BUSINESS & LEGAL

By Mark Salter, Fort Financial Planning

The summer of 2021 has certainly been eventful for all sorts of different reasons and as I write this article the news is still full of uncertainty such as overseas travel, tax rises and volatility in the stock market. However, I want to focus on something else; it’s something that’s also very uncertain but definitely more enjoyable, sport. We’ve had so much to enjoy watching this summer with sport back to its best with Wimbledon, the Euros, test matches, and the Olympics. And in just the last week, British tennis has a new rising star as teenager Emma Raducanu has beaten all the odds to make it through to the final of the US Open. A few months ago she was studying for her A-Levels and she is now one step away from being a world champion. It doesn’t really matter which sport you enjoy watching, they all have the same goal – to win! As viewers we only see the final stage whether it’s a race or a match. Perhaps what we don’t think of as much is the amount of time, dedication and planning that has taken place to enable that person or team to achieve their goal. Professional sportspeople and athletes don’t just sit at home and put their feet up expecting it all to come together on the day. With the help of experts such as coaches, fitness coaches, nutritionists and psychologists, they formulate a plan and stick to that plan. The plan may have to be adjusted to reflect unexpected events but ultimately the goal will always remain in sight. Financial planning and investing is no different. Saving for next year’s holiday is very different to saving for your retirement in 10 or 20 years’ time. You need to set yourself goals and then once you have specific goals in mind you can formulate a plan to achieve them. With all the sacrifices and hard work that Emma Raducanu has put in, she wanted to be competing with the best tennis players in the world and ultimately become a champion, but what are your personal goals? Would you like to retire early, help your children financially or perhaps own a holiday home in the sun? The problem is that many people have no real goal and therefore no plan. They pay into a pension or ISA and are disappointed with the outcome because they have unrealistic expectations. The simple reason why they have unrealistic expectations is because they had no expectations in the first place, and therefore any result will be disappointing (i.e. no goals and no plan will ultimately lead to disappointment). So when you’re watching the next big sporting event, you might start thinking about some of your own personal financial goals. To achieve greatness you need a goal, and you need a plan, and you need to stick to that plan. At Fort Financial Planning we are the experts that can help you build a financial plan for your future and coach you through the uncertainties and unexpected events to ensure you achieve your goals.

ALWAYS READ THE SMALL PRINT!

By Catherine Holloway

Holloway Insurance Services is using its thirty years’ experience to share tips on how to make sure that you are fully covered when you choose your insurance schedule. This will reduce the chance of you facing the horror of trying to make a claim and then finding your loss isn’t covered under your policy. The current insurance market is hard; insurers have less appetite for risk. This means that at renewal you may find the terms you enjoyed before are no longer available for you. Last month we discussed the paperwork and systems that help to make your business more attractive for insurers to want to insure at a good price. This month we discuss common omissions, for example, clauses that you may not notice that could prevent a payout. With all policy prices being on an upwards trend, it is possible that the cover you did have may have been trimmed to reduce the price so you must check every bit of wording. Check that every part of your business is covered. Read any small print that may say ‘excludes’. For example, a retailer or manufacturer may find ‘excludes oversea export’ or indeed that certain industries that you may currently service have now been excluded in the updated policy e.g. excludes ‘aviation industry’. Check your policy doesn’t exclude ‘abuse cover’ if you are a care provider. Check also if you are a ground worker that you covered to work on main roads or if you are a tree surgeon that you are not excluded from working over a certain height. Insurance providers are less inclined to cover for floods so don’t presume you are covered. A good broker will work with you to ensure that your property is fully covered but they won’t know what you own, unless you tell them. We offer premises visits to help clarify what you need to cover, e.g. fixtures and fittings, and spot any practice that could prevent you from being

Telephone: 01460 206588 or 07341 663783 info@hollowayinsurance.co.uk covered, e.g. missing fire suppression systems! Next month we will discuss the main types of business insurance so you can make an informed decision on what you do and don’t need to pay for.

