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Given the current economic climate in the United Kingdom, a large number of small businesses are putting a particular focus on lowering costs and minimising financial responsibities. One excellent way of doing this is to utilise serviced offices, which generally refers to sharing office space with other businesses.
Serviced offices inside large business complex’s are quite a new trend in the United Kingdom, but have been widely used in the United States for 20-30 years. These business centres allow small businesses to enjoy the use of meeting rooms, secretarial services and a completely equipped office environment.
What a lot of small businesses find particularly appealing is the amount of money they can save right at the beginning, as they don’t need to put in any money whatsoever for office equipment (representing a major saving).
Offices like this allow a company to grow at a healthy rate, by focusing on their work and minimising financial responsibility.
The industry has seen such a growth in popularity that there are now dozens of companies specialising in serviced offices, making the market very competitive. This can only be good news for consumers, as it gives them an opportunity to compare prices and services, meaning they can make an informed choice with their money. Some areas of the country will be more competitive than others, and although there are serviced offices available in most major towns and cities, area like London will be the most competitive. Try searching for serviced offices Victoria or serviced offices Soho, and you should be greeted with several different providers for office space in the area.
Obviously the exact cost of your office space will depend on what exactly you want from an office and the location it’s in (London offices are likely to be more expensive that Aberystwyth offices for example). Generally, prices will depend on the amount of space you require, the number of desks, the quality and size of the building, current parking facilities, etc. Whatever price you are quoted though, this price will be all you need to pay. The final amount is usually all inclusive, meaning you won’t have to worry about cleaning, heating, lighting, maintenance, reception or security bills. Hopefully this will have given you a good idea of why serviced offices are so popular with small businesses, and how they might be useful for your business.
Tags: offices, serviced offices, small business
Posted in Business · July 23rd, 2010 · Comments (0)
Many people confuse the jobs of a bookkeeper and an accountant, especially since bookkeepers are sometimes referred to as accounting technicians or accounting clerks. While very similar, a bookkeeper focuses on maintaining timely and accurate records of financial data – ranging from income, payments, sales, and purchases. An accountant, on the other hand, takes the information recorded by the bookkeeper in order to create financial statements. Since the jobs are intertwined, some accountants actually start their careers as bookkeepers.
Bookkeeper’s can choose between single-entry recording systems and double-entry recording systems. The single-entry system is used by many small businesses and only utilizes income and expense accounts. However, the double-entry system that uses a balancing system of debits and credits is actually more accurate and will ensure that the books are truly accurate. In the double-entry system, every transaction is record in two different areas of the books.
A bookkeeper can record all the business transactions in ledgers, journals or on a computer database. Everything that is involved in the business including sales, purchases, cash, credit, pay outs, and other items are recorded in these very important places. Everything that is spent, bought, or sold throughout the days events are then recorded in these types of journals, whether digital or not, so that the business has an accurate accounting at the end of the week.
Income statements and balance sheets are created from ledgers, which include various financial data that is divided into sections. The general, or nominal, ledger details the various income, expenses, liabilities, and assets of a business. The customer, or sales, ledger illustrates the various financial information transacted with customers. The supplier, or purchase, ledger shows the company’s transactions with various suppliers.
A bookkeeper will periodically, usually once a week, make sure that the books are balancing properly. What they can do is either print out the database or go through the ledger line by line to make sure that everything is balancing properly. This includes creating a credit and debit column starting with a day of the week, usually corresponding with when your sales week starts and when it ends. This is a good way of making sure that there are not any mistakes in your bookkeeping that could possibly create a ton of problems down the road.
Large businesses often employ multiple full-time bookkeepers in order to keep up with their various bookkeeping needs, as the job can be lengthy and complicated. However, small businesses often find hiring a qualified bookkeeping service a better allocation of funds over employing a full-time, in-house bookkeeper. A bookkeeper will visit the business as often as needed to ensure that complete, accurate, and balanced financial records are kept in a detailed set of books for the company to use for its accounting.
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Tags: accountancy, bookkeeping, finance, small business, Taxes
Posted in Taxes · July 16th, 2010 · Comments (0)