Recommendations for Keeping Your Books in Line

Surrounded by boxes of receipts? Using Word to produce your invoices? Excel to keep track of your earnings and outgoings? It’s time to get your small business books in line!

Nowadays there are all sorts of easy to use online bookkeeping systems that can help you manage your invoicing and purchase transactions and keep you on top of everything. They can be accessed any time, any place you have an internet connection.

These systems offer a lot more than keeping track of income and expenditure; they provide a total management platform. Features such as invoicing and statements with built-in card payment facilities; payment reminder letters for overdue accounts; quotes that you can later convert to invoices and a purchase order system are all geared towards making the life of the small business owner so much easier.

Online Bookkeeping Systems: So Many Benefits

Most online bookkeeping systems will link with your bank accounts, allowing you to see precisely what you have in your accounts and on your cards, and what you owe at any given time.

You can mark invoices as paid; run reports to see who owes what and work out your cash flow and profit and loss position for any time period. Receipts can be scanned in so you have all your records in one place, so there is no need for paper filing systems. You can also prepare your VAT returns and even submit them through some of the platforms. In other words, you will be able to keep your business running smoothly, and stay on top of your current financial position. And with all this information readily at hand, it makes everything so much more a piece of cake when it comes time to submit your annual returns.

Your accountant can also usually be given access to the platform so their work for you is cut down too. They can run management reports and journals to help you keep one step ahead when it comes to your tax and VAT position.

Free Trials and Useful Links

Many online bookkeeping systems offer a free trial, which is great for making sure you are comfortable with it before you commit. Billing is usually monthly or yearly.

Here are some useful links for you to a range of online bookkeeping systems. Why not have a look through and see which one could be best for your particular needs?

Kashflow: https://www.kashflow.com/

QuickBooks: https://quickbooks.intuit.com/uk/

Sage: https://www.sage.com/en-gb/

Xero: https://www.xero.com/uk/

Free Agent: https://www.freeagent.com/

Financial Force: https://www.financialforce.com/financial-management/accounting/

Still not sure? Why not have a chat with your bookkeepers? They’ll know what will suit you best and will also be able to help you get set up once you make your choice.

Data Vulnerability Could Cost Small Businesses Dear

According to research, almost one million businesses in the UK are at risk of losing company data because they do not back it up. A further 2.8 million risk losing valuable information because they are storing back-up copies in the same location as the original data. This is according to Beaming, a business internet service provider.

Beaming’s survey reveals that 83 per cent of UK firms do back up their data, however half of these save it on storage devices or servers that are on the same premises as the source data, rendering them at serious risk should there be a malware attack or theft or loss of data.

Just as much of concern is that the remaining 17 per cent of businesses surveyed don’t make back-ups at all. The survey reports that of all company types, micro companies and sole traders are least likely to back up their data.

Old School Back-Up Routines

Some small and medium sized businesses are still asking personnel to take physical back-ups home with them, and around a third of large and medium sized organisations copy data to their own servers.

Only 35 per cent of UK businesses are said to store their back-up data off the premises, and 13 per cent of micro businesses and 15 per cent of sole traders use a cloud storage service such as Google or Microsoft as their back-up system.

The recommendation by business continuity experts is that back-ups are made to data storage facilities a minimum of 30 miles from the company premises in order to reduce the risks posed by natural disasters. A lot of businesses however that follow this guidance use cloud storage, and have not bothered to find out exactly where their data is held.

Time to Think Seriously About Data Storage

Sonia Blizzard is managing director of Beaming, the company behind the survey. She says that a lot of businesses, especially the smaller ones, are not doing enough to protect their sensitive data.

She says, ‘The introduction of GDPR has highlighted the need for secure and resilient data storage in order to mitigate the risk of significant data loss.’

‘We’d encourage businesses to think seriously about private cloud or co-location services when it comes to storing highly sensitive data or mission critical applications. These should only be accessed through the most secure forms of connectivity.’

It is vital to think about how your business would function should a loss of data occur. It is also crucial to be aware of the fines that can now be levied under GDPR following a data breach.

If you are unsure as to the integrity of your data storage and back-up methods, you should take advice from an IT security expert without delay.

Research source: http://smallbusiness.co.uk/company-data-safety-store-2544068/

Can a Disqualified Director act as a Shareholder?

All sorts of grounds can lead to director disqualification. Non-payment of debt to HMRC; wrongful and fraudulent trading in insolvency; failure to comply with company legislation; unfit conduct and criminal conviction are some of them.

Directors are disqualified under the Companies Act 1990. Disqualification orders can apply for up to 15 years, and are issued with a range of restrictions.

Disqualified Director Restrictions

Disqualified directors are not permitted to act as trustees; they cannot sit on the board of a charity, police authority or school; neither are they allowed to act as a registered social landlord. They cannot sit on a health board or social care body and they are banned from practising as an accountant, solicitor or barrister.

In addition, a director disqualification order will also prevent those disqualified from acting as a director of any UK registered company or any overseas company with links to the UK. It is also not allowed to form, run or market a company. Any breach of the terms of the disqualification order could lead to a custodial sentence of up to two years.

Despite all of this, disqualified directors are actually not banned from owning shares. Anyone disqualified as a director is still permitted to purchase shares in public companies and can also hold shares in UK registered private limited companies.

A Grey Area of Law

This may of course appear confusing, because as we said, disqualified directors are forbidden from forming, running or marketing a company. So how does this work?

The law states that disqualified directors cannot be directors of UK companies. They can’t form a company, but they are allowed to hold shares. In other words, they can part-own a company with other non-disqualified directors, providing those non-disqualified directors are responsible for marketing and running it.

It is a bit of a grey area of law, but for the present time the answer to our original question is yes, a disqualified director can be a shareholder.

If you have been disqualified as a director and are unclear on your rights, the best thing to do to ensure you do not breach the terms of your disqualification order is to take professional advice.