Being Environmentally Aware – Doing Our Bit

We are committed to reducing our carbon footprint, both personally and in our business.

We are a paperless office, we recycle what we can and we get our electricity (and gas, at home) from Bulb, who use renewables.

We cycled to work when the weather permits – Paisley is lucky to have fantastic cycle routes running through it and it is much quicker than walking or driving (due to traffic, lights and the one-way system).

You’ll see featured in our photograph our electric vehicle charging point. Purchased with a grant from The Scottish Government, who are also trying to reduce pollution and invest in renewable energy.

We currently have a BMW i3, which is easily the best car we have ever had. It is a work of art; true when we first got it, it was strange to look at, but it’s grown on us. It’s so easy to drive, a pleasure actually. Plus, it is fully electric, so whenever we hop behind the wheel there is no longer that horrible guilty feeling about the impact we have on the environment. In addition to the great driving experience and the environmental plusses, we have saved a fortune! Our journeys are mostly comprised of short ones, so we were using a ridiculous amount of fuel. One charge of the i3 (which takes around 4 hours on a home charger) gives around 100 miles (or 120 in hot weather – this summer was amazing), perfect for most people.

We’re always open to suggestions on how we can become more green – if you have any ideas, please let us know!

Ask the Accountant

Q: “How Do You Keep Up to date?”

A – “We use various social media platforms, to keep abreast of current trends and movements. We always want to be moving forward and avoid becoming stagnant.

With regards to education, all of our employees are encouraged and supported in their continued professional development (CPD).

We use a variety of training sources, including Business Gateway, Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), Intuit and Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT).

Recent training for the practice has included GDPR, tax and health and safety. It’s important for us to keep up to date with everything, not just accounting”.

Ask the Accountant

Q: “When is the best time to employ an accountant?”

A: “Starting your own business can be intimidating, from registering with Companies House to choosing whether to become a Limited Company or Sole Trader.

Then there are the bits in between: do you have a business address? Can you open a business bank account? Are there any grants or loans that could help you with your startup?

It’s for these reasons that we feel it’s best to employ an accountant right at the beginning. The money spent on their professional advice could be the difference between success and failure.

Not every accountant specialises in offering startup advice, so always do your homework. Ask them what type of enterprises they have assisted before and get a feel for whether they are the best fit for your business.

Don’t be afraid to walk away if you feel it won’t work!”

Ask the Accountant

Q: “How do you communicate with your clients?”

A: “We offer a number of forms of communication here at C Allan & Son.

We love seeing clients in person, however, we know that our working hours are normally your working hours too, therefore we can communicate via Skype (mostly for meetings), email and Slack.

We use cloud-based accounting packages and can share information via this platform. Some clients choose to upload their receipts and invoices at night, for us to work on the next day.

We also travel to provide services such as training and audit preparation. We have been lucky enough this year to take in Shetland, Bath, Warminster and Southampton.

We do take initial enquiries via social media, but would always continue communication via email or telephone thereafter, to ensure your personal information remains safe”.

No Wrong Path

With Scottish exam results received in the last week, I know there will be some people who have been left bereft because they did not gain the results they expected.

I just want to say to you, it’s not the end of the world.

Of course you will have invested a lot of hard work, emotions and time on these exams, and that’s hard to take when you haven’t got the marks you thought you would. That feeling of utter disappointment will fade over time.

There are options. I wish I had known this when I didn’t do quite so well in my high school exams.

I failed Maths 3 times and I still cannot get my head around anything other than basic mathematics, and sometimes I struggle with that. This lead me down the path of choosing a degree that didn’t have a high pass rate for maths to gain entry and also didn’t have maths in the course itself (or so I thought, but even Social Sciences has maths, cloaked in the disguise of ‘Research Methods’).

I have used my degree in some aspects of my career, but I could have ended up in the same position if I had not studied at university, but instead chose to volunteer and gain experience through working. I wish I had known this when it was important. I would have stressed less in school, enjoyed university more and not have worried about studying as much as I did.

I remember a teacher from high school saying that exams only test how good a memory you have, they do not test what you are good at or passionate about. I agree with this wholeheartedly.

None of this matters now, as I find myself down a path that I could never have imagined – jointly running an accountancy practice with my husband. I am happy, challenged and continually learning.

Every day is a learning day, you’re just not standardised tested on it!

Enjoy your journey, whichever path you choose.

GDPR May 25th 2018

It’s important! General Data Protection Regulation compliance.

It has been a labour of something other than love.

