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Contracting VS Permanent

February 21, 2013 By

The idea of becoming a contractor can be pretty scary to start off with, as you have a lot more responsibilities to take on in order to make sure that your business is successful.

But at a time when employee benefits are being reduced, final salary pensions are disappearing and salaries are being dramatically cut – there’s never been a better time to join the world of contracting. Also, with the help of a good accountants for contractors, you can rest assure that you’ll be advised properly when it comes to your financial planning.

As with most things in life, there are of course some downsides to being self-employed. Firstly, you do not have the same benefits as a permanent employee, such as being entitled to holiday or sick pay.

There’s also the fact that you need to have the motivation and determination to get out there and find your own work, and then stay on target when you do get a contract, ensuring you stick to deadlines and don’t let you clients down.

However, most contractors would agree that the advantages far outweigh the negatives…

Benefits of contracting
Contracting can be extremely rewarding and there are so many advantages to working as a contractor:

Skills development

• As a contractor dealing with a variety of different clients, will give you the ability to build up a wide-ranging CV and to establish an extensive list of reference contacts.
• Working for different organisations gives you the ability to advance your career and your knowledge, without being limited by a single employer’s processes, procedures or business ethos.
• Depending on the type of contractor you are, you will gain added experience of different types of products and/or services, which can widen your experience and make you more attractive and interesting to future clients.

Flexibility

• As a contractor, you have the freedom to work when you choose, where you choose and for however long you like.
• The company that you work for is not your employer, but is instead your client, meaning you have far more control over your contract than what a permanent worker would have.
• You will have a lot more flexibility and control over agreeing working conditions and negotiating payment terms.
• Taking holiday will be a lot easier, as you will not be in the position of having to juggle your days off around other colleagues. You can also choose to have as much time off as possible, instead of the standard few weeks in a year.

Financial benefits

• An average contractor rate can easily be double that of a full time employee, or even more.
• Contractors are paid very high rates, due to the fact that they are skilled and flexible, as well as the fact that most contracts are normally short-term.
• As a contractor you are able to work as much over time as you wish, as well as taking on a number of clients at the same time.
• Unlike permanent workers, you are able to claim back on expenses that are made wholly and exclusively for the purposes of your business, and, as you only get taxed for your profits, this can lower your tax bill.
• If you contract through your own Limited company, this is the most tax efficient way to work and can see you taking home more money than if you were to trade through an umbrella company. Working through a Limited company also means that you have far better tax planning opportunities, which can reduce the amount of tax you pay. By using a contractor calculator, you could work out a rough figure of how much you could potentially earn as a contractor.

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Take care of business yourself

November 13, 2012 By

When you work for a big company, you get used to sending stuff off to different departments – sending expenses to the finance department, phoning the IT department for technical assistance, calling on the marketing department for help with events and conferences. However, if you move to starting your own business, you’ll soon realise that you have to wear several different hats during the course of the day.

Working for yourself, the buck falls to you on almost every front. Not only do you have to work on making sales or winning contracts, but you also have to take care of all the back office functions – at least until you’re successful enough to be able to hire employees or to outsource certain functions.

The good thing is that if there’s something you don’t know how to do, you can always find out how. The internet is a great source of information on how to do things. And most processes are relatively simple; they just seem complicated when you have never done them before.

For example, anyone can keep the books for a company; it’s just a question of keeping accurate records. You can do the donkey work in terms of filing receipts, expenses, income etc, and then pay an accountant to check them over and audit them for you.

Similarly, you can organise a money transfer whether it’s domestic or international, as these can be done online. So whether you need to pay invoices on a regular basis or have one off payments to make, you can do this from the comfort of your own desk once your business bank account is online. It’s also a good idea to set up a foreign exchange account for the times that you need to move money internationally.

Whatever function you need for your business, it’s possible to find a way of doing it yourself, and if not, you should buy in assistance on an ad hoc basis rather than taking on an employee. This will be the cheapest option and will save you the necessity of complying with regulation for employees such as sick pay and holiday pay.

 

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Choosing Anti-Virus Software For Your Computers

June 27, 2012 By

No business can function at its best today without having good antivirus software installed on all its computers. This is a widely acknowledged fact, but the trouble is that if you don’t know that much about IT and computing, and you run your own small business, then sometimes the choice of internet security available can be a little confusing.

