Running a business in Britain, page 10
246 articles on what it actually takes to run a business in Britain: VAT, staff, rent, rates, tenants, stock and sites. From the studio that simulates it.
- Registering a business name is not protecting it. Companies House accepting your name means one thing only: no other company has that exact name. It says nothing about whether you are allowed to trade under it.
- Terms that mean something when it goes wrong. Terms on your website do not bind a customer who never saw them. What has to be on the quote, and which clauses actually survive a dispute.
- Small claims, and whether it is worth it. Issuing a claim is easy and cheap. Getting the money from somebody who has none is the part nobody tells you about before you pay the fee.
- The signature that puts your house behind the business. A personal guarantee is a separate contract between you and the lender. It survives the company, it survives your resignation, and it is negotiable before you sign.
- Invoice finance, and what it really costs. Invoice finance turns a ninety-day debtor into cash this week. The advertised rate is a fraction of what it costs, and getting out is harder than getting in.
- Buying a van without the cash for a van. Hire purchase and leasing look similar on the monthly figure and are completely different by the end. What you own, what you can claim, and the total nobody adds up.
- Business grants, and the ones worth the paperwork. Most advertised business grants do not exist. The ones that do are local, small, and want match funding you have to find first.
- Raising money under SEIS and EIS. The reliefs belong to your investor. The qualifying conditions, the advance assurance and three years of not doing anything clever belong to you.
- A business plan you would actually use. A forty-page plan impresses nobody. A one-page summary, a bottom-up cash flow and an honest assumptions sheet will get further with a lender.
- Break-even, and the number of covers or jobs it takes. Break-even expressed in pounds tells you nothing useful. Expressed in covers, jobs or customers a day, it tells you whether the business can work at all.
- The five numbers worth a whiteboard. A dashboard with forty numbers on it gets read once. Five numbers on a whiteboard, reviewed every Monday, changes what people do.
- Business energy, and the contract you were rolled into. Business energy has almost none of the protection domestic supply has. Miss the renewal window and you find out what deemed rates cost.
- Fitting out an empty unit. The landlord hands over a shell with a concrete floor. Everything between that and opening is yours, and it takes twice as long as the programme says.
- Handing the business to somebody else. Nobody plans an exit in the year they want one. The three routes out of a British business, what each asks of you, and why five years is the minimum run-up.
- Leasehold, freehold and the ground under both. A lease is a long tenancy with a mortgage on it. What you actually own, what the ground under it costs you, and the year count that decides whether it sells.
- Service charges, and taking the management back. A service charge demand is not a bill you simply pay. Reasonableness is a legal test, consultation is a legal duty, and the tribunal costs less than people assume.
- Buying at auction, where the hammer is exchange. When the hammer falls you have exchanged. Everything you would normally do before committing has to happen in the fortnight before the sale.
- Bridging finance, and the clock it starts. Bridging is quoted by the month and priced like an emergency. It works when the exit is real, a date, and something you control.