Too Busy for a Holiday? Take the Work with you!

It’s always hard for an entrepreneur to decide to take time off, and many small business owners forgo holidays altogether. That, however, is decidedly not good for you and not really good for the business either. When you don’t take breaks, you get tired and stale, and that affects your performance. Your business can no longer benefit from your vision and verve.

Getting Away Does Help

Take a tip from your bookkeepers and book yourself a holiday. If you really can’t afford to leave your work for a week or two, find ways to take it with you. A change is as good as a rest, the old saying goes, and this could work for you too.

When you are away from home and your work place, other responsibilities are left behind. You can make time in the day or evening for exploring the new environment or go for a refreshing swim in the sea or the hotel pool before or after you put in a few hours of work. You’ll wake in the mornings with things to look forward to once you close your laptop. You’ll be eager to get the work out of the way so you can join companions on the beach or the golf course.

A Little Planning Could Make it Work

If you have a favourite holiday destination, it could be worth buying a holiday home there and going away regularly. Whether it’s a place in the sun or a country retreat, you’ll be bound to come back with batteries charged and ready to move forward at top speed. If you like exploring different places, you need to spend a little extra time on planning to make sure you book somewhere you’ll have internet access. Everything else you can take with you.

To get the most from your break, you should set some rules where you can. These could be set times during the day to check and respond to emails and other messages. Your out-of-office email message could ask for text messages to your mobile for anything urgent.

The holiday destination could give you the respite you need to write an important proposal or bid for funding. But if you expect to be really busy on something like this, plan longer periods for working with set times to stop and do something else.

It’s true that having to work on a break is not ideal, but it’s certainly better than not taking one at all. With all the technology that’s available now to make it possible to access your files and stay in contact with staff and customers, there really is no excuse for putting off taking that well-deserved and much-needed holiday.

To be sure that everything will be properly looked after whilst you are away, have a chat with your outsourced bookkeepers about their general office services. You might be surprised at what can be taken off your shoulders for as long as you want.

More Help for Small Firms Seeking Funds

Although we are supposedly well into economic recovery, small businesses are still finding it hard to access the revenue they need to develop. Sometimes they need funds just to get them over a slump and survive, and this seems to be even more difficult.

There are many new options from which investment can be sourced, yet outsourced bookkeepers agree with the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, who recently said that “…small businesses often give up if they are turned down for finance by their bank.”

Banks to Be Forced to Give More Help

In his March 2014 budget, Chancellor George Osborne mentioned plans to make banks do more for these small firms. They would be obliged to give them the option of being referred to an online platform giving access to alternative lenders. These will include crowd funding and peer-to-peer lending websites, invoice finance companies and some of the new challenger banks.

An announcement from the government on August 6 included proposed legislation on this as part of a new strategy to encourage more innovation in finance. It is one of the first steps in a campaign to make the UK a global centre of financial innovation. A full strategy document will be published shortly.

Boosting the Alternative Funding Sector

The alternative funding market grew significantly in 2013 to be worth almost £1 billion, and its value is expected to reach around £1.6 billion in 2014. This is a trend that the government wishes to promote and exploit.

To encourage the evolution of the financial technology (FinTech) sector, the Chancellor launched a new body, Innovate Finance, which already had 53 members, and which CEO Claire Crockerton believes will soon reach a membership of 200 companies in the sector. Innovate Finance and the Business Bank will be sponsoring new prizes and awards for those who manage to provide solutions to meet a challenge or problem in granting small businesses access to alternative funding.

The announcement also referred to a further £1 million for the British Business Bank’s investment programme, designed to help small businesses generally, plus the FinTech sector specifically. Ministers will also be looking at the potential advantages of using virtual and digital currencies such as Bitcoin, as well as the risks involved and how to regulate them.

Until the proposals to make the banks more responsive to their customers’ needs for finance come into force, your outsourced bookkeepers will advise you not to give up if your bank won’t help you. The many other ways to access funding are growing day by day. You just need to keep trying.

Managing Without Borrowing

Can you run a successful business without borrowing? Some do, and if the circumstances are right, with some good cash flow management, you could too.

Managing the Circumstances

The circumstances will be right when the business income is reasonably predictable; you are not planning excessively expensive changes; you have ample stocks; and you have the staff you need and the cash to pay them. These are aspects that can also be managed, but you need to take them into account when considering the cash flow situation.

The circumstances may not be right if you suffer from fraud, theft or a serious cyber-attack. While you can take steps to protect your business from such wrong-doing, this is not manageable in the same way. Crises like these, or natural disasters such as flooding, may need more cash than you have available to be able to recover. But these are rare circumstances, and while it is good to have contingency cash, your outsourced bookkeepers would recommend that, like most successful entrepreneurs, you do what you can for protection and then stop worrying about them.

Managing the Cash Flow

Cash flow, on the other hand, must be kept in mind all the time. The most important factor in good cash flow management is keeping accurate and up to date records. This is what will allow you to know the state of your finances at all times and have no nasty surprises.

Regular cash flow forecasts will also allow you to project that knowledge forward, so that you will know when monies are due in and can allocate them for spending. This means you can plan activities for when you can make financial resources available, and will be able to develop your business in this way.

Enlist the Help of Your Bookkeepers

Your outsourced bookkeepers will be invaluable to you in helping with this. They can also assist with controlling your debtors and paying creditors at the right time. Paying within terms but not too early means you will keep your cash as long as you can, and maintain a good credit rating.

Use your bookkeepers wisely and they will ensure that invoices go out promptly with advantageous terms. They will also flag up any potential problems with cash flow that you might otherwise miss. Noting them in good time means they can probably be avoided. Talk to them about whether late payment penalties or invoice factoring would be a good idea if you have any customers who take their time to pay.

All of this could help you manage without having to take out a bank loan or search for alternative funding.