Even in a relaxed office environment, everything should be in its right place. You’ll want to find what you need with no fuss, and know who each item of tech, stationery or furniture belongs to. Knowing who uses what and where it should go should ensure that your office is clean, tidy and organised, meaning you can get on with whatever tasks you have to do.

A label for every purpose?

Asset labels are something a number of businesses, state departments and large non-governmental organisations including charities use for their most expensive pieces of technology. Created mainly with computers and other tech such as printers, photocopiers and scanners in mind, they differ from ordinary labels in quite a few ways.

The main difference between an asset label and ordinary ones is that they look more sophisticated. They’re designed to make each item traceable in the event of theft or tampering, damage or loss by any other means, while each asset label usually comes with a code of some sort that, when listed in auditing, is easy to find when it’s needed.

Deterring thieves

One of the best things about asset labels is that, because they have an authoritative appearance, should your office get broken into for whatever reason, the items that are adorned with asset labels might be less likely to get stolen. They act as an effective deterrent against theft and criminal damage, which for firms who operate on a small budget is invaluable.

Asset labels are also more versatile than you might think. As well as being used for computers, they could be placed on printers, tablets, scanners, stationery, kitchenware and even furniture. Whatever they’re placed on, the item adorned with an asset label can be tracked and accounted for with no fuss whatsoever.

Cost-effective

In terms of office management, asset labels are also effective. They’re relatively cheap to buy, and don’t need too much in terms of maintenance. They can also help to save time too. A top tip from Stuart Jailler of Seareach Ltd is:

“For a low cost, thousands of pieces of a corporations’ electronic equipment can be marked with an asset identification label and tracked in inventory software.

“From loaning equipment between departments, through to the effective control of company assets, this is an essential part of business housekeeping that is often overlooked.”

Content sourced from SEAREACH.

For small businesses, the difficulty of setting up a business is greatly reduced by choosing to set up an online shop rather than go through the trouble of buying or renting a physical shop. Allowing products to be seen by customers all over the country, and not requiring lots of employees, ecommerce is a great way of setting up a company.

However, it looks like some SMEs are starting to show an interest in setting up physical shops to meet with demand.

Branching out

Just because a small business has its roots in online sales doesn’t mean there’s no promise of sales in on the high street, as many small businesses have already discovered.

One such example is Oak Furniture Land, a furniture company which started off as an online shop on auction website eBay. Just a few years after setting up in 2003, the company was setting shops across the UK and shows no signs of stopping.

Another company which recently branched out from online selling was eciggarettedirect.co.uk. Recently, the electric cigarette company opened up a shop in Swansea, Wales, after enjoying a growth of sales from their online shop.

James Dunworth, co-founder of ECigaretteDirect.co.uk, told the South Wales Evening Post: “E-cigarettes are no longer a niche market – they are becoming more and more mainstream.

“Since we started trading in 2008, we have had orders from all over the UK, as well as providing e-cigarettes to the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, America, Canada and much of Europe.”

Having a shop on the high-street puts a human side to an otherwise faceless operation, and gives customers the chance to try things out before they buy them.

“Customers have told us they want to be able to pop to a shop to get their electronic cigarette supplies,” Dunworth continues, “especially if they have forgotten to order refills.”

Why make the move?

Not only can having a store increase custom, but it raises brand awareness. There’s also the real bonus that it offers more jobs to the local community. Given that the economy has improved by 0.6% in the first quarter, there’s good reason for small businesses to be optimistic: and bringing sales onto the street could help boost things even further.

Content sourced from ECigaretteDirect.co.uk.

Little has been mentioned of the emergence of so-called non-bank finance in light of increasing caution amongst Irish banks meaning that they are reluctant to lend to SMEs. In other words, the kinds of companies that make up Ireland’s economic backbone, the kinds of companies that have witnessed their working capital dry up. It is for this reason that those very same companies are looking to alternative ways of unlocking cash tied up in receivables, a branch of invoice finance known as invoice discounting.

It is certainly becoming more popular as an alternative way of accessing credit in a cautious market. Typically, the borrower sends the lender a copy of their invoice(s) and up to 90% of the value of said invoice(s) is loaned immediately. The only requirement is that the annual turnover of the company is over £500,000, meaning that it appeals to a large number of businesses unwilling to put their faith in traditional lenders. In the majority of cases, there is no need for the customer making payments to the borrower to know about the invoice discounting process.

A look at some of the deals taking place in Ireland over the past few months would certainly give weight to the argument that the tide is turning in favour of alternative financing methodology. Three of the seven invoice finance deals to have taken place since the end of last year are for amounts in excess of €2million, whilst the smallest amount pushed £800,000, across industries such as manufacturing, distribution, IT services and food & beverage.

