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Startup group

Startups are literally a journey into the unknown and entrepreneurs need to be comfortable with taking on ambiguity, uncertainty and multiple challenges.

Unfortunately, on average, 9 out of 10 startups will go out of business, and the remaining that are able to survive and succeed are the ones that capture the qualities outlined below. These qualities are generally deeply ingrained in the character of successful entrepreneurs.

1) Vision

A well-defined vision is a skill or gift that every company leader needs in order to cross the finish line. It will be the major force behind an entrepreneur’s success and will serve as a compass in tough times. A startup needs to envision how to monetise from the very beginning. The first dollar counts, especially for potential investors.

2) Speed

Getting things done in a quick manner is one of the many reasons why startups are able to reach their goals and milestones. It makes a difference when a startup is able to launch on time or when it’s able to move much faster than competitors. Successful startups never delay the process of getting things done, and have to work as much as needed until something is complete. The most productive people are the ones who make the most of their time. Regarding speed, having knowledgable people in-house really makes a difference. The faster you can make the mistakes, learn from them and improve your offering, the better.

3) Budget Masters

A successful startup is efficient in managing its finances and able to operate very lean. Every angle should have its own budget assigned and unnecessary expenses should be avoided. It is important to know what the company needs in order to accomplish milestones and budget accordingly. When resources are limited, and time is of the essence, companies need to master the skill of doing more with less.

4) Social Skills

Networking is another reason for startup success. A founding team that knows powerful and influential people in the business is completely priceless and can open the doors to partnerships and investors in a New York minute. Great startups have an outstanding CEO who is able to work his or her way into any organization. On the other hand, startup leaders need to inspire people and give them reason to follow them through the uncertain journey, often where team members are required to make many sacrifices such as work/life balance, salary cuts, limited or no health insurance and so forth.

5) Discipline

Discipline starts with self-control and is a product of a strong self-imposed personal standard. Without discipline, startups fail to succeed in business even if situated in the best economy. Self-discipline leads to positive work ethic, and work ethic leads to getting things done effectively and efficiently. It is critical to have all the team members aligned and working together to get to the finish line.

6) Determination

Strong determination is always necessary for success to take place. A successful startup emphasizes the significance of determination when building a business and never quits, especially when the road gets bumpy and scary. There are many challenges that will arise and the startup team needs determination to overcome these challenges.
Just like the book from Jim Collins “Good To Great”, if the right people are seated in the right seats of the bus, the startup will eventually find its direction towards success. Determination and persistence is a key component to making this fact happen.

7) Ability to Adapt to Changes

The best startups are always willing to adapt to new technologies.  Adapting to change can lead to major breakthroughs. During the early years, the startup will need to iterate the product plenty of times until they are able to  find the secret sauce and get it right.

8) Fundraising Skills

Cash flow is the blood line of any business.  This means that businesses can be ruined with inadequate capital. Successful startups are the ones that have sufficient capital to run their business operations.  The primary duty of a startup CEO is to be able to raise capital. A good way to raise money  online  is via equity and debt crowdfunding platforms as it allows the startup to raise funds, in some cases, in just 60 days from accredited investors. This eliminates the need of doing an 8 month road show which is tiring and ultimately very unproductive for the business itself.

9) Unwavering Belief

Every business’s success revolves around taking risks. Successful startups are prepared to take risks. As they say, the most profitable investments usually require high amounts of risk. However, such decisions need to have a solid due diligence in order to avoid as much as possible the downfall in the event things don’t turn out as they were expected, which is often the case.10) Master of Time Management

Startup life can be rough, between the mountain of things to do and limited staff and resources, the company’s success hinges on the team’s productivity and effectiveness to do more with less. I was once told by a savvy and very successful business man that having things to do will never be an issue, but carefully picking what to focus on and what to prioritize will be your business challenge.

11) Execution

Lastly, having an idea is just the beginning and really, execution is 98% in determining each business’ success.  For this part, the experience of the team is critical as their backgrounds will help towards making more good decisions than bad ones.

