Author: Megan Davies

4 tips to encourage repeat customers!

There’s a lot of data supporting the idea that it’s less costly, easier and more efficient to encourage repeat customers than bring in new ones. Among the stats Hubspot lists are that a 5% increase in customer retention is responsible for more than 25% increase in profit; repeat customers are 9 times more likely to convert than first-time visitors; and a 2% increase in customer retention has a similar impact to your bottom line as reducing costs by 10%.

That’s a lot of motivation to encourage repeat customers! Here are 4 tips to encourage your customers to keep coming back.

Build relationships with customers

Take time to learn more about your customers. Do they mention family members? Ask about their loved-ones. Do they frequently buy the same products? Keep track of when that customer comes in and have some items set aside for them. Do they always order the same meal? Mention similar dishes to try. 

Go the extra mile to show your customers they’re important to you.

Ask for their input, as well. They’ll get to know your products and services, and can offer insights into what’s working and what could be improved. If you engage them and make changes based on their feedback, you’ll develop a loyal customer base.

The more special your customers feel, the more likely they are to come back. They’ll appreciate that you remember them and value their input.

Make it personal

Your loyal customers deserve communications that are more personal and less formal. It’s fine to use impersonal emails for your larger email list, but use more personal communications with your best customers.

If you want to let them know about an important business-related matter, phone them or suggest an in-person meeting. Keep track of important dates, as well. You can send gifts or cards to mark important occasions, or just to reach out.

Make your best customers feel as though they stand out from the rest by being more personal with them.

Share relevant information

Newsletters are a great way to stay in touch with your customers and let them know what you’re up to, but if you get to know your customers really well, you can pass along articles, books, or other information that might interest them, even if it isn’t related to your business. It shows them you understand and you care.

Remember your loyal customers

Businesses sometimes focus their attention exclusively on new customers, forgetting about loyal and repeat customers. You need new customers to keep your business thriving; however, excluding long-term customers results in customer churn.

It’s great to offer new customers rewards and incentives, but that leaves existing customers feeling ignored. Offer your long-term customers bonuses for their loyalty.

Final thoughts

Encouraging repeat customers makes solid business sense. To be successful, you need a balance of new and long-term clients. This means building relationships with people, personalising your attention, sharing relevant information and remembering your loyal customers.

A great product or service at a reasonable price might bring your customers in, but outstanding customer service that gives them a positive, memorable experience will keep them coming back.

If you are looking for Fulham accountants or a tax advisor in London, get in touch!

e: office@londonaccountants.co   t: 0203 137 9791

Kind Regards,
The Team at London Accountants

Technology toolbox for trades!

When you run your own trade business, your life involves a lot of long days being on job sites while managing projects, staff and clients. 

There probably are not enough hours in the week for you to deal with all the issues that arise while keeping your customers happy, and taking time out of your schedule to manage your business is probably the last thing you want to do.

Thanks to a variety of online software companies, running your business is now a lot easier. You can efficiently manage your projects, employees, finances and records all through your computer or your tablet, freeing you up to focus on your clients.

Here are two online software companies you should consider adding to your technology toolbox.

Xero (xero.com)

Unless you’re an accountant, anything to do with finances probably isn’t on your list of fun activities. You don’t want to spend your time writing up invoices and chasing down clients for payment, or tracking and reviewing your expenses. You want your energy to go to an exciting project or finding a solution to a client’s problems.

Xero lets you do just that. It offers a user-friendly invoicing system that allows you to accept payments through the software. You can connect Xero to your bank account so transactions are imported to your Xero account daily, meaning you don’t have to manually enter them. 

You can even manage your inventory and conduct bank reconciliation through the program.

All those stressful accounting tasks are taken care of, with minimal effort from you.

Dext (dext.com)

As Dext astutely notes, you didn’t go into business to do paperwork. Dext makes it easier for you to keep track of your expenses, including storing receipts, classifying expenses, reviewing data, and sharing the information with your accountant. It connects with other accounting software, including Xero, so you don’t have to manually share information between various programs.

Leave the paperwork to the experts and focus on the activities you love to do.

Final thoughts

For many business owners, the management is the least fun aspect of business. It drags you away from the work you love doing and drains your time and energy. Using technology to help you out in areas that you don’t enjoy is a way to ensure those tasks are completed correctly.

