Do as I say, not as I do – the pit of doom for regular blogging

What is my New Year’s resolution? To follow my own advice. When I sit with a client  and develop their social media and marketing plans I always say: “Whatever you do, when you start a Twitter account, Facebook page or blog, make sure you update it regularly.  Include thoughts that are personal to you, maybe talk about an interesting article you’ve read recently or some new research that’s relevant to you and your blog readers. It’s all about making your page interesting and informative.”

 

What has happened to me in the past? I failed miserably. Client work took precedence, staff changed and all my time was taken up with the day-to-day operations of running my business. Consequently, I ran out of time and I stopped writing blog articles. Shame on me! I’m not the first or last person to have fallen into this trap. But not anymore!

 

So, what will I do in future to ensure this doesn’t happen again? My New Year’s resolution is to set aside just a couple of hours every month to update my blog. It won’t be long. It won’t always have to be full of statistics, quotes and research. The idea of a blog is to impart thoughts, based on interests and experience. With this in mind, I’m sure we all have something useful to say – and even I can probably stick to that. So, watch this space!

Susanne Hasselmann
Director, Scirum Ltd

www.scirum.biz
@scirum

Financial Management for SME's

Congratulations! You have turned your idea into a business. You have a plan for the business today and how it will develop in future. You may even have had a few years of business experience behind you, but, whether you are a start-up or an established business there are still a number of considerations anyone managing business finances should know about.  

We at Scirum have therefore put together a series of financial blog posts that will give you some of these basic tips and tricks of the trade. Of course, if you need any more detailed information and help, just give us a call on 01264 860060.

       1.       Financial & Management Accounting – what is the difference? Why do I need it? (Click here)

       2.       Record-keeping - Record your income and expenditure (Click here)

       3.       Cash control – Develop good cash management practices (to be published)

       4.       Planning – Make a budget (to be published)

       5.       Processes – Determine how you are going to organise your office (to be published)

       6.       Controlling – Controls for when you have other people working for you (to be published)

The best advice we can give you is not to ignore your finances.  You may have some of the skills necessary to keep track of your income and outgoings and you may even decide to do your own tax computation at the end of the financial year when HMRC deadlines approach but you should always consider the following:

1.       How much time do you spend doing your finances? Could you spend it more wisely by networking and selling your products?

2.       Do you know what value an external view and some experienced hands can bring to your business? Have you tried it?

At Scirum, we have a dedicated team who take care of our clients' social media planning and digital presence. If you are thinking about increasing your social media activity, why not give us a call (01264 860060) or email us?

Mary Proctor, Commercial Financial Controller, Scirum Ltd.

For more useful tips and answers to common questions from SMEs, visit www.scirum.biz or follow us on Twitter and Google+, like us on Facebook or join our LinkedIn group.

  

Financial & Management Accounting – what is the difference? Why do I need it?

            Let us first of all consider the two types of accountants.  Not everyone knows that there are Financial and Management Accountants and they offer very differing skills.

            Financial Accountants are chiefly involved in a business’s legal entity set up (eg. Limited company, partnership, sole trader or self-employed, etc) as well as their tax computations.  They can audit the business’s accounts to ensure compliance with accounting laws and to test that financial controls are rigorous enough to avoid fraud, for example. They also advise and assist business owners with the submission of forms required by HMRC and by Companies House (if registered).  They can provide advice on which expenses are allowable for Tax, thereby decreasing the annual tax bill.  These are some of the skills for you to consider when deciding whether you need a Financial Accountant. 

            Financial Accountants are usually external to the small company and have offices on the high street. They will provide you with a quoted cost. To ensure you keep your costs to a minimum you should regularly test the market by asking other local firms to quote. If you change your Financial Accountant make sure you do this at your year-end, so transferring the accounts becomes a relatively simple task. You should also consider the type of work that is done - the more you can employ someone to carry out routine transactions (from a trained admin assistant, to a bookkeeper) the more you are in a position to reduce your bills.

            The alternative is to do it yourself and take advice from HMRC websites and run the gauntlet with them as to whether you are actually compliant with tax and accounting laws. With a small number of transactions to process and little complexity in the business, there are lots of small businesses doing this! However, you need to weigh up the time you need to spend learning the tax rules and keeping up with latest legislation against the time required to grow your business.

            Management Accountants, in contrast, are generally internal to a company.  They process the weekly and monthly results; provide analysis of cashflow and profit; forecast financial outcomes and provide analytical insight on a product, a service or on a customer level.  The Management Accountant effectively provides ‘a second set of books’ that you use internally to drive your business.  The overall figures stay the same, but the Management Accountant uses models to extract parts of the financial data. For example, you might wish to understand the strategic implications of making certain capital investments or expanding a product line. The Management Accountant would be able to draw out the relevant costs and model different scenarios for you, analysing product profitability or business unit profitability as well as cash flow, thus giving you a better understanding of your business and helping you to make the best strategic decisions.