In summary, successful startups are always looking for opportunities to do something better by thinking outside of the box and constantly questioning the status quo. They learn from their mistakes and fix them quickly as they continue their long, challenging and soon-to-be successful journey.

 

Article by Tanya Prive, Rock the Post

 

image by plewicki

 

Tape measure

Our strapline sounds good and seems reasonable but what is a realistic expectation and how do we prove it  – that’s our challenge.

Years ago I was the Financial Controller for parts of very large companies – Unilever, Marsh & McLennan, TV Times, Time Life and Times Warner. Naturally I reported monthly otherwise I would have been shown the door pretty quickly.

I left this world to start BookCheck which from the first has provided monthly Management Accounts but the strange thing is that such monthly MI is almost unheard of in our prospects with turnovers from £250,000 up to £1 million and unlikely, especially in quality, above that. So why is this? There are two key reasons:

• lack of skilled resources to produce them
• lack of knowledge or experience to use them and benefit

Although our prospects have a natural bias in that they are talking to us, very few have Management Accounts (or MI) or if they do then it’s so unsound it’s worse than useless. So would these businesses be under achieving profits by not measuring?

It ought to be possible to produce quality MI, use it and then expect a significant increase in profitability but by how much?

How do we calculate a range of expectations? The ideal would be to measure our clients but that will take time. So we wonder are there are any UK statistics on this subject that we could use?

At least we have one client example – they started with us engaged on 25 contracts with a typical life of 2 to 3 years. The business was impressive however they had a big weakness – they didn’t know the individual contract profitability. Now they do from our BAR – BookCheck Advanced Reporting, now they work on the lower profit areas to improve, they also focus on the higher profit areas to increase such business. It’s all so obvious but it hadn’t been achieved previously. Over time it’s increased their Gross Margin by 3% which on a turnover of £3M has added £90,000 to their bottom line. That’s one heck of an achievement from just reporting.

Measuring overheads likewise is the basis for a significant reduction in costs but by how much on average? Would 10% be reasonable?

Our challenge is expanding this information across our client base in the meantime does anyone have any research on what a reasonable expectation might be? Of course the interesting extension is what would be the effect of properly used MI on the results of UK plc?

Author – Anthony Pilkington, Managing Director of BookCheck Ltd

image from aussiegall

We’re all very familiar with the term SME and hardly anyone needs reminding that it stands for Small Medium Enterprises. It’s used everyday somewhere or other. Today’s article in my paper reported “about 63% of loan applications from SMEs secured a loan” so what’s the problem?

Of the 4.5 million private sector businesses In the UK what percentage are SMEs? Is it 40% or 60 % or more? Would you believe it’s 99.87% and that’s the problem.

Here’s the BIS Summary

 

Employees

Businesses

Employment

Turnover

thousands

£   millions

solo None

3,557,255

74.20%

3,902

16.33%

207,805

6.64%

micro 1-9

1,022,695

21.33%

3,848

16.11%

416,162

13.29%

small 10-49

177,950

3.71%

3,471

14.53%

454,327

14.51%

medium 50-249

29,750

0.62%

2,909

12.18%

450,384

14.38%

SMEs (0-249)

4,787,650

99.87%

14,130

59.14%

1,528,679

48.82%

large 250 or more

6,455

0.13%

9,763

40.86%

1,602,870

51.18%

All businesses

4,794,105

100.00%

23,893

100.00%

3,131,549

100.00%

All employers

1,236,850

25.80%

19,991

83.67%

2,923,744

93.36%

Source BIS Department for Business   Innovation & Skills - Business Population Estimates 2012

Just about all private sector businesses are SMEs so it’s a really meaningless term.  A great deal of policy is focused on SMEs – you don’t have to look far to see this every day. But focus is the wrong word because SMEs cover all the way from the 1 person business (74%) up to 249 employees. To make any sense, policy needs to be focussed on a minimum breakdown of solo (1 person), micro (up to 10), small (up to 49) and medium above this as obviously these are very different businesses in many respects.

All of our clients are SMEs yet they vary enormously across the size range, just about everything is different, including their needs.