Adding these technology tools to your toolbox makes running your business easier, more efficient and more enjoyable.

Get in touch with us to find out how we can help your trades business.

If you are looking for Fulham accountants or a tax advisor in London, get in touch!

e: office@londonaccountants.co   t: 0203 137 9791

Kind Regards,
The Team at London Accountants

6 Vital Money Management Tips for First-Time Entrepreneurs! 

Financial management is a vital part of running a successful business, but often entrepreneurs start their business with little understanding of how to make solid financial decisions. Managing your finances is about more than bookkeeping and paying taxes (although those are also important to a sustainable business!) 

It’s about managing cash flow, preparing for income fluctuations, and having the resources to take advantage of opportunities.

Here are 6 money management tips first-time entrepreneurs should follow to increase their chances of success.

1. Have a budget

A key step in being on top of your finances is having a budget. 

Knowing how much money you have, how and where you spend it, your limits on how much you’ll spend, and where the money is coming from gives you crucial information about your profitability. 

That data can then help you make vital operational decisions about your company, such as where you need to save money and where you can spend more.

Having a budget and accurate records helps you keep your business (and your finances) on track. In fact, every important financial decision should be weighed against your budget.

2. Start an emergency fund

Your emergency fund doesn’t have to hold a large amount of money, but it is there for you in case of sudden emergencies. 

Even highly successful companies have periods where they struggle financially, often due to circumstances well beyond their control, such as market shifts. An emergency fund can help your business survive during times when income drops. It can also provide you with needed cash to take advantage of an unexpected opportunity.

3. Don’t spend too much

New entrepreneurs might feel tempted to grow their business too quickly, make significant but unnecessary purchases, or hire too many people before they have the financial stability to do so.

Wait until you have a steady, reliable cash flow to make big changes to your company. At least in the beginning, it’s important to take time to focus on the necessities for running your business, and get to know your business cycle. 

Don’t spend large amounts of money until you know when your busy periods are and when the slower times tend to occur—and how drastically they affect your finances.

Plan ahead for any massive expenditures and establish guidelines for when you’ll start spending more money, for example after a set period of stable income. Then, stick to the rules you’ve set out for yourself.

4. Hire an accountant

An experienced accountant can help you understand tax laws and take advantage of deductions. Without an accountant, you could find yourself facing an unwelcome and unexpected surprise when your taxes are due. You can also make costly mistakes if you do your own taxes.

Tax regulations can affect everything from your company’s ownership structure, to the best ways for you to spend your money so you can decrease your financial obligations at tax time. Hire an accountant and get to know them well, so they can give you tax advice that meets your specific needs.

5. Keep your business and personal finances separate

It can be enticing to mingle your business and personal finances, especially if your business is very small. Doing so, however, means you don’t have accurate financial information either about your business or about yourself.

It’s also vital to make sure you pay yourself an income from your business. This helps ensure you’re financially stable. 

Combining your business and personal finances means you aren’t paying yourself. You’re just keeping whatever is left over after everything else is paid for. This leads to situations where your business becomes unsustainable because all your money is going into the company, leaving you with nothing to live off.

Open a business bank account and draw your salary from that.

6. Maintain a good credit score

Good credit is essential for entrepreneurs. It establishes your credit worthiness and enables you to apply for loans, open accounts, and maintain a steady cash flow. It’s crucial you know your credit score and maintain a good rating.

If your credit score is poor, focus on paying bills on time and double check to ensure that your credit report is accurate and up-to-date.

Final thoughts

Mistakes with your finances can be a recipe for disaster. By following the six tips above, you can protect yourself from making devastating financial errors. You’ll also have solid information about the financial health of your business so you can make informed decisions.

If you are looking for Fulham accountants or a tax advisor in London, get in touch!

e: office@londonaccountants.co   t: 0203 137 9791

Kind Regards,
The Team at London Accountants

Advantages of digital signing.

Electronic signature software offers small business a number of time and cost-saving benefits. If you’ve considered going paperless but haven’t yet made the plunge, here are 6 excellent reasons to start using digital signatures today.