If you don’t want to spend any time on it, then a straightforward option is to use the antivirus software offered by your internet service provider. You need to actively choose to download it as it won’t happen automatically.

However, this isn’t your only option. On a new computer, the retailer will often offer to install their recommended antivirus package when they set it up for you. However, you can find many different antivirus software packages online and they are simple to download. You can also download a free version as a trial product before signing up to pay for a year’s subscription.

If you have more than one computer, you might be better advised to buy an antivirus software program with a multi-licence. Some companies like Kaspersky offer a multi-device licence that covers different operating systems – Windows, Macs and mobile antivirus.

As well as antivirus, the internet security suite you choose should include anti-spyware, a spam filter and firewall.

When you first download an antivirus package, it might seem to slow down the functions on your computer, and when the virus scans are running it will make using your pc tediously slow. For this reason it’s best to set the scans to run last thing at night before you shut down your computer. Once the software has been installed for a day or so, your computer should run at normal speed again. If it doesn’t, it may be that you’ve picked something that isn’t compatible with your computer system, so uninstall it and try a different one.

This is why free downloads of antivirus software are invaluable. Trialling a product for 30-60 days will give you ample time to see if they software works well for you.

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How to Get Yourself Out of Debt

May 14, 2012 By

In these lean economic times, you’ll see and hear a lot about so-called easy ways to get out of debt. But let’s be clear; there aren’t any.  If there were, everyone would be spending like crazy, then taking the easy route to being debt free.

So how do you get out of debt?

There’s a simple equation. If you earn more than you spend, you will become gradually debt free. You will also gradually build capital which you can then put to work to up your income. So first off; try and face up to your situation in a realistic way.

A good way is to talk over the situation with a friend to take a close look at your income and expenditure. You’ll be surprised just how much careful budgeting will help as business planners Russell Illsley Calvin Ayre can wisely testify.

Many people are close to the tipping point of being in a surplus of income each month. But the “drip, drip” effect of being unable to balance the books each month has a huge effect as the debts and interest payments compound.

As economics blogger Russell Illsley knows, creating a surplus of income over spending each month takes self-discipline and determination to succeed.

So try and achieve the best possible deals on all your necessary outgoings like food, utilities, credit cards, mortgages, banking and insurance policies.

When you’ve done all you can yourself to turn things around, take expert advice from reputable and completely objective sources such as the Citizen’s Advice Bureaux. In this way, you should be able to gradually get completely debt free.

But if there really is absolutely no chance of clearing your debt through your own endeavours, then bankruptcy may be the only way out. Don’t fear the consequences. Do what you need to do and ask experts to steer you through the process – remember, you aren’t alone.

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Cinemas into event spaces

April 30, 2012 By

When people are planning conferences and trying to think of a venue hire that’s just that little bit different from the run-of-the-mill type of hotels and dedicated conference centres etc., it isn’t often that they think of cinemas – or specifically of Cineworld. This is a mistake – and it’s a perception Cineworld is trying to put right by making its 79 cinemas across the UK and Ireland some of the most original conference venues out there.

Of course, the very fact that its venues are also cinemas gives the group a huge head start in so many logistical ways – but perhaps most notably in its state-of-the-art digital projection facilities. These make presenting on the big screen very quick and easy with all the impact and production quality you would expect from a big screen blockbuster- except that the subject area is of your own choosing. To say this kind of presentation has a bigger impact than most (or perhaps any…) other conference venues really would be an understatement.

In this way, for example, you get to see your brand and the details of your products or capabilities – and what makes them unique- presented in the highest impact way possible. Imagine saying what you want to say on a screen which is 30 feet high in a cinematic environment.

All Cineworld cinemas have plug and play capabilities so your conference event and presentation from a simple PowerPoint presentation, to a product launch, AGM or a major themed conference, can have the impact of a Hollywood blockbuster with the click of a button.

And all Cineworld’s auditoria can be transformed quickly and easily to accommodate individual requirements. Cineworld’s experienced conference events team can provide a variety of additional audio, visual and lighting to suit any individual requirements, and with flexible space at the front of our auditoria we can accommodate a variety of different staging setups.