The more focused the policy is then the more likely of course it will be successful but do policy makers really differentiate, do they have a real understanding of a solo business looking for finance, do the statistics break it down – it’s doubtful and there’s very little sign of this information being published.

SME however is such a convenient term so how do we wean ourselves away from something that is meaningless – I would love to know your thoughts and suggestions.

 

BookCheck is in the middle between lenders and their customers – we hear both sides. Our clear and extensive experience is that there is a disconnect between the two. Whilst lending continues, the question is how many deals have been lost because of this. And how much are growth prospects being wasted?

Just 40% of companies with fewer than 250 employees reported using any form of external finance, the lowest level since the start of 2010, a key survey shows.

The bank-funded Business Monitor also revealed that just one in three firms that are planning to apply for a loan or overdraft are confident their bank will agree to the request, down from more than half at the start of 2012, and a record low for the quarterly survey.

EEF, the manufacturers’ group, called for an “immediate review” of small business finance in light of the results, including a focus on increasing competition and making it easier for companies to switch bank.

Lee Hopley, the EEF’s chief economist, said: “Despite investment and investment intentions holding up this year, disengagement with external finance providers is on the rise. We need every pound of investment we can right now to support our SMEs growing into the globally-focused, mid-sized and ultimately large businesses of tomorrow.”

Shiona Davies, director at BDRC Continental, which conduced the research, said the results were down to a combination of a weak economic climate reducing the appetite for credit and an assumption that banks aren’t ‘open for business’.

“There’s a clear message that SMEs are moving away from external finance; fewer are saying they’re renewing facilities or that they’ll apply in the future.”

She added that lack of confidence that banks will approve an application “contrasts with the actual success rates”, which stand at around 70pc.

However, the smallest businesses are finding it harder to secure finance, Ms Davies said. Among first time applicants for bank finance, just 42% were successful.

Alex Jackman, of lobby group the Forum of Private Business, said: “There’s an undeniable and altogether unsurprising drift away from banks as lenders. It’s not a dramatic collapse in trust, more of a slow, inexorable creep away. The banks really must address this issue for the good of the UK economy if they are to avert a real shift in cultural attitudes to finance sourcing.” He added that “Government must read the riot act to the banks to improve their support for businesses that are in the higher risk category, if not with money but by way of more tailored business advice and support”.

The survey – which is used by the Business Department to monitor the treatment of small businesses by banks – also found that only a minority of those declined for a loan or overdraft were offered alternative forms or sources of funding.

Advice provided by banks was typically rated “poor”, and awareness and use of an independent appeals process remains “very limited”.

“Their perception is that they haven’t been signposted elsewhere. They seem disappointed by the whole process,” said Ms Davies. She added that there was also widespread ignorance of Government schemes to boost lending and reduce the cost of loans, such as Funding for Lending.

“If there was a perception that cheaper finance is available, more companies might apply.”

The research described the biggest group of small companies as “happy non-seekers” of finance, since 63% of firms are content not to apply for outside funding.

Ms Hopley added that the Government’s planned ‘business bank’ should be a “commercially focused retail challenger to compete with the incumbents”.

How do you demonstrate to a complete stranger that they should invest in your business? What makes your business more attractive? How do you reduce the cost of the money (i.e. sell less equity for more money?).

Here are 15 ways you can show that you are better than other competing ideas. This is not an exclusive list, just some of the most important ones.