The landscape is certainly shifting. Whilst invoice finance may not be the prevalent methodology just yet, whereas previously the ratio sat at 80/20 in favour of the traditional lenders, it is now more of a 50/50 situation. As well as the resurgence of invoice discounting, there is a similar trend in areas such as car finance, leasing and foreign exchange. It is leading to overseas companies such as the UK’s ABN AMRO Commercial Finance considering establishing operations in Ireland.

Whilst the traditional lenders started broadening their horizons in the 1990s, offering a ‘one-stop shop’ service covering the whole financial services spectrum, it is only now that any real competition is beginning to show itself.

Content sourced from ABN AMRO Commercial Finance.

If your company is found guilty of miscalculating payroll, it can be placed under review or made to pay penalties for inaccuracies. So it’s important it’s done right the first time. Our guide examines the simple stages of working-out staff payroll.

Get Your Employees to Complete the Correct Documents

Before a new employee comes on board, he or she must fill out a state and federal Employee Withholding Allowance Certificate (more commonly known as a W-4 form). This document ensures that the business knows how much state income tax they should retain from the payroll and takes into account any exemptions. The percentage you find should then be applied to the employee’s gross pay.

Tip: remember that there’s a set amount of money which counts as non-taxable income. This escapes the clutches of state income tax.

Calculate The Employee’s Gross Pay

When it comes to calculating the employee’s gross pay, the system is simple. All you need to do is take the number of working hours within a given period and multiply it by the hourly rate. If an employee is working a 40 hour week and is earning £10 an hour, 40 x £10 = £400. It’s important to record any unpaid sick days or absences, as this deduction will have to be factored into the gross pay.

Use Federal and State Income Tax Tables

Obtain a tax table which operates based on their status (single, married but filing separately, head of household, or married but filing jointly) and their exemptions. Internal Revenue posts all up-to-date tables online, so they’re easy to access.

Applying Social Security

Social security stays at a fixed rate and manifests as a percentage of the employee’s earnings. For income under £113,700, social security is 6.2%. Medicare tax is 1.45% on top of that. Taxes for the self-employed are higher at 12.4% and 2.9% respectively.

Voluntary Deductions

Some other things you may have to deduct include 401, deferred compensation programmes, flexible spending accounts, and long-term disability deductions. Alternatively, there may be deductions enforced by the court, such as child maintenance or alimony.

Options for Payroll Calculations

There are plenty of payroll software programs, which reduce the likelihood that human error will hash up the information. The results can be easily printed off, along with end of year W-2 forms. Outsourced payroll services are usually a wise choice.

Know Your Politics

Every year, adjustments are usually made to policy, which affect which deductions you need to make to gross pay. Keep on top of these changes, otherwise you may find yourself on the wrong side of the law. You never can be too careful with other people’s wages.

Content sourced from Mitchell Charlesworth.

Over the next decade, it’s predicted that energy prices will continue to rise by as much as 26%; if that wasn’t bad enough, many experts believe that figure is a gross understatement. Businesses are on high-alert about rising overhead costs and are increasingly hoping to recuperate losses through energy saving schemes.

Checking Your Invoices

Wouldn’t it be great if you could rely on your energy supplier to send you accurate invoices? Unfortunately, these bills are infamous for overcharging, due to human error or cost estimates. You can compare your invoice charge to your actual energy consumption, thanks to smart metering.

If you hire an energy broker to take care of this issue, you can even ask him or her to go through the past invoices, to check that there were no previous instances of overcharging.

On-Site Survey

Welcoming energy specialists on to your premises to inspect your workplace is a great way to get a professional’s opinion on saving energy. They are trained to highlight inefficient processes, suggest improvements to current systems, and make you aware of schemes that could benefit your business (including government funding).

Of course, there are simple changes that can be made without the help of a specialist, such as encouraging your staff to be more energy conscious. Something as small as turning off all the lights in the building could save you as much as £350m a year, depending on the size of your company.

Reduce your business’s carbon emissions by starting an environmental consciousness campaign in the workplace. Ask employees to be mindful of their energy usage and offer rewards to areas of the building which hit their reduction targets.

Localised Power

Generating your own energy on-site can be an exciting and rewarding approach to reducing your overhead costs. Instead of leaning on the National Grid, explore more environmentally-friendly and renewable methods of generating your own energy. Whether that’s combined heat and power (CHP) or solar panels, you can talk to an energy consultant to consider your options.

Smart Metering

Monitoring your consumption is a fantastic approach to understand how you’re using your energy. Measuring the resource consumption across departments can highlight areas where energy is being overused.