            If you are too small to be able to afford a full-time Finance Director post, Scirum provides part-time support to its clients in book keeping, management accounting and strategic financial planning. Please call us on 01264 860060 or send us a message. We are a friendly bunch and happy to help and talk through your requirements.

For more useful tips and answers to common questions from SMEs, visit www.scirum.biz or follow us on Twitter and Google+, like us on Facebook or join our LinkedIn group.

Record-keeping

Receipts and Invoices: 

When you start your business you will start spending money before you make any.  That is a fact for all but very few businesses.  For several reasons you will need to keep a record of those outgoings and keep track of all of your receipts.  You will need to keep them to support the tax computations you (or your accountant) will make at the end of the business year and you will need them to refer to should you have payment queries or you need to contact your suppliers.  You really must get organised from the start.  The old fashioned idea of collecting your invoices and receipts in a shoebox is a good analogy to start with!  If you are going to keep your own ‘books of account’, this is a good way to start... at least you can find them all in one place!  Alternatively, you could file these and divide them up either a) alphabetically: so you can find what you are paying by supplier name or b) by month: so you can input (and later trace) them to your accounts on a month by month basis.  You have now got a system for storing your paperwork.  As you grow, you can develop more sophisticated systems with the help of a bookkeeper. For example, you may use a numbering system that is stamped onto the incoming document and logged on your ledger.  In that way, you build your filing system and you trace those documents using the sequential numbers stamped onto them.

Ledger book, Spreadsheet or Accounts program: 

At first, for a small start-up, this is not a major consideration.  If you are computer literate and have a version of Excel, you can open a new file and set up three tabs (i) Income (or Sales) (ii) Expenditure (or Costs) (iii) Summary Income & Expenditure (Profit or Loss) Statement.  I have shown a screen shot example of each below.  The Summary uses links to the other two pages to calculate Income less Expenditure (Sales less Costs) giving you a figure for profit or loss.  You can list items in a long column or you can try to track the type of sale or type of cost by using headings across the top of the page, in columns, with the Supplier or Customer name down the left hand side, alongside the date and cheque/invoice number. For some micro businesses, an accounting ledger book is sufficient and they are more comfortable with this method. The layout is approximately the same as the spreadsheet layout shown below.

The first example is showing a suggested breakdown for Income (or Sales).

The second example below is showing a suggested breakdown for Expenditure (or Costs).

When you hand over your metaphorical shoebox of invoices to someone, this is an example of what they will do with them in order to produce a Summary for you for the period under review.  An example of the Summary Income & Expenditure Statement is below:

If your invoices remain in the shoebox you are missing out on summaries and analysis that will positively influence you in decision-making for the future of your business. “I know what my costs are, even if they are in a shoebox.  I know what I have spent”… this approach does not separate out the true costs of your product/service going forward.  The figures you have in your head could well include the costs of your business cards, the deposit on your office, the cost of your website set up and your hosting costs.  How you apply those costs to your product/service will greatly affect your pricing and your expectations of profit.  This is exactly where a few hours with a management accountant offering decision support would be beneficial as that insight and coaching would serve you well for the future of your business.

Inevitably as your business grows, the range of products/services you offer may become more extensive, or perhaps you may reach the VAT threshold (currently £81,000) and you feel that you need to have more in-depth financial analysis and greater financial control.  In this case you would consider accounting software packages.  There are a number of well-known brands out there:  Sage and Quickbooks, for example, have been very dominant in this market over many years and traditionally have been set up on a standalone computer. But with the growth in cloud accounting, others like Xero have risen to prominence.  Entry prices for cloud based packages start at £6 to £9 per month. Each package will have their advantages and disadvantages and some of the features will be useful to you and easier to use whilst some provide a Rolls Royce when a Mini will do (a common expression used by accountants!).  You may have specialist needs such as multi-currency or stock control so you have to choose wisely, as not all packages are equal. Of course, if you need help with choosing the right package, the Scirum team is here to help!

Our aim in this article is to demonstrate to you that you can get on with developing your business whilst spending very little effort setting up and running adequate financial ‘systems’.  Always remember that sophistication comes at a price, so make sure you cut your coat to fit the cloth but remember also that with good financial analysis and control you can recoup those costs through improved financial management and decision making.

The next article in this blog series on Financial Management will look at the challenges of controlling your cash.  Keep following the blog for further useful articles on the essential aspects of financial control or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn. If you have any questions, just call us on 01264 860060 or send us a message. We are a friendly bunch and happy to help and talk through any challenges you may be facing.

Mary Proctor

Commercial Financial Controller

For more useful tips and answers to common questions from SMEs, visit www.scirum.biz or follow us on Twitter and Google+, like us on Facebook or join our LinkedIn group.

The best social media channels for SMEs – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, Pintrest, Tumblr

Who uses what social media and why? What does your social media say about you?

