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…
Category: Finance
Don’t let GDPR ruin your plans to raise finance
When seeking investment for your business there are many considerations for a business owner, but from May 2018 you can add GDPR to that list. Whilst all business owners will have without doubt heard the horror stories of GDPR and its potential for unprecedented fines, what is not really being discussed, is the longer-term impact…
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…
Have you paid your fee yet?
All organisations, companies and sole traders that process personal data must pay an annual fee to the ICO unless they are exempt. For ‘small’ businesses this is £40 (or £35 if paid by direct debit). Organisations across the business services, construction and finance sectors are among the first to be fined by the ICO for…
It’s no longer good enough
Last week the Monetary Policy Committee of the Bank of England increased the base interest rate to 0.75%, only the second increase in the past 10 years. One respected commentator said “It takes some considerable stupidity to see a crisis coming and decide to make it worse. But that’s exactly what the Bank of England has…
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…
Are you making the right choices?
The news this week of business failures past, present and possibly future is alarming. Stories of incompetence, ignorance and a lack of information on a huge scale. I was fortunate to have respite from this doom and gloom on Thursday when I attended a masterclass with a very successful entrepreneur whose wisdom would have prevented…
An important lesson for entrepreneurial business owners
This week the news has been dominated by the collapse of Carillion, which will have huge repercussions for not just the staff they employed but also the 30,000 smaller businesses that relied on Carillion for their income and survival. There are a number of lessons entrepreneurial business owners can learn from this debacle that, like…
When will we learn?
Ten years. Is that all? We have short memories. It’s just ten years since the start of the last financial crash that caused banks to go bust and sent others running to governments for support. And let’s be clear it was entirely self-inflicted and avoidable. Too much debt being granted to over-burdened borrowers with too…
The Virtues of Persistence
This week I have been reading a little known Jim Collins book called How the Mighty Fall. Unlike Built to Last, Good to Great and Great by Choice, How the Mighty Fall is a book originally intended as a research paper until, as Collins says, it defied the constrictions of an article’. Written just after…