1. Excellent Management Team. A good management team can be successful with a poor product but the reverse is not true. So no matter what you are doing, you need a knowledgeable, well-rounded, capable management team.
2. Have a working prototype. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” So if you can show your product or service rather than just talk about it, you will allow people to quickly evaluate whether you have a solution to a common problem.
3. Have a prototype you can sell (MVP). The Minimally Viable Product is about having something you can start selling as quickly as possible. Funds from customers always trump those from investors (and are cheaper too).
4. Good advisors on board. Advisors can help prevent you making mistakes, provide insight into the future, suggest other avenues for your product/service, etc. So a good set of advisors is essential to moving the company forward. One caveat though, if you have ten advisors and none of them are prepared to put money in, it suggests that they think it is too risky (and they are experts in your business).
5. Legal company set up and operating. Have something someone can put money into – a real company which is registered, has expenses, income, owns the assets, etc.
6. Sell one to a friend & then stranger. Sell one to a friend and they show that they want it although they could be just being nice to you. Sell them to strangers and you demonstrate you are doing something right.
7. Put your own money in. If your idea is too risky for you to put your own money in (and you are the expert in your idea) then it is too risky for mine.
8. Family & friends investment. Family and friends believe in you and your ability to make the company work. They can demonstrate this by providing time and/or money. If your partner went out to work in order to support you in your endeavour, they really believe in you.
9. Purchase order from a good customer. Having a real order for your product from a well-known brand name demonstrates that you’ve got something that people really want. And it links you to their brand showing that you can really play in this marketplace.
10. Build barriers to entry. If your idea is good then others will come and copy/innovate so you need to make sure you area ahead of them. Patents and copyright are only part of the picture. Other barriers include market penetration, quality customers, marketing collateral, validated business model, etc.
11. Good reference customer. Have a well-known customer say how great you are. People will buy on that recommendation.
12. Documentation showing company owns IP. If someone is putting money into something, they want to be assured that it owns assets. Ensure that all the documentation is there to show that any documents, patents, copyright, etc. is owned (or has been fully transferred) to the company.
13. Business Plan. A business plan sets out the founder’s reasons for creating the company. It will demonstrate to a stranger that the management team know about the market place, how to produce the product, how to fulfil order, etc. It doesn’t need to be long. The best I’ve seen was just three pages. I never read the one that was 270 pages.
14. Your pitch. This can’t be poor or unprofessional. If you can’t sell yourself, you’ll find it difficult to sell your business. Get some help and project passion, determination and professionalism. You can’t win funding in just the first few minutes of a pitch, but you can certainly lose it. Don’t be like the poor performers on Dragon’s Den.
15. Management Information. MI is for a little bit down the road when you have some numbers to report, even if only costs. This area is usually overlooked, it’s an afterthought but if the information is prompt and sound you will be streets ahead of the competition in attracting investment.

The more of these you have completed, the cheaper your money will be.

Based upon and reproduced with permission from Brian Dorricott at Meteorical

BookCheck has used a Mentor – here’s how to do it.

Mentors can provide a great deal of support and advice, whether you’re starting a business or growing an existing one. Sage Business Expert Caroline Baxter gives her advice on how to choose a good mentor

Why should you have a mentor? A mentor is someone who can offer you a different perspective. A good mentor does not offer you specific advice, instead helps you to find the answers yourself. A good mentor will encourage you; tell you the truth even when the truth hurts and will also celebrate your success. A good mentor can help you through tough decisions and can be a sounding board for new ideas.

Mentors genuinely enjoy helping others, seeing others reach success and helping others not make the same mistakes they might have made. A good mentor/mentee relationship gives both parties a reward. You can pay a mentor for their services or you can always give your mentor gifts, or pay for lunch when you meet up as a token of your appreciation. Or you can help them in their business by referring clients. Finding a good mentor requires some planning and thought.

1. Identify some possible candidates. They might be friends, family or simply someone you respect in the business world. If you are choosing family or friends, be careful. Business and pleasure do not always mix. But if you are sure they are far enough removed from you then go for it. When asking around, other people may suggest contacts who you can consider asking.
2. When you do approach someone to ask if they would be a mentor, ask nicely, be polite and say why you thought of them. If you admire their skills, tell them. This is the best way to get someone to say yes, as well as check that they are a good fit.
3. Consider how the relationship will work. What are you looking for? Try not to be too needy. Define whether you will meet in person, or over the phone. Once a month or once a week? Your arrangement should suit both parties.
4. Try to find a mentor that while does think in similar ways to you, also pushes you to think about things in a different way. Your mentor should be someone who you occasionally disagree with, can have a mature debate or discussion with as well as someone who has a broad view. Yes you want someone you can gel with and enjoy their company, but you also want someone to push your boundaries.
5. Keep honing your own gut instinct. Don’t get too dependent on your mentor for every little decision. And remember, you don’t have to take every bit of advice your mentor gives you.
6. Have more than one. Yes you can have several mentors if you like. Each mentor will bring a different point of view and come to topics with varying opinions. They will also have different expertise and experience.
7. Say thanks and make sure your mentor knows they are appreciated. Share your successes with them and for goodness sake, pay for lunch if you meet up. Know their birthday and send them a card every year.
8. Finally, know when to stop. If someone can no longer act as your mentor then do not stress. Thank them for their time up until now and move on. Change is good.

