After my father died I found among his papers a booklet detailing the history of his mother’s family, the Goodliffes, over several generations during the 19th century, during which they built a thriving wholesale grocery business in the Midlands. In one passage it describes how Thomas Goodliffe, my great-grandfather, went on the first escorted tour…
Category: Accounting
Rewarding failure
I read with interest an article by Prof Adam Leaver of Sheffield University published by Open Democracy recently. For anyone interested in financial reporting and auditing, and why they have failed to prevent corporate greed and business failures it is essential reading. In the article he looks at how Interserve, which has now failed, paid management bonuses…
Anything at all that matters in life only does so as a consequence of its impact on our conscious mind
Have you ever wondered why relatively few entrepreneurial businesses achieve super success? It’s about one in twenty. Not very many. This should be surprising. Napoleon Hill said “Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. There is no shortage of books, articles, websites and research about what makes a successful business…
You may have to start digging deeper
Last week I spent two days, with different clients, analysing and reviewing their management information. In the first case we’d be warned by their monthly management accounts that profitability had slipped in December. As is often the case the reason wasn’t clear from the P/L alone (which is often the case) and we needed to…
Is your business model fit for purpose?
Christmas is over for another year. For many in retail – and the businesses that supply them – it’ll be over for good. HMV has already gone into administration. It won’t be the last retailer to do so. The new year will inevitably bring more gloom to the high street as retailers, whose hopes were…
The financial crisis no one is talking about.
Auditing is not a sexy subject. But in recent years the auditors of our major businesses have let the public down to a staggering extent. Let me start by restating why audits were introduced. In the 19th century, to encourage trade, businesses were allowed to become limited liability companies, meaning that the liability of the…
It isn’t Colonel Mustard.
If it was a game of Cluedo the prime suspect would be Amazon, in the high street with a web browser, but the causes of the devastation of retailing in many town centres is actually more complex than this, even though it is easy to blame the increase in e-commerce and online shopping. Like most…
This couldn’t happen in your business…..could it?
You may not have heard of the company but you will almost certainly have heard of its brands Bargain Booze, Wine Rack, Bibendum and others, despite which Conviviality plc, the brand owner, went into liquidation last week after making three profit warnings in just over one month. Another example of an avoidable business failure by…
Making Tax Digital – accounting software
Making tax digital is the government’s plan to take information for tax purposes directly from business owners’ online accounting software with no recourse to their accountant. This explains why HMRC are so keen to work with Xero, QuickBooks and FreeAgent. This move was foreseeable, and should be less of a shock to forward-thinking business owners…
“What’s your business worth?” I asked.
A client of mine decided recently to incorporate his business. “What’s it worth”, I asked “Does it matter” he replied “I’m not planning on selling”. “Yes you are” I told him. “Incorporation of a business or ‘going limited’ as many people call it, is legally and for tax purposes a sale from one party to…