As an individual, it is great and long overdue, especially with the recent big case data breaches.

For businesses, it is a headache, but with power comes responsibility. Especially when your clients place their trust in you!

We have updated our Privacy Policy to reflect the changes that are coming with the General Data Protection Regulation on May 25th.

Important points to note are:

(1) We will no longer be using Dropbox as a means to transfer data between the practice and clients unless this is the client’s preference.
(2) We will no longer be using Facebook Messenger as a means to transfer personal documents – only to arrange appointments.

To see our new policy in all its glory, please click here https://caas.org.uk/privacy/

Happy reading.

Continued Professional Development

Phew! What a great few months it has been for my own personal development.

Chris and I started the practice in 2013, and since then I have given social media my best shot. I even created our very first website (using the create a website tool available online).

I was incredibly proud of the site, and it brought us in some business – success! Then we fell from the first page of Google, and I couldn’t understand why. Sure, I heard the term SEO, but I didn’t actually know the in’s and outs of it and that was a barrier.

I used Facebook and Twitter to the best of my ability, however, something was always lacking.
I knew that using images in your posts made them more visible as Facebook’s algorithm preferred something more than just text. What I didn’t know how to use, and I found frustrating, was how to utilise the many great features that Facebook has for getting your business out there. How did other businesses make their pages look so professional?

So, for the past 5 years, I have been ambling along and doing my best to promote our practice, but I needed assistance. Enter Business Gateway and their fabulous Digital Boost scheme.

It’s easy to get bogged down with the every day running of your business, it takes up so much time. It’s good to remember that there are loads of courses out there to help you on the way – whether you are a new enterprise or if you’ve been in the game a bit longer.

Business Gateway has been brilliant for us; they offer a plethora of half-day workshops covering lots of different topics. The Digital Boost scheme is slightly different and was one that was introduced to us by Renfrewshire Council initially. It was so easy to sign up – you visit the Gateway website and take a short survey. The results of this survey determine the type of support you are offered.

We were allocated three 1:1 sessions, provided by Gary Ennis of NS Design. The sessions were quite intense but so informative. I was able to state the aims of each session, to ensure everything I wanted covered, was.

I have learned so much from Gary and I will be forever recommending his services to anyone who will listen. I can now edit our website, write a blog (hurrah!), use Facebook to the best it has to offer (our most recent advertising has brought in 12 new page likes – more than ever before), my LinkedIn profile and Twitter page are optimised to bring in business. But not just this, more importantly, we now have a brand that people can identify with, and that was one of the biggest aims of starting the practice. We wanted to stand out from other accountants, in that we know our client’s personally, and we are approachable and on hand to help.

If you’re reading this and are in the same position that I was – you know what you want to do digitally, but you don’t know how to do it – get in touch with Digital Boost. You have nothing to lose and a whole lot of knowledge to gain.

To undertake the digital health check for your business visit https://www.bgateway.com/driving-growth/digitalboost

Making Tax Digital – what you need to know!

Making Tax Digital for business, is a Government initiative that will pool all your tax information together in one place, online. The aim is to allow business owners the opportunity to view how much tax they owe – or are due back – at any point throughout the financial year.

The scheme should provide:

Accurate Tax Information – digital tax accounts can be verified immediately, in real time; rather than sifting through paper based records.

Reduced Errors – the real time aspect of Making Tax Digital will allow HMRC will to work with your tax information almost immediately, reducing human error from incorrect data input.

Making tax digital should also be:

Easier to understand – HMRC anticipates taxpayers will better understand how much tax is owed from viewing their digital tax account – akin to online banking.

Easier contact with HMRC – online access will make it easier for to contact HMRC via webchats and secure messages.

The following timeline information is for guidance only, and may be subject to change.

April 2018 – Quarterly reporting starts for businesses with turnovers more than the VAT Registration Threshold of £85,000

April 2019 – Quarterly reporting starts for businesses with turnovers below the VAT threshold of £85,000. Digital quarterly reporting for VAT also begins

April 2020 – Quarterly reporting for all companies

HMRC have not provided software to allow business owners to report their accounts online, therefore we are proud to be a fully accredited supplier of Intuit Quickbooks.

This software and a variety of others, including but not exclusively – Xero, Kashflow and Sage, provide the tools required to manage your business records digitally.

We have invested in training and developed comprehensive support services to facilitate the change for our client’s business’.

To discuss the scheme in further detail, please call 0141 816 9750 or complete the contact form.