Get paid faster

Digital signatures make it easy to close a sale on the spot, turn around contracts faster, and finalize documents that require signatures from multiple parties. Electronic signature software can also streamline the generation of invoices, cheques, legal agreements – any paperwork that is typically “held up” by ink signatures. The result is quicker document processing and faster payments.

2. Direct and indirect cost savings

Switching to electronic signature software means you’ll spend less on paper, ink cartridges, printer maintenance, postage and courier costs. You’ll also save time spent managing paper documents, including tracking them down and filing them. 

Digital signing software automatically forwards a document from one signee to the next – a huge time saver – and it’s easy to track the status of an e-document as it makes the rounds.

3. Improve customer service

A recent marketing report showed that 65% of digital growth is from mobile use. That means a very high proportion of your customers and clients do business online via their personal devices. 

The bottom line: digital signing is what a growing number of your customers expect. Make it easy to sign and you’ll maintain customer loyalty and avoid losing sales because your business is behind the times.

4. Simple to implement

Digital signing software is easy to use and cost-effective. You can test drive different software with a free trial and when you’re ready to buy, expect to pay as little as £10/month for a yearly basic plan. 

One of the benefits of electronic signature software is it’s designed to seamlessly integrate with other applications, so you can use it to sign different kinds of documents in various formats.

5. Enhanced security

Digitally signed contracts can be more secure than paper documents. Here’s why:

Documents signed by digital signature are protected with a tamper-evident seal and the originator of a document is automatically notified when there’s been a change.

An electronic record of the document’s lifecycle serves as evidence of who signed the document and when.

Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) – the highest standard of encryption verification technology – is used to identify an individual by electronic signature and ensure the integrity of each signed document.

E-documents dramatically reduce the risk of being stolen, damaged, intercepted, lost, destroyed, altered, or read by unwanted eyes.

6.Legally binding

In many parts of the world, legislation is in place to protect parties who have signed documents via electronic signature. If you work with international clients and customers, be sure to get familiar with the laws around electronic documents everywhere you do business to make sure your digitally signed documents will hold up in court.

Final thoughts

Now that you know the benefits of digital signing, do you still need convincing?

According to the Paperless Project, the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of paper a year – a staggering number when you consider the global financial and environmental cost.

Why not save time, money, and trees by going digital?

If you are looking for Fulham accountants or a tax advisor in London, get in touch!

e: office@londonaccountants.co   t: 0203 137 9791

Kind Regards,
The Team at London Accountants

1) When you have to register: What are the rules?
2) VAT Returns: How do they work?
3) Registering for VAT early: What are the pro’s & con’s?

What is VAT?
VAT is sales tax which is added on top of the sales of some goods and services. This needs to be reported and paid over to HMRC via the submission of a VAT return.

Once you are a VAT registered business, you can then also reclaim VAT on any purchases that you have made.

20% is the standard rate of VAT, though some goods and services have a reduced rate or a zero rate of VAT.

How does the VAT return work?
In most cases, a business will file a VAT return on a quarterly basis.

The VAT return is a summary of 2 things:

The VAT on sales for that quarter – which you owe to HMRC
The VAT on purchases for that quarter – which HMRC owe you

Your VAT return will show a net figure and this could be an amount you owe or an amount you will be due to receive. This depends on whether your sales or your purchases are higher for that quarter.

Timelines:

You have 1 month and 7 days after the end of the VAT quarter to file your return. You must pay any VAT you owe within this time.

Submitting your return: 

HMRC’s is moving everyone across to submit taxes digitally. This is called MTD (Making Tax Digital).

At London Accountants, we are partnered with Xero – this makes filing VAT so easy. Drop us an email or give us a call if you have any questions about this.

Do I need to keep invoices?

Basically…YES. You must always keep invoices.

You should have a VAT invoice to support the VAT paid across on any income. You need invoices to support any VAT you are reclaiming on purchases.

We use Dext which connects to Xero, and it’s a really easy way to bring your invoices & receipts into Xero so everything is in one place. Nice.

When do you need to register for VAT? 

You need to register when you cross the ‘VAT threshold’.  This is when you have VAT taxable turnover of above £85,000 in the last 12 months, or you expect your VAT taxable turnover to go over £85,000 in the next 30 days.