Management software, specifically designed for energy, is available for all businesses, and some of the most high-tech models, such as am&t metering, can analyse and breakdown your data so it’s more user-friendly. It’s a great place to start, if you’re looking to cut energy expenditure.

Watch the Energy Market

Always take advantage of dips in energy prices, by utilising market tracking tools. Set up your next contract ahead of schedule, while costs are low. Energy prices are only going to increase with time, so the earlier you plan ahead, the better.

Content sourced from Energy Saving Trust and Energ Group.

Get In The Social Media Game

Probably the most glaringly obvious option for growing your business: snap up some new clients. Focus on how you’re advertising your company to the rest of the world. If you’re not on social media, you’re missing a killer opportunity to reel in more custom. By creating your own Twitter and Facebook account, your brand can reach many people. Update regularly and become everyone’s go-to authority, when it comes to styling.

Avoid posting anything that isn’t hairdressing related, but keep posting throughout the day. This could be a fantastic, inspirational hairstyle you saw in a magazine or take a picture of your favorite hair treatment of the day and post it on social media. If a prospective customer sees something they like, they’ll be sure to contact you first.

Ask all your friends and family to promote your social media pages online. Hopefully, this will trigger a ripple effect of shares. Encourage current customers to sign up too.

Particularly interesting for would-be customers are competitions to win hair products or equipment, so do give-aways every now and then on your Facebook wall. People will share your page and create a buzz around your brand. Once people are familiar with your business name, they become more likely to try you out.

Alternatively, you could go old school and print of stylised business cards or fliers to post around the local area. Remind people that your business exists; don’t fall into obscurity.

Customer Service Is Key

There’s no point attracting new customers, however, if you can’t keep your current ones. You need to keep clients coming back for more. How do you do this? Wonderful customer service.

Make your customers feel special; they usually come to the hairdressers for a treat. Think of the little things like refreshments, recommendations for hairdresser’s supplies, or pillows for chairs. It’s up to you to make the experience a positive one. Be friendly at all times and offer an opportunity for customers to leave feedback.

Keep thinking about how you can improve your business’ customer service. You may also want to offer a loyalty rewards package, seeing as they are so popular and encourage clients to come back.

Help Your Customers Spend More Money

By maximising the spending capacity of your current customers, you’re improving your income. For regulars, offer samples of new products or treatments and ask for their comments. Advertise promotions for services, so customers can try them out for a cheaper price. The trick is to create needs in your clients, or in the very least, desires.

Hopefully, when they want to treat themselves, they’ll come to you, as they already trust your services. Alternatively, they may come to think they need an extra treatment, until it becomes the norm.

Content sourced from Salons Direct.

We take a look at the dreaded area of IR35 and examine whether it applies to contractors who work overseas.

An overview of IR35

If you are self-employed, it is important you understand what IR35 is and how you can avoid getting accidentally caught. However, many people may not even have heard of the legislation, particularly if they are sole traders. We will therefore start with an overview of IR35 and how HMRC applies it.

Because of the undeniable tax advantages of working on a self-employed basis, there has been a surge in the numbers of people leaving employment and setting up as contractors. In many cases they are then going on to work on projects which normally would have been allocated to employed individuals.

The taxman became concerned that some individuals were doing this to deliberately avoid paying the higher rate of tax and National Insurance and launched IR35 as a result.

It is important to know how the IR35 Regulation will affect you.

The legislation is designed to catch those working in ‘disguised employment’ and to avoid being deemed as fitting the criteria; there are a number of different tests which must be passed. These include things such as being in control of your own work, setting your own hours, using your own equipment and being responsible for errors or mistakes.

The difficulty with IR35 is that the rules are not cast in stone and the way in which they are applied is very subjective, depending very much on the individual circumstances of the individual and their business. For this reason, IR35 investigations are often viewed with extreme caution by the self-employed.

Working overseas

Of course, as a contractor working overseas is certainly an option and one which is becoming evermore popular with UK professionals, especially in fields such as engineering or IT.

So how does IR35 fit in with UK residents who opt to accept an overseas contract? The answer is rather surprising.

Contrary to what individuals may believe, working overseas does not necessarily mean IR35 ceases to be an issue. If the limited company they are working for is registered in the UK, the same IR35 considerations will apply. However, the only difference is that for countries within the European Economic Area,  National Insurance contributions usually no longer be payable as the individual should be paying social security payments to the state in which they are temporarily residing.

The full rules and regulations about when IR35 applies to individuals working overseas can be summed up by a brief test: are you still liable to pay UK tax? If the answer is yes, then IR35 applies.

Understanding how your taxes work is important.

