Have you tried the HMRC app yet? 100,000 other tax payers have…..
Have you utilised the HMRC app to pay your Self-Assessment tax bill? Are your company records up to date and ready to be filed? Tips on keeping your staff safe in the cold weather, keeping your business strong in terms of cash flow, plus…working capital finance, the Smart Data Discovery Challenge and modernising the framework for dispute resolution
Self-Assessment payments via the HMRC app treble to £121 million
Almost 100,000 tax-payers have paid £121 million using the HM Revenue and Customs’ (HMRC) app since April 2023, taking advantage of the new way to pay their Self-Assessment tax bill.
Latest figures from HMRC reveal that between April and September 2023, 97,365 taxpayers used the app to settle their tax bill for the 2022 to 2023 tax year – more than 3 times the £34.6 million paid by 36,467 taxpayers during the same period last year.
Tax-payers have been able to pay their Self-Assessment tax bill via the free and secure HMRC app since February 2022 and there is a YouTube video demonstrating how to make a payment.
See: Self Assessment payments via the HMRC app treble to £121 million – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Companies urged to file accounts early and online to avoid penalties
Running your own company can be exciting but also challenging. Directors have lots of responsibilities including keeping company records up-to-date and making sure they’re filed on time.
All limited companies, whether they trade or not, must deliver annual accounts to Companies House (CH) each year. This includes dormant companies.
If we do not file your accounts then you can use CH online services which are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week – and there are inbuilt checks to help you avoid mistakes.
It can take as little as 15 minutes from start to finish and you’ll know your accounts have been delivered on time. To file online, you’ll need your company authentication code. If you need to request a new code, you should allow up to 5 days for this to arrive at the company’s registered office.
You should only send paper accounts if your company cannot file online.
See: Filing your Companies House accounts – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
HSE guidance on keeping workplace temperature reasonable
As winter takes hold, you can find helpful advice from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) on keeping people as comfortable as possible when working in the cold.
The guidance has been refreshed to make it easier to find and understand advice on how to protect workers in both low and high temperatures.
The Workplace (Health, Safety and Welfare) Regulations require employers to provide a reasonable indoor temperature in the workplace.
The guidance explains how you can assess the risks to workers and put controls in place to protect them.
There is a workplace temperature checklist to help you carry out a basic risk assessment. HSE have also updated sources of advice, including practical steps you can take in the summer months to protect workers during a heatwave.
Stay safe in the snow
The Met Office have some practical advice and information on what to do to stay safe in the snow.
When there is a snow warning in place the guidance covers:
1. What to do if you need to drive somewhere;
2. Driving safely in snow;
3. Thinking ahead and acting now so you can cope if cut off;
4. Staying safe if you are cut off; and
5. What you can do in a power cut
See: 5 tips for staying safe in snow – Met Office
Where does the money go?
With ever increasing supplier prices, managing your businesses cash and understanding the flow are now vital tools in maintaining resilience and being able to adopt flexible strategies for success.
Fund flows are a reflection of all the cash that is flowing in and out of a business. Owners can look at the direction of the cash flows for insights about the health of specific products or services and overall market patterns.
Some types of business are more likely to run into cash flow problems, while other types appear to be more resilient. If you are a business owner, you might be wondering which category your business falls into. No matter how inventive or simple your business model is, you can still have problems with cash flow. Here are our thoughts on managing the flow of cash in your business:
The first stage of understanding and predicting how funds flow is to perform a health check on your accounts. Look at your latest profit and loss statement and check that your income is sufficient to cover your expenses. If your profit is falling behind your expenses and cash flow is slowing down, you might need to take action. Prepare a funds flow statement so you know where the money goes.
Next, create a yearly budget and look where cash could become tight and months where you can save to cover off the quieter times. Look at those quieter months and think about flexible work scheduling, new products or services, or other activities to tide you over.
Finally, make sure you collect your money from those who owe you quickly. Reward customer loyalty by offering early bird discounts; set credit limits and payment terms to ensure customers follow the rules. If you take on new customers, make credit checks. Penalise late payers and request up front deposits or payment.
Talk to us about preparing a funds flow statement and annual budget so that you can work on your business for maximum success!
What is Working Capital Finance?
Working capital finance solutions offer businesses the opportunity to improve cash flow. The world of commercial finance and asset based lending (ABL) is complex and expansive with products, terminology and contractual interpretation varying from lender-to-lender.
The Benefits of arranging Working Capital are:
- Up to 90% of outstanding invoice value can be advanced within 24 hours;
- Flexible lending – funding increases in line with your growth (UK and Export);
- Confidentiality – lenders can offer a completely confidential service – your customers need not know you have a facility in place;
- Lenders allow you to manage your funding at all times;
- Sector-specific finance is often available;
- Structured ABL – funding for management buy-outs/management buy-ins; and
- Trade Finance & Supply Chain Finance Solutions.
Specialists in this area can advise on:
- Invoice Finance – an effective way of quickly accessing a proportion of the value (up to 90%) of your invoices. Effectively, a business ‘sells’ its invoices to the lender in return for accessing cash at the point products and services are sold. Specific sector-based offerings are available, as is the ability to arrange finance for selected invoices only.
- Structured ABL – generate a higher level of funding by unlocking the maximum value tied up in the combined assets within your business, including Debtors, Inventory, Plant & Machinery and Property. Additional forms of funding can be structured in addition to this, such as top up loans in order to drive growth.
- Trade Finance – supply chain finance with various options, enabling the purchasing of goods from overseas where you are otherwise unable to obtain credit from suppliers.
Typically, you will need to ensure your management accounts are up to date, you make available current detailed lists of debtors and creditors, and you might need up to date projections before an expert will consider your application. Please talk to us about finance; our working capital finance experts have many years of experience and success in advising businesses across a wide range of sectors in obtaining working capital finance solutions.
The Smart Data Discovery Challenge
There are few aspects of our lives today that are not influenced, informed, or driven by data.
We generate data constantly in our daily lives: when we spend and save; when we use energy or watch TV; when we shop, travel, or use the internet. But most of this data remains locked away in individual companies and organisations, rather than being put in the hands of consumers.
The Department for Business & Trade (DBT), Challenge Works, the Open Data Institute (ODI) and Smart Data Foundry are inviting individuals, innovators, entrepreneurs, academia, and civil society to identifying innovative ways in which Smart Data could make a difference for consumers, small businesses, and wider society.
This open call isn’t seeking fully-formed solutions, but cross-sector Smart Data use case ideas that use data from at least one of the following five sectors:
- Financial services,
- Home buying,
- Energy,
- Transport, and
- Retail.
Following the Discovery Challenge, the aim is to launch a Smart Data challenge prize later in 2024. Participants in this prize will benefit from a share of up to £750,000 to prototype and test solutions that demonstrate a range of promising cross-sector Smart Data use cases in action.
You must submit your entries by 4pm on 8 December 2023.
See: Home – Smart Data Challenge (challenges.org)
Dispute resolution – Modernising the framework
The new Arbitration Bill could benefit businesses and individuals around the world who look to the UK as the best place to resolve disputes from family law and rent reviews to international commercial contracts and claims by foreign investors made against entire countries.
Modernising the framework for arbitration in this country for the first time in 26 years – making it quicker, cheaper, and more efficient –could cement the position of this high-value sector in the face of growing competition from other centres such as Singapore and Paris.
With arbitrations in England and Wales worth £2.5 billion to the British economy each year in fees alone, the Bill should help the UK’s world-leading legal services sector to continue to flourish.
See: Modernised laws to secure UK as world leader in dispute resolution – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)