Crossbone Systems

[Note:- this article was originally scheduled for appearance in April but unfortunately time constraints delayed it until after the 2008 end-of-year filing deadline. I've published it now in the hope that it will show potential company-founders how easy it is to stay on top of such things].

At the end of the tax year, (ie. 5th April), you must file a return that tells HMRC the breakdown of the income tax and NIC payments you have made throughout the previous year. HMRC need this information because tax and NI deductions are paid to them monthly throughout the year without any additional details about the breakdown. (See part 1 of this article for more information). Read the rest of this entry »

Apart from my initial earlier thoughts on one of the difficulties I encountered at the conference, BStartup 2008 (at the London ExCeL centre) was a good experience. For brevity, I’ve summarized a few of the most relevant and interesting people and services, below. Read the rest of this entry »

Once you’ve started your own limited company and people are paying for your products or services, you may want to start taking a salary.

This is a good idea for several reasons:

1. It’s the main way to legally move money from your business bank account to your personal bank account
2. It ensures you continue to pay National Insurance contributions, (essential if you expect a government pension later in life)
3. You pay tax to the government, thus preventing them from breaking down your door and demanding your money!
4. It gives you some money to live off

This article is designed to take a lot of the jargon away from paying yourself. Read the rest of this entry »

This article is all about how to set up an official private limited company, but to write about that subject requires me to make some assumptions. Without any, I’d have to write an entire book. So here are my assumptions - if more than a couple of these hold true, read on:

1. You’ve got a ton of ideas and are struggling to find time to work on any of them
2. You’ve hardly got any money to use to seed a company
3. You want to build a company, a brand and/or something you can point to and call your own
4. You live in the UK

The last one doesn’t preclude you from enjoying this article, but I’m going to focus on the specifics of starting up in the UK, because that’s where my experience lies. The bootstrapping blog has a guide for any Americans reading. Read the rest of this entry »

One of the constants of (UK) business seems to be late payment. I’ve seen many articles written about this, and it’s an unfortunate situation. But the reality is that when you send someone an invoice, the chances are that you’re not going to see the money for well over a month for the following reasons:

1. You have to give a “reasonable” payment period on the invoice, which can be anything from 14 to 60 days. (30 days is fairly typical)
2. Clients will often count the date of the invoice from when they receive it, not when it’s dated
3. They have to send you a payment, and they will use 2nd class mail
4. It’s likely the payment will take at least 3 days to clear

All in all, it’s a difficult situation when you’re on a tight cash-flow.

And people pay late.

So is there anything you can do about this situation, or do you just have to starve for your first two months of business? Well, if you’re bootstrapping your business it’s less of a worry, but in high-level terms, you have two choices:

1. Join the culture - make sure you pay the bills that you receive on the last possible day and earn the extra few pounds/pence from the interest of having the balance in your account
2. Fight the lack of good manners - pay your bills in a reasonable time, (eg. in the middle of the period) and politely demand that your clients do the same

I pass no judgement on either. Whichever is right/best is left as an exercise for the reader.

When they talk about small companies, people often seem to get very scared about “looking like an amateur” and treat it as a big bad bogey man who must be appeased at all cost. Granted, everyone wants to look professional, no one wants to appear incompetent, least of all to their prospective clients or customers. But most of the time, these people are not really concerned with the professionality of a company at all, they’re scared to death that someone might see the human side of your business.

This fear of the human touch is endemic, from the roots of government right to the franchised shops and banks on the high street. Behind the scenes, call centres generate a total lack of personality - even when an operator gives their first name, who ever rings up later in the week and actually asks to speak to them?

In some instances the Internet can make things worse. Automated ticketing systems for technical support are meant to improve accountability, but the reality is that they often give a large support group a wall of anonymity to hide behind. In some organizations, a single ticket is picked up by several different staff member and any notion of being helped by a real person vanishes. Unless rapid resolution occurs, customers can easily be left feeling frustrated and under valued. The workers in this process are also left feeling uninspired because they do not get to build any kind of relationship with the customers.

Employees count

When your company is small, the people in it are what count. In the early months of a business, they may be the only thing that differentiates your company. They all need to be able to talk to your customers, and your customers need some visibility on who does what.

My message: be bold and show that you’re a person. We’re all people, so when friends and family warn you about being too personal, be kind but firm with them. Before hiring your first employee, you’re all you have - say NO to becoming a faceless corporation!

I hope the mere existence of this blog reveals something about my own personality, but as the site grows in the coming weeks, I’ll be adding more information about my background, (including why I think I’m qualified to do what I’m doing).