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Risk Management Company Needs Insurance Guidance Proud to be insuring and supporting local businesses

Compliance Communication Telephone: 01460 206588 or 07341 663783 deanholloway@gauntletgroup.com

Expect more from your broker - expect our full spectrum of solutions INSURANCE & RISK MANAGEMENT You can rest easy with our regular compliance newsletters, articles, action plans and support to FOR BUSINESS keep you up to date on the latest legal developments as your company grows.We don’t believe in finding you We aren’t just here to help you when you have a claim, all our clients have access to FREE risk cheap business insurance, management resources that will improve e ciency we believe in finding you the best and reduce risk within your company whatever stage or sector of business you are in.business insurance and working With over 30 years’ experience and as part of the with you to ensure that you are Gauntlet Group we o er an unrivalled level of access to market. We have access to more options and more supported at all stages. insurers than most of our competitors, o en leading Proud to be insuring and supporting to a more competitive quote for your business.www.hollowayinsurance.co.uk local businessesinfo@hollowayinsurance.co.uk 01460 206588

By Patricia Marks

1. Don’t have a plan – Yes, the good old business plan. There’s an old business saying that ‘plans are useless, but planning is indispensable’ – and that is absolutely right. You should be planning and preparing, plotting and scheming, wheeling and dealing on a continual basis.

2. Be wary of any initial advice

you get, including this! – The majority of advice you read or hear will be generic and general and won’t apply to you and your business. But some of it will, and your task is to decide which is best and applies to you. 3. Don’t totally trust people – This includes business partners, staff, advisers and suppliers. Somewhere down the line you will inevitably be let down by someone you felt you could trust – be prepared. 4. Never switch off – One of the most common pieces of advice given to owner-managers of new and small/micro enterprises is that you need to make sure you take time off or at least switch off occasionally from your business. Have these ‘advisers’ actually ever run their own business? You don’t need to be at your desk, in your shop or in your workshop 24/7, but the time you spend away from your workplace is often the best time to think about the things you never get a chance to think about when you’re up to your ears in the daily grind. 5. Be obsessive and on it – Being obsessive can sometimes be the difference between success and failure, in terms of product and service standards, never giving up on what you believe to be right. Trust your gut. 6. Say no most of the time – It’s tricky though, especially when it involves the temptation of some short-term cash, but there can be a cost in terms of lost time and focus. Opportunity cost is something that inexperienced business owners often find difficult to grasp. 7. Always push forward – There’s a difference between being annoying and offensive – all of us can be guilty of that – but the business owners who are most likely to taste success, especially in sales, are those who know exactly when to push and to push the hardest.

8. Worry is good, especially

about the detail – In fact, it makes perfect sense to worry about the detail in everything to do with your business. Worry about the detail in contracts, in promotional copy, on price lists, on your tax returns, in the spec of your product, in your legal obligations, in business correspondence and especially on the advice you get. The devil (and the key to remaining solvent) is always in the detail.

9. You’re vulnerable, so scare

yourself – It’s better to scare yourself stupid about going out of business than not. Customers and suppliers are attracted to business owners who don’t try and act as though they are something they’re not and will trust and respect you more as a result.

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10. Hate debt – and continue to hate it – It’s incredible when you look at the fact that so many – probably the majority – of business failures (or failures to make any decent money) are caused by, or brought about by, being unable to service their debts.

Get connected. Stay connected.

PARDOES FREE LEGAL HELPLINE

Questions for the Qualified

Tough times require a community willing to help and support one another. Due to the restrictions in place in Somerset (and the nation) we have had to halt our popular free Legal Clinics in the villages/towns dotted around South Somerset. We have endeavoured to continue to help our community by offering other free services such as The Friendly Law Podcast which covers a range of important legal topics, but we would like to offer a further solution: The Pardoes Free Legal Helpline will commence on the 22 February and will run every Monday between 16:00 and 18:00. It will be manned by qualified staff The Legal Helpline

It is our ambition that dedicating this time to give free legal help will ease some people’s worries and give back to the community of which we have been a proud member for over 100 years. Please book an appointment using our enquiry form at the bottom of our website homepage www.pardoes.co.uk Alternatively, please check our website/social media platforms @PardoesLLP to find out who will be taking calls and their number. We look forward to hearing from you.

WiFi • Email • FaceTime • WhatsApp Skype • Google • eBay • Amazon Facebook • Twitter • Instagram

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• Friendly, patient, and knowledgeable help • Keep in touch with family, friends and colleagues for free over the Internet • Sell online easily, quickly and reliably • Buying advice, setup and installation I’m Phil Hudson, your local tech expert and trouble-shooter. I’ll come to you and sort things out, at a time that suits you. Or you can drop off your machine at my workshop for quick, efficient care and maintenance.

Call me now on 07805 783147

IT’S NOT JUST A NUMBERS GAME

By Jim Rayner

Most of us don’t like to talk about it, but there is an embarrassing medical condition that often afflicts accountants and business advisors like me. And when it strikes, it blights our relationships with business owners, leaving them feeling misunderstood and unsatisfied. Tim Harford (the Undercover Economist from The Financial Times) has given this condition a name: premature enumeration. I’m unashamedly a numbers man. I have a degree in mathematics and I’ve spent around 40 years working with small businesses and looking at their numbers. But I know that the numbers don’t tell the whole story of what makes a business tick. Here is an example. A recent edition of Undercover Boss showed the cunningly disguised managing director of Pickfords visiting a disillusioned removal team in East London. Following the sale of their depot, they were required to work from a potholed yard without vehiclewashing facilities or even proper toilets. The blame, they said, lay with accountants who ran the company, implying that accountants are only interested in cutting costs. I don’t know enough about Pickfords to know whether there was any justice to this complaint. But it’s certainly true that concentrating on the numbers before understanding how a business generates profit usually leads to poor decisions. As business owners or advisors, we need to be aware of the risks of premature enumeration, and only examine the numbers after we’ve understood the business model. So what is a business model? I love Saul Kaplan’s definition: ‘A business model is a story about how an organisation creates, delivers, and captures value.’ It describes your ideal customers, the problems you solve for them, why they buy from you, the relationship you have with them, what you do that they value, how you set your prices, the key resources you use, and your cost structure. Successful businesses create something their customers value enough to willingly part with good money to get hold of. It could be a cup of coffee, a piece of furniture, a weekend break in a country hotel or maybe a relieved toothache. Then it needs a way of reaching its ideal customers and providing them with that bespoke hand-crafted pantry cupboard and pain-free root canal treatment. And finally it needs pricing and payment strategies that mean it gets paid for the value that it provides. Understanding how a business makes a profit – how it creates, delivers and captures value – is the key to knowing which business numbers really matter. If you own a small business and you’d like to tell me about how you create, deliver and capture value, I’d love to talk to you. You can get in touch via my website www.james-rayner.co.uk and I promise I won’t prematurely enumerate.

STAY ON TOP OF THE NUMBERS

PROTECT YOUR BUSINESS

DISASTER PLANNING, RECOVERY AND BUSINESS CONTINUITY

By James Flynn, Milborne Port Computers

I think we’ve been here before in one guise or another, but it’s a perennial issue that I like to keep in the minds of all my clients; read on … loss or corruption from hardware failure, human error, hacking or malware could be significant, so a plan for data backup and restoration is essential.

Businesses and individuals (that’s you and me), use IT to quickly and effectively process information. We use electronic mail and VOIP telephone systems to communicate. Electronic data interchange is used to transmit data including orders and payments from one company to another or just ordering a tin of beans from Tesco online. Servers process the information and store large amounts of data; desktop computers, laptops and wireless devices are used to create, process, manage and communicate information. What are you going to do when your IT stops working? Now, most small businesses and individuals can cope with an interruption like a power cut or internet failure for a short while; yes, it’s inconvenient, but it’s not usually life changing. Bigger businesses, however, should have a disaster recovery plan as their whole business could stop operating – imagine a supermarket without power, it has to close because it cannot operate. Furthermore, all its perishable stock will be lost, but I’m sure they have insurance for that. Happily, once the power has been restored, life goes on. So what are you going to do if your server dies a nasty death, or you flush your mobile somewhere it wasn’t designed to go? Much of your data is important; some of the data is vital to the survival and continued operation of your business. The impact of data In planning your recovery strategy, you should consider the loss of one or more of the following system components if it applies to you: • Servers (secure location, backup power supply, etc.) • Hardware (networks, desktop and laptop computers, wireless devices and peripherals) • Connectivity to a service provider (fibre, cable, wireless, etc.) • Software applications (internet, email, resource management, office productivity, etc.) • Data and restoration (backup!) My plan only focuses on data and restoration, as all the others can be ordered for next-day delivery or connected to my neighbour with a long bit of cable. All of my data (personal and business) is backed up daily to a cloud-based system that I pay an annual fee for, and my email system is cloud based. If everything failed or got burned to the ground, I’d just buy a new PC, install my programs, download my data and connect to my email. Yes, it would be a faff. Yes, it would be inconvenient. Yes, it would cost me time and money. But would I lose anything? No!

However modest your