News and Articles

Of all the performance measurements that a small hospitality or manufacturing business can use, Gross Profit %age is the most useful. It is calculated as follows:  Sales less Direct Costs as a percentage of Sales  Direct costs are those expenses which vary with sales....

As we said in an earlier blog, we are pleased to have young William Burlingham on our team as a full-time in-house IT support Technician. It is maybe a bit unusual to have such a resource in a small practice like ours, but this reflects the huge changes in technology...

If you are an NI entrepreneur and have a business opportunity ready for funding, Catalyst is running an event in Belfast’s Titanic Hotel on Tuesday 18 October. It will give you the opportunity to pitch to a number of notable UK investors, all in one day.  A...

A new recovery loan scheme has just opened which is a great opportunity for UK business to invest and grow. It offers loans up to £2m (£1m under the NI protocol because of EU subsidy limits). The scheme is administered by the British Business Bank and is backed by a...

No date has been given but “soon” filing company documents online will be an easier process. It will have these features:  the ability to link your company to your WebFiling account to give you more control over your filings;  the ability to digitally authorise people...

Talk is rife of a jobs bloodbath as businesses consider closing because of the energy crisis. Hotels are particularly vulnerable as they have to heat their building during the winter. Our clients are reporting that energy costs, which were 2% of turnover, are likely...

CIPD, the HR manager’s professional body, has criticised zero-hours employment contracts in a recent report. It found that the employer has more to gain from the arrangement than the estimated one million employees in these contracts. ...

It is well known that businesses using self-employed workers in place of employees have some advantages. At least twenty legal protections do not apply to the self-employed. Examples are unfair dismissal, holiday and sick pay, redundancy pay and statutory minimum...

Despite the help given during the pandemic, many restaurants find themselves struggling to recover. A recent survey by UHY Hacker Young revealed that an incredible 70% of the top 100 restaurants in the UK are making a loss. In many cases the difficulty was attributed...

We are pleased to say our practice is now big enough to employ a full time IT technician. Welcome Williiam! Having William as a resource has been tremendously helpful in the smooth running of the business. Luckily his broad knowledge allows him to tackle a wide range...

My advice to someone starting a business takes account of all the failures I have observed over the years as a practising management accountant. Running a business exposes you to new challenges and often to extreme competition. (Think of the effects of Trip...

Normally a Company can carry back a loss against its previous year. The budget announced a temporary extension to allow losses to be carried back up to three years. This can trigger a refund of tax paid in these previous years. In detail, Companies having accounting...