Have you ever had a mentor, or thought that you might need one? Let us know your thoughts

Caroline Baxter is a serial entrepreneur, SME Consultant, Business Start Up Coach, and bestselling author on Amazon. She has multiple businesses in property, the motor trade and online and offline business consultancy.

If you’re an employer you will have started to receive broadcasts from HMRC shaping you up to comply with the biggest change to PAYE in 70 years.

Despite a Government minister saying, “it’s just the touch of a button” a whole pile of extra red tape is set to land upon all businesses with employees from next April. What is clear is that payroll payment flexibility will be seriously reduced for some employers. In addition all employees must be handled by payroll software, so that’s the end of manual systems. And that software must work with RTI – not all does, so some employers will have to change.

So what’s in it for the employer – well nothing, apart from significant extra work and cost. Still this will bring opportunities, principally new business for outsourced payroll service providers!

Even accountants are really thinking – is it worth continuing to provide a payroll service with this extra level of hassle, including reporting to HMRC at every single payroll run, even weekly. Not to mention the new HMRC fines looming.

Mapping the route to economic recovery with Business Intelligence

A White Paper by Pegasus Software – October 2012

Executive Summary

In this paper, Stuart Anderson, Director – Sales & Marketing at Pegasus Software, looks at the role and prevalence of Business Intelligence (BI) in small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Drawing upon research and examples to highlight key trends and successes, this paper identifies how SMEs can take advantage of lower cost, fit-for-purpose solutions to help drive growth and boost profitability, and provides a simple 10 step guide to getting the most out of Business Intelligence in your organisation.

A new era for SMEs

The past few years have been challenging for every business, and we are by no means out of the economic woods. Rising unemployment, high levels of inflation, subdued consumer spending and restricted access to credit continue to conspire to create tough conditions for SMEs. Against this backdrop, businesses must draw upon the resources and tools at their disposal to identify their most profitable products and customers, and then act on this information to maximise value in the most cost-efficient way possible.

But while most organisations have access to vast amounts of information which holds the potential to help provide focus and shape direction, this information is, for the most part, unused. It is often stored in a variety of formats, across a number of locations. So while the data exists, the tools to transform it into insightful and actionable intelligence do not. The information cannot be accessed in a meaningful way and remains one-dimensional and limited in its propensity to help drive the organisation forward.

The rise and rise of BI

Business Intelligence is crucial in bridging this void, testament to which is that the worldwide market for BI software hit $7.79 billion in 2011, up 16.3 percent from the previous year, according to Gartner. Additionally, business intelligence was the top-ranked technology for 2012 in Gartner’s 2012 global survey of CIOs as organisations combine analytics with other technologies to create new capabilities. In fact, Gartner states ‘Analytics is no longer a stand-alone technology based on isolated data warehouses and analytical models. CIOs need to consider their technology priorities in combination to reach the level of innovation and customer experience that makes the enterprise’s strategic objectives achievable’.

This growth is because BI represents the closest thing to a crystal ball a business is likely to adopt; BI can provide answers to questions such as who your most profitable customers and products are, and what impact a particular event may have on cash flow and earnings over the next five years. Crucially, it can help understand the drivers of profitability and perform what-if analysis based on scenarios such as opening a new branch, developing and launching a new product, decreasing staff numbers, deploying a new call centre system, or penetrating new markets.

