is by how much. But, as I’ve talked about before, it is an exercise worth persevering with. An effective budget is a vital tool for building a successful business....
Better business budgeting in 2021: making a more effective plan
Did you work out a budget for 2021, as per normal? Have you thrown it out yet?! It’s easy not to bother at the moment; last year showed how little certainty we really have when we try to plan ahead and the last 12 months have made it clear that that’s not changing...
How to plan for an unknown future?
How can you plan for the future when you don't know what it holds? Come to think of it: what do you not know about your business? December is usually a busy month for business planning with my clients as we spend time looking at the next year in more detail. That...
Practical advice for micro business
It can be difficult to get practical advice for micro business, especially when you're on a budget. In an effort to share good advice and help every business thrive despite the current restrictions the team at North Devon's Business Action magazine has developed a...
Your guide to creating a cashflow forecast
I spend a lot of time talking about cashflow, but how do you create a cashflow forecast for yourself? Where do you get the information from? What does it mean! Here's my guide to creating a worthwhile cashflow forecast for your business: How To Start Your Cashflow...
Avoid second lockdown cashflow crisis
Does a second lockdown mean cashflow crisis for your business? What can you do to avoid it? We know that a lot more businesses are allowed to stay open this time than were able to in March, but staying open is not necessarily a good outcome. A lot of SMEs have used up...
SOS – help managing cashflows in distress?
The saying "Cash is King" is very true: profit doesn't pay the bills. But that doesn't help when there just isn't enough cash to go round and you need help with managing cashflow and getting out of trouble. This is the final instalment in a series of posts that I...
Making the most of cash
Generally people only think about cashflow when there is a shortage of cash in the bank to pay the bills. But what happens if you find your business with surplus cash in the bank? For some businesses at present that is a very real possibility, either because the...
Updated Again! Support for UK SMEs tackling coronavirus disruption
Edited 12th November 2020: This post was originally my view of the government support for UK SMEs tackling coronavirus disruption that was announced on 24th September, but since then it's been changed so what's the situation now? Read on to find out more: Furlough is...
Case Study: AMZCO Construction
AMZCO Construction specialises in building and maintaining anaerobic digestion plants. They work on a small number of complex, multi million pound projects meaning that it is vital that they have timely, reliable information to help keep control of the finances. On...
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