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Work Experience

We realise the importance of passing on knowledge and experience, so this week, we have a 4th year pupil from a local secondary school on placement.

You know when you’re transitioning from a young teenager to a young person in school, when you are tasked with picking subjects that are going to affect which career you pursue in your adult life.

Part of this task also marks the start of work experience – a one week placement with an employer, to try and gauge whether you’d like to do the job you think you do. Crikey!

For one reason or another (1. I was incredibly shy. 2. I was incredibly unmotivated) I didn’t do work experience. I managed to wangle out of it, and got to go to school and do art for the week. I could think of worse things.

I didn’t know what I wanted to do after school. Some of the careers that stoked some interest included: police, midwife, social work or interior design. I ended up doing none of these; moving on to do Social Sciences at university and then working as a Support Worker within the Citizens Advice Bureau, then an Assistant Income Adviser with the local council. Now I own an accountancy practice…and I love it!

We have a 4th year pupil on placement this week, we’re trying to fill the week up with real life accountancy work, rather than the usual opening envelopes, scanning and filing – exceptionally boring tasks and who knows, perhaps when this young man goes on to be an accountant, we might not even use these methods?

Our placement is genuinely enthusiastic, asks very relevant questions and is keen to do well. I’m really pleased, because I feel that I missed out from my own lack of work experience.

As you can see from the header photograph our placement is well on their way to the world of accounting: neat organised piles of work, a cup of coffee and two choices of cakes!

If anyone within our field, is looking for a young person to train upon leaving school, we are more than happy to give a recommendation.

Panic!

Now is the time of year when all accountants get frantic calls/emails, from people who haven’t even looked at their self assessment; let alone completed it.

If you find yourself in this position, the worst thing that you could do is put off getting help any longer.

HMRC state in their own words: “You’ll get a penalty if you need to send a tax return and you miss the deadline for submitting it or paying your bill.

You’ll get a penalty of £100 if your tax return is up to 3 months late. You’ll have to pay more if it’s later, or if you pay your tax bill late. You’ll also be charged interest on late payments”.

It’s scary, sitting down and realising that you’re going to be fined. However, the longer you leave it, the worse it will be. So, chin up, head down and call in an expert – you wouldn’t carry out dental work on your own (or maybe you would, if you’re in to that sort of thing...)

Asking for help means making sense of all the information you have collected throughout the year and knowing how much (if any) tax you’ll have to pay.

A good accountant should also help you figure out the best way to run the accounting side of your business, going forward. So that next year you’re totally prepared and won’t receive any fines – the money is better off in your pocket!

We hate to sound like HMRC, but ‘tax doesn’t have to be taxing’. Preparation is the key to success. Let us help you be more successful!

*source: https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns/penalties

Happy New Year!

To all of our existing clients and the prospective ones.

We hope you all had a restful and happy festive period – we did and we are all set for 2019.

Our New Years resolutions include the usual: eat healthier (we tried the Plant Based Kitchen range from Marks &Spencer earlier, very tasty!), get more exercise (the scary one) and keep on top of household administration.

What are yours?

If you’ve made the decision to try and keep on top of your business paperwork/bookkeeping and know that you’ll need help, why not look at our fixed fee, pay monthly packages?

The packages given on the website are a starting point – should you have less transactions to process; give us a call or email (contact information on here too!) and we can discuss.

Here’s to 2019!

Fun Friday!

The Abbey Mill Business Centre elves, Molly and Doddie, dropped by for a visit.

Chris and Doddie inadvertently ended up twinning their outfits!

The Boss and Chris

Molly suggested they play some games and relax, as that’s apparently ‘what accountants do all year round, except for the month of January!’.

Relaxing before the January rush

The elves also had an important message for our clients – it’s turning colder outside, so get your self-assessment paperwork to us ASAP.

Getting their self assessment info to us, by any means necessary

You can travel by sleigh; post your receipts or simply share the information via the cloud. Just get it to us soon.

Renfrewshire Christmas Toy Bank

What a Friday it has been, and it’s only just left half past ten!

Thank you so very much to Caroline Watson and Mearns After School Care from Abbey Mill Business Centre.