The Pew, a research centre based in Washington, states that overall, 42% of online adults use two or more social networks, while 36% use only one (the remaining 22% did not use any of the five specific sites they asked about – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Pinterest). Among those who only use one major social networking platform, 84% say that Facebook is the single site that they frequent.

Facebook:  In addition to being the most commonly used social networking platform, Facebook also has high levels of engagement among its users: 63% of Facebook users visit the site at least once a day, with 40% doing so multiple times throughout the day. 42% of online adults use multiple social networking platforms. For those who use only one social networking site, Facebook is typically—though not always—the platform of choice.

While Facebook is popular across a diverse mix of demographic groups, other sites have developed their own unique demographic user profiles.

Facebook and Instagram exhibit especially high levels of user engagement: A majority of users on these sites check in to them on a daily basis.

Twitter: The Twitter audience is continuing to grow in a similar fashion to previous social networking sites - Facebook attracted a core of teen and young adult users, then the parents’ of those users started signing up, and the social networking giants main growth came from the older generation.

Twitter is heading in the same direction in the UK. The trend in the number of users aged 12 – 44 years old is slowing down, this user age now rates as below average whilst the users aged 65 years and over is forecast to increase by 37.8% this year. If your business offers services that the older generation are interested in, then perhaps get ahead of the trend and join Twitter. Of the 42% of all online adults, 2% use Twitter as their only social media account. Similarly to Instagram, Twitter appeals to younger adults, urban dwellers, and non-whites.

Twitter has a significantly smaller number of users than Facebook, but users of these sites also tend to visit them more frequently, 46% of Twitter users are daily visitors (with 29% visiting multiple times per day). Users tend to read more of the content posted on Twitter than post their own tweets, so content is being consumed although there is less conversation.

LinkedIn: LinkedIn is particularly popular with college/university graduates and internet users in higher income households. Of the 42% of online adults, 8% use LinkedIn. At the end of last year, LinkedIn was found to have the oldest audience out of all of the social networks. Business to Business companies saw a 61% success rate in customer acquisition via LinkedIn whereas Business to Customer companies had 39%. Popular with Financial, IT and Telephone Communications industries, as well as higher education and information services.

Pinterest: Almost like a scrapbook. If you have more visual content you want to share instead of written information, Pinterest would be better. Female users make up 80% of all Pinterest users. Of the 42% of online adults who only use one social media platform, 4% use Pinterest. The most popular age group is 25-34 year olds, so companies advertising products to 25-34 year old women, should get a Pinterest account. 70% of visitors from Pinterest spend more than those from non-social network site referrals. The most popular categories of Pinterest content are tutorials, DIY and recipes.

Google+: If you are targeting a Google+ audience, you should be aware that multimedia content achieves more positive outcomes as the majority of users are single, young males interested in IT and videos. Luxury brands, like Ferrari for example, have already connected with their mainly male customers through Google+ by using multimedia branded content to appeal to them.

Tumblr: If you’re marketing products for young adults and college students, then you definitely need a Tumblr account. 45% of users are 35 and under. Only 35% of users have an income of less than $30K, 65% of Tumblr users are college educated. 

Instagram: Instagram has a significantly smaller number of users than Facebook has. Users tend to visit Instagram more frequently with 57% using it at least once a day and 35% visiting the site multiple times per day and almost every day. Of the 42% of all adults using social media, 2% use only Instagram. Instagram is similar to Twitter in that they both appeal to younger adults, urban dwellers, and non-whites, there is substantial overlap between Twitter and Instagram user bases.

VK: Mainly used in former Soviet Union areas, VK has more than 100 million active users. It is quite interactive; you can connect with friends, blog, listen to music, watch films, play games and get the news. With over 70 million internet users, the average Russian citizen spends twice as much time on social media sites than the average American. VK has 47 Million Russian members and is the most popular website in the country. There are 40 million groups on VK, which make it an ideal place to advertise, group adverts are integrated within newsfeeds.

Flickr: There are around 10,000,000 Flickr users, of which 43% are men and 57% are women. A common trend with photo and video sharing social media platforms is that women use them a lot more than men. Users aged 35 and over make up 65% of all users, 31% are 18-34 years old and only 5% are 13-17 years old. Flickr is owned by the same company as Tumblr: Yahoo

MySpace: In 2011 a study from AdAge concluded that the highest percentage of female MySpace users was 19.6%, they are aged 14-17 years old. The highest percentage of male MySpace users is 27.2% and they are aged 18-20. The age of users corresponds consistently between males and females, with users of both genders dropping to around 7% at ages 30-34 and picking back up again to around 12% until 55-64 years old where number of users drops to around 1%. 



At Scirum, we have a dedicated team who take care of our clients' social media planning and digital presence. If you are thinking about increasing your social media activity, why not give us a call (01264 860060) or email us?

Grace O'Brien, Digital and Marketing Executive, Scirum Ltd.

For more useful tips and answers to common questions from SMEs, visit www.scirum.biz or follow us on Twitter and Google+, like us on Facebook or join our LinkedIn group.