But while many large companies have been using BI to make greater use of their data for some time, for SMEs, effective BI represents relatively uncharted territory. This is because for a long time BI simply wasn’t designed for SMEs. In many cases, it was viewed as overkill, and was therefore prohibitive from a cost standpoint. For example, Coca Cola might use BI to decide where to place its products on supermarket shelves to gain the most sales, whereas a small chain of DIY stores could argue it just needs collaboration between a couple of its managers to reach the same conclusion.

However, as complexity continues to increase for organisations of all sizes, and margins continue to be squeezed, the potential of BI is becoming more and more compelling. In line with this growing demand, BI tools specifically designed for SMEs are becoming increasingly available. And in many cases, BI capabilities are being embedded in standard operating software.

SMEs today often run on thin margins but using BI can make a significant difference to profitability and ongoing sustainability. This is because BI tools do far more than standard reporting packages. Reporting only tells you what happened and when. BI tools can identify exactly where it happened and why it happened, and help to make decisions on what to do in the future. For example, BI can identify anything from how many staff are needed at certain times of the day, to which are the most profitable outlets, and what impact a particular event or promotion may have on cash flow and earnings over the next five years.

Using traditional methods such as spreadsheets, this type of analysis could take even the most competent manager days, or even weeks, which is simply not viable in these economic times. Mapping the route to economic recovery with Business Intelligence

Selecting the tools for the task

The main BI tools used in SMEs are the same as those used in large corporates: reporting, score-carding, dashboards and business analysis tools. Used properly, these tools enable accuracy and consistency of data, producing confidence in reporting and a clear picture of business performance.

Dashboards allow complex information to be communicated simply across the organisation. Crucially, they do not only benefit the management team but all personnel, from marketing and sales to operations and finance. They provide key performance indicators and operational information in easy-to-read page layouts, and give decision makers regular updates on the state of the business at a quick glance. Given that ‘ease of use’ has surpassed ‘functionality’ for the first time as the dominant BI platform buying criterion according to Gartner, this is crucial to effective BI.

Dashboards can also be accessed remotely over an internet connection. This means business owners can keep track of performance when away from the office and travelling abroad or when adverse weather renders them home-based for significant periods of time.

Given that the Centre for Economics and Business Research estimated that people working from home during the Olympics helped wipe £1billion off the UK economy this year, the ability to access dashboards that provide accurate, live information from which to make decisions and continue running the business, can deliver tangible benefits to the bottom line.

Dashboards enable each user to define their own individual portal, depending on their role and responsibility. Critical information relating to each area can be tracked, whether its sales performance, marketing campaign results or stock levels, ensuring that decisions about business performance never have to be delayed as a result of a lack of contextualised information.

Implementing BI requires commitment, dedication and resource to realise its potential benefits. However, as economic conditions remain tough for SMEs, BI currently represents an untapped means of achieving a substantial competitive advantage.

It can facilitate better, sharper, timelier business decisions, and provides insight into what helps and what hinders business success, both in tough conditions and in boom times.

10 steps to successful BI

1) Establish an honest benchmark, no matter how disparate databases are, or how poor information might be.

2) Create a project team or project leader who has a thorough understanding of what information is needed, in what format and for what purpose.

3) Develop a plan comprising realistic, achievable goals. Identify exactly what you need from a system, ie analytics, dashboards, reporting tools etc, and remain focused on these goals.

4) Assess the success of these goals at each stage and revise the plan accordingly.

5) Talk to experts: specialists in BI projects, software providers and consultants will provide invaluable advice and insight.

6) Talk to other SMEs who have faced similar challenges and look at how they have resolved them.

7) Select and adopt the right tools for your organisation: don’t make additional investment in extra functionality which might sound appealing but in reality would not be used.

8) Once implemented, train all users; the greater the buy-in, the greater the benefits.

9) Assess the improvements against the original benchmark and subsequent goals set.

10) Maintain a focus on data quality. It’s an on-going priority and must be maintained to maximise effectiveness of any BI system. [BookCheck's role is to produce reliable and prompt MI always from a qualified accountant]

We all know the importance of producing management accounts and experience a wide variety of challenges in settling down to a regular reporting pattern. There they are, nice neat numbers, perhaps in colour with graphs but how sure are we of the quality? Is it sound? Does it reconcile? What’s in the Suspense account? Does it correctly incorporate opening balances from the previous year?