After an entire year of working overseas, individuals may be exempted from paying UK tax but will have to instead pay tax in the country they are working in. Whilst this may sound tempting, in reality it can be more complicated and in some cases even more restrictive than in Britain.

Complications

IR35 will apply regardless of where you opt to work in the world if you continue to be liable for UK tax. And one of the problems is that the IR35 review process works in exactly the same way no matter where you are.

It’s therefore essential to ensure that any foreign contracts adequately address the issue of IR35 and contain the relevant clauses to provide the protection you need should HMRC choose to investigate.

The other problem is that foreign clients may be unable or unwilling to provide evidence on your behalf if the taxman decides they want to interview them. And as HMRC has no jurisdiction outside the UK, they will have limited powers to enforce action. But don’t think this means you will be let off; instead you will be judged on the information available and that could be to your detriment.

Conclusion

It is absolutely imperative that you get professional advice if you are considering working overseas, not only to ensure you don’t get caught by IR35 but also to ensure that you maximise the potential for the country in which you plan on working. For example, some countries have laws which provide tax breaks to migrant workers, a fact worth taking into account when deciding where you want to be liable for tax.

HMRC may not have full international jurisdiction but IR35 is certainly a global concern for a UK tax payer and making sure you are just as prepared as if you were working in your home nation is absolutely vital.

Content sourced from Brookson Accounting Services.

The policy is provided by UK Export Finance (UKEF), the government body created to support exporting businesses, as well as SMEs looking to trade overseas, by providing credit insurance policies, political risk insurance and guarantees on bank loans.

Regions covered by the scheme include high-risk zones, such as Greece, South Korea and Israel.

David Arthur, Regional Development Director for International Trade at Bibby Financial Services said:

“Many SMEs face the problem of identifying opportunities within markets which are deemed too risky by some insurers, and this can mean that they are unable to obtain the level of funding they require.

“In some cases, businesses themselves find the prospect of trading in certain regions too much of a risk and the Export Insurance Policy will give such businesses the security and reassurance required to pursue these overseas opportunities.”

Exported goods and services account for over 33 per cent of UK GDP and in last year’s budget, George Osborne announced the government’s target to double UK exports to £1 trillion by 2020.

A recent study from Bibby Financial Services found that one in five SMEs were considering exports as a gateway to growth over the next two years.

Almost one in six (17 per cent) respondents in a UK-wide study said they were ‘very’ concerned about managing cash flow effectively over the next 12 months, with a further 27 per cent saying they were ‘quite’ concerned. Around half (46 per cent) of businesses report being hit by at least one recent cash flow setback – with late/ failed payments from customers (24 per cent), weak sales (8 per cent) and unexpected costs and charges (7 per cent) the top three reasons cited.

Larger UK businesses (those with annual revenues between £5 million – £20 million) are less concerned about cash flow compared than smaller companies, with 6 per cent saying they are ‘very’ concerned, compared to 14 per cent of firms with annual revenues between £500,000 – £1 million, and 22 per cent in the £250,000 – £500,000 bracket.

However, the research revealed greater use of cash flow management solutions such as Invoice Finance, Asset Finance and Supply Chain Finance by larger businesses: one in four (25 per cent) firms with turnovers between £5 million – £20 million have used Invoice Finance or intend to over the next 12 months, compared to 12 per cent with revenues of £500,000 – £1 million and 2 per cent in the £250,000 – £500,000 tier.

Marcelino Castrillo, Head of SME at Santander Corporate & Commercial, said: “Cash flow clearly remains a huge challenge for thousands of UK businesses. However, many businesses are missing out on effective alternative financing solutions such as invoice or supply chain finance – or relying excessively on loans and investments – and in doing so, are opening themselves up to unnecessary cash flow volatility and business risks.

“It can be very beneficial for companies to take a regular review of their resources, both in terms of cash flow and their wider business plans, to ensure they have the best toolkit to equip themselves for managing payments and dealing with the unexpected hurdles that all businesses face from time to time.”

At the same time, it found that one bank was charging a failing customer interest of only 0.2 per cent of its turnover, in effect artificially keeping that company afloat. The net result is that other firms would most likely have had to accept higher rates to make up for the loss, or may have been refused a loan altogether.

“The Government is long on talk but short on action,” said Chirag Shah, managing director of Nucleus Commercial Finance. “On the one hand it talks about the need to encourage alternative lenders such as Nucleus to step up to the plate; on the other, all of its actions are focused around the dominant High Street lenders who are the ones responsible for the current mess.

“SMEs, and especially SMEs in theconstruction sector, require a different kind of capital that requires different thinking and a different approach. They are being turned away from the High Street because of the folly of previous lending decisions and are paying the price for other people’s mistakes.”