Together, we managed to collect a whopping 15 bags of donations to the Christmas Toy Bank. Gifts ranged from huge boxes of Lego to a boxing stand and gloves, with loads of art and crafts goods in-between.

The staff at the storage unit were genuinely delighted with the haul.

Special thanks and mention must go to Lauren Roy-Sutherland who has organised and coordinated this whole project, to ensure that children and teenagers throughout Renfrewshire have a happy Christmas.

We have been privileged to be involved with this project and have enjoyed every minute of it.

Have a very merry Christmas and a joyful New Year!

Christmas & New Year Opening Hours


For C Allan & Son Accountancy Services

As the festive season approaches, we would like to highlight to our clients our opening hours in the coming weeks.

We will be open from 9.30 am to 5 pm, up until the 20th of December.

On the 21st of December, we will be open from 9.30 am to 3 pm.

Our office will re-open to clients on the 4th of January, at 9.30 am.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all of our clients the very best for the festive season. We hope it is healthy, joyful and filled with lots of laughter.

Ask the Accountant – Are you regulated by a professional body?

If yes; who?

 

A: We belong to the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants.

 

We must pay an annual membership fee to ACCA along with purchasing a practising certificate – this allows us to state that we are indeed chartered and have the right to run an accountancy practice.

Why is this so important?

For a start, being chartered means our clients benefit from a professionally qualified accountant who is bound by a code of ethics and professional standards. We are dealing with your personal and business finance – we must be professional, discreet and trustworthy.

By belonging to ACCA, the practice must have certain policies and procedures in place. These include having professional indemnity insurance, complaints and disciplinary procedures and we also undergo monitoring of compliance and quality reviews of our professional practice. Members of ACCA (and other regulated accountancy bodies) must comply with professional development to ensure their knowledge and skills are always relevant.

Chris is actually a Fellow (FCCA). As the Association state, “This is a major milestone as it highlights five-years’ continuous membership and compliance with ACCA’s CPD scheme. Fellowship demonstrates to employers and clients that you have extensive experience; and signifies that you’ve made a long-term commitment to professionalism and ethics”.

Did you know that unless chartered or qualified with another professional accountancy body, anyone can call themselves an accountant – even without professional training or qualifications to back it up.

What happens if something goes wrong? Not very much if they are unregulated.

Qualifications go hand in hand with experience. To qualify as chartered, an accountant must work for a breadth of different clients across a range of industries.

We have experience across several sectors both nationally and internationally. These include e-commerce, charitable, aviation, marine, generation and supply, outsourcing, local government, civil service, health and beauty, automotive, professional services, construction and IT.

All in all? You’re in good hands with C Allan & Son Accountancy Services.

Fun Fact Friday – St. Andrew

St. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, Greece, Russia, Italy’s Amalfi and Barbados.

The first disciple of Jesus, the saint was born in Bethsaida, Israel.

St Andrew never set foot in Scotland during his lifetime, although after his death some of his relics made the pilgrimage to Scotland, up until around the 16th century. This was stopped because some of the relics were damaged during the Scottish Reformation.

St Andrew was crucified on an ‘X’ shaped cross – legend states that the saint himself requested this, as he was not worthy to die on a cross in the same shape as Jesus’. This cross is represented in white on the Scottish national flag, the Saltire.

Have a fantastic weekend!

Remember, if you have a 2017-2018 tax return due on the 31st of January 2019, get your numbers to us in the next 4 weeks, for guaranteed submission before the deadline.

Contact us on info@caas.org.uk or 0141 889 1161.

#2018ROCCO

The awards are over, we had a great night.

Congratulations to FE Live Audio who took home the award for Outstanding Performing Business <5 Staff at this years ROCCOs.

We are incredibly proud of getting to the final – it was total teamwork; with Michelle writing the award entry and presentation, and Chris delivering the presentation to a distinguished panel of judges.

The competition was stiff, with FE Live taking home not one, but two awards on the night.

There were 2 particular highlights of the night for us (1) the amazing dinner and (2) the entertainment from Scottish Opera – it was simply incredible.

**soppy alert

I (Michelle) would personally like to thank Chris for still undertaking the presentation, given that he had a serious accident just a couple of weeks prior. He has also listened to the kid’s and I and considerably slowed down since the fall.

**back to business

Looking forward to the ROCCOs 2019!