VAT doesn’t have to be that taxing

OK, so I missed a day. Barely a week into my blog test and I skipped a day. But it was for a very good reason, I spent yesterday morning working out my VAT return. Consequently for the remainder of the day I played catch-up. I’m sure I’m not the first small business owner to experience this phenomenon, where back room processes disrupt actual fee earning work. I expect Digby Jones would have some interesting thoughts on this.

So what did I learn from this?

Firstly, that filling in your VAT return takes careful attention to detail, but actually isn’t that taxing (sorry). More interestingly, that changing your VAT payment scheme can significantly aid your cash flow. I changed yesterday from the normal accounting to the cash accounting scheme. This basically means my return needed to include output tax on invoices that have already been paid. On the normal accounting scheme you are required to include output tax for invoices submitted, even those unpaid. If that makes sense you should see a clear benefit for your cash flow.

But, those nice people at the HMRC have a range of other options that could help us small business owners. I’m not an expert here so you should consult the HMRC or your accountant. However I read about the flat rate scheme that seemed pretty good for small companies, particularly for reducing your time overhead calculating your return.

the future of advertising

News from Ad:tech London, advertising is heading online. No surprise there, clearly companies of all sizes have been heading to the internet to advetise, just look at the rise in Payperclick advertising. Well, our friends at Google think there is still more to come. The speakers from Google University believe that the internet accounts for 21% of media consumption in the UK, but currently only 6.4% of advertising spend. With figures like that, it’s hard to argue with them. Of course Google may be a little biased here, they do after all have something to gain from increasing online ad spend.

technorati – the bloggers directory

it seems one of the best ways to start driving people to your blog is to join Technorati’s directory. So here goes.

marketing value of blogging for small business

I attended a conference held in London last week all about social network tools. The main thrust of the conference was all about the value of Web 2.0 applications, such as blogging, wikis, online communities, instant messenger services etc for generating business results.

The speakers ranged from huge coroporates such as IBM and Oracle, to tech bloggers such as Stowe Boyd and a fascinating case study by EnglishCut – a company which has used blogging to achieve phenomenal results. All of the speakers suggested that managed well and social network tools could have a major impact on businesses, for everything from marketing to internal communications.

The conference has inspired me to look at how useful blogging is for small businesses, those that typically need low budget high impact marketing strategies. As such I am going to trial blogging using my own business as a guinea pig. I will regularly contribute to my blog and measure the impact in terms of my work load and the results it generates.

I hope that this will become a useful test case for small companies, particularly for those of you that are considering using blogging as part of your marketing mix.

Andrew