Cineworld can also help with your multi-site video conferencing needs, film the presentations in High Definition and broadcast via satellite instantly onto any one of its screens at our venues located throughout the UK & Ireland.

And if you have a global conferencing need Cineworld can liaise with your international teams to either broadcast to them from one of its venues, or receive their incoming transmission allowing you to link up with your colleagues for important presentations anywhere around the world.

Many Cineworld locations also contain licensed bars, whilst the company’s professional caterers can provide anything from pastries on arrival to a full hot buffet.

So if you want your conferences to offer something a little off-beat with a high degree of cinematic impact and technical excellence in the presentational side off things – Cineworld is well worth consideration.

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Crucial coverage

April 23, 2012 By

When it comes to planning for the worst, most of us would always make sure the worst case scenarios are well covered off in business – but aren’t as good at planning for such eventualities in our personal lives.

This is because we’re always struggling for time and it’s easy to put off doing anything about the situation until tomorrow, or the day after, or the day after that… and on it goes.

This is why it’s a statistical fact that most us don’t have adequate insurance cover for life’s tragedies – except where it’s a legal requirement as with motor insurance, house buildings insurance and, in some cases, critical illness insurance.

But when it comes to thinking about other tragedies in life that that we may face, most of us don’t make sufficient insurance provision. Now if you have no dependents, life insurance isn’t a necessity. But if you do – and if you don’t have sufficient assets, investments and other resources to see those dependents through should something happen to you, then you really ought to have good life insurance cover.

We never think it will happen to us until it does – that’s human nature. But in business planning, we always think about and mentally accept such tragedy – so why not in our personal lives?

It’s a similar situation with child life insurance. Very few people like to even think about child life insurance for very obvious reasons; the death or serious injury of one of our children is such an unimaginably horrible tragedy that we can’t even bring ourselves to contemplate the very possibility. This is understandable – it hurts us deep down to even weigh the possibility. But just imagine, then, how you’d feel and how unable you may be to cope financially if something awful was to happen. Your whole life would be turned upside down. And this is the very reason it probably is wise to at least consider some form of child life insurance- particularly if you have more than one child; children who would be depending on you for support in all sorts of ways – just at the very point when you may feel least able to give it.

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Is your business believable without professional indemnity insurance?

November 5, 2011 By

The credibility of a business can hinge on various points, not least its capacity to provide an effective service. First-time clients have little way of knowing how believable or professional a business is likely to be, however, which is why they might ask questions about other clients, relevant qualifications, years in the business, insurance and so on. In respect of the last point, prospective clients would at the very least expect service providers to be fully insured. If this is not the case, why would a client ever risk doing business with a firm that apparently places little value in protecting itself from legal claims?

Insurance and specifically professional indemnity insurance is essential for many types of business. Professional indemnity cover, premiums for which can be acquired from services such as Constructaquote, is necessary for all professional service providers, from solicitors and accountants to surveyors and architects.

Without this vital cover, a business risks losing both money and clients. Money can be lost very easily without professional indemnity cover; in fact, legal claims can cripple or destroy an uninsured business. Professional indemnity insurance acts as a safety net for professionals, but it also provides benefits for clients.

Perhaps the easiest way to describe the benefits of professional indemnity insurance is by way of example. If an architect acts negligently by developing a building design that is inherently unsafe, the client might end up losing everything. Assuming the building is constructed before the design flaws are noticed, it may be that a section has to be knocked down and rebuilt. Perhaps the design flaws are not noticed in time, leaving part of the building to collapse in time, causing extensive damage. If the architect is uninsured, it is quite possible that any claim for compensation made by the client would run aground if the architect were to be declared bankrupt (and therefore unable to pay the damages).

If the architect in question does have professional indemnity insurance, their policy should be able to cover the losses sustained by the client in question or at least up to a certain limit defined by the policy. Whilst the good name of the architect would be tarnished, the client should still be able to recover their losses.

Therefore, professional indemnity insurance is essential for protecting both the insured and their clients. Mistakes do occur on occasions and insurance is sometimes the only barrier between failure and a total loss. In a nutshell, clients are unlikely to take seriously the credentials of any professional who chooses not to purchase professional indemnity cover.

Filed Under: General Business Advice