The summer months can traditionally be a time of low business activity levels for many industry sectors – with August in particular being a time where trade can dip to all-year lows. So how have you fared during the summer months – and is it ‘business as usual’ or time to move to more drastic measures?

If you’re an online retailer, trading either through your own site or via larger networks such as Amazon or eBay, there’s plenty to feel optimistic about as we head out of summer and towards the key Christmas retailing period. Whilst the 21^st century dot.com entrepreneur doesn’t have everything falling in their lap, there are plenty of opportunities coming up to take advantage of. Fusion Accounts, the online accounting software specialists, has put together a few ideas to help you get your business in shape as we head inevitably towards silly season – and keep those virtual sales tills jingling!More...

The Business Inspector is a 4 part series which is shown on Channel 5 on a Wednesday night at 8pm. The show is presented by Hilary Devey and began on Wed 17^th March. Shows to follow are Wednesday 31^st March and Wednesday 7^th April 2010.

Each week Hilary Devey acts as a business inspector to two small businesses who are struggling to survive.

This week Hilary visited a go-karting company ‘Premier Karting’ and a cocktail bar ‘Mokoko’

The karting company was struggling to bring in any new business and owner Derek who had invested all his life savings into the business openly admitted they were running dry. They business had lost £15,000 that month and a total of £145,000 in the previous financial year. More...

The Business Inspector is a 4 part series which is shown on Channel 5 on a Wednesday night at 8pm. The show is presented by Hilary Devey and began on Wed 17^th March. Shows to follow are Wed 24^th March, Wednesday 31^st March and Wednesday 7^th April.

Presenter Hilary Devey stated that ‘Britain’s brimming with creativity but a terrifying number of businesses go bust each year and this shouldn’t be happening. I am going to teach businesses how to improve their all round business knowledge and direction, cash flow, marketing strategy and in some cases even their enthusiasm.  Invaluable lessons they will never forget.”

The HMRC sponsored the show as they recognised the effect that poor bookkeeping is having on the industry.More...

Tune into Five tomorrow night to watch the first of a new TV series “The Business Inspector”.

The series has been sponsored by HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and will raise awareness among small businesses that they need to keep good records.

This four-part series will be broadcast weekly on Five at 8pm from 17 March 2010.

Stephen Banyard, Business Customer Unit Director at HMRC said:

“We know that most small businesses want to get their tax right.  But we also know too that failure to take reasonable care costs the Exchequer over £6bn a year, with a major cause being poor record keeping.  We hope this series will raise awareness of the need for good record keeping.

“We also want small businesses to realise the benefits to them – such as improved cash flow – of taking better care of their records and paperwork.”

Each week presenter and award winning entrepreneur Hilary Devey, visit two small businesses and advises them how to improve their processes, systems, strategy and direction.

Hopefully this series will highlight to businesses the importance of having a good bookkeeping system in place and the value of having an online bookkeeping system which can be accessed real-time and from any location.

www.fusionaccounts.com

Many businesses are just beginning their new financial year.  Fusion accounts has a very simple year end routine which we believe allows the business to continue transacting whilst allowing the accountant and bookkeeper to prepare the reports and carry out adjustments for depreciation etc..

In order to support this Fusion accounts marks each account transaction with a year identifier.  Transactions that do not have a year identifier are deemed to be in the current year.

All new transactions have no year identifier and so are deemed to be in the current year with the exception of nominal adjustments which may be made in previous year.

A year end session marks all transactions up to the entered date as being in that year end.  When the year end is committed the adjustments are made to clear down the sales accounts etc.

The upshot of this model is that the year end can be run at any time and that once it has been run the transactions, and so the financials, for that year are fixed.  So even if a transaction is dated in the previous year it will not alter its figures.  Similarly, previous years transactions can be edited as the reversal and new transaction both appear in the current year and the original transaction remains in the original year.

We recommend the following process for year ends.

• Carry out all bank reconciliation up to the year end date.
• Create a year end session for the year end date.
• Carry out any adjustments on the year end as Journal Entries in that year.
• Commit the year end session

This process can be carried out any time subsequent to the end of the year.