These questions are relevant to all reporting from the very outset yet it may be that the checking procedures are not as strong as they should be, maybe they don’t even exist. This risks the integrity of the reporting and could lead to some sort of embarrassment.

For example when looking at a Balance Sheet it would be assumed that the bank reconciles. Short of checking there is no proof of this yet it’s the most fundamental of all the reconciliations. We have lost count of the systems we have seen, with turnovers above £1M, where the bank does not reconcile. In all such cases there have also been major quality question marks over the whole accounts. We always find in such situations that the owner has assumed that all was well as it was left to the book-keeper and of course they know what they are doing – or do they?

In businesses up to 20 or 30 or even more employees the book-keeping is normally in the hands of just one person. That book-keeper may be friendly, punctual, efficient, even professionally qualified however that proves nothing about the quality and state of reconciliation of the accounts. Everyone in the business will assume that all is well unless there is a fire but is that safe? Indeed the chances are that no one in the business is really able to measure the quality of the accounts. Yet that is taking an unnecessary risk.

So how can this risk be dealt with. Someone else in or outside the business, whoever it is someone who knows what they are doing should check the quality. In our opinion it’s safest to use a qualified accountant – that need not cost much as it’s a pretty quick exercise for a professional and it’s normally only a one off task.

Sage HealthCheck Sample

The sample shows the sort of detail that can be covered. It’s not dealing with the health of the business but with the quality of the accounting information and related security considerations. The traffic lights make it easy to focus on areas that need attention. It’s short and easy to understand.

The Benefits of a Sage HeathCheck

• Improves the quality of the management reports
• Reduces risk of embarrassment
• Easy to understand traffic light status
• Reduces the risk of data loss
• Saves unnecessary cost at the Year End

Extra benefits of Outsourcing the Sage HeathCheck

• Access the required skill set of a professional
• Discreet confidential checking of a book-keeper’s work
• Independent

Good Times for a HeathCheck

• When the first set of management accounts are produced or soonest thereafter
• When there is any sort of doubt about the book-keeper
• Upon a change of book-keeper
• Before issuing ‘special’ accounts e.g. an application for bank funding
• Annually as a routine quality check
• Before selling the business

A Sage HealthCheck is quick and easy so no excuses!

I guess all businesses need to. All the gurus say that’s the thing to do but it’s taken us 18 years to recognise that, whilst in our minds we know the difference, our prospective clients might not. There are hundreds of sites proclaiming something rather similar to BookCheck (Sage, book-keeping, management accounts & payroll) and we don’t want to be confused. So what to do?

After all these years of trying we need a different approach and I think I’ve established the principles so check me out. We have the extra dimension that we want to appeal both directly to prospective clients and also to sources of new clients – accountants, banks, part time financial directors and advisors. That’s quite tricky because there are two directions.

In a way it’s easy. First we have to be clear in our own mind what it is. Then we need to find the words and medium – at this stage we can use professionals to guide us. Perhaps the last stage is to road test it by asking prospective clients, do some simple market research, ask our business colleagues.

If you look at our website - it’s work in progress! So how clearly do you differentiate your business?

ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System – we are very proud to announce that we have been accredited by BSI after a rigorous and independent audit. Naturally we are delighted as it’s confirmation of our quality systems – we believe this is a unique achievement for a firm of book-keepers in the UK.We’re very pleased to advise that the ISO accreditation process really strengthened our company, our staff and our procedures – we are significantly better for it. It even improved our efficiency by rationalising some tasks.

We are audited ongoing to check that we really do what we say we will do. For our clients and prospects it provides trust that we can relied upon to run with top quality systems.

We’ve just launched BookCheck Advanced Reporting. It’s a huge breakthrough which we’ve been seeking for many years in linking Sage to Excel easily. Previously the only method was ODBC which although powerful is pretty hard work and a worry to many. Our software works as Excel functions so no ODBC and no rekeying. This transforms Sage reporting into the unlimited possibilities of Excel – any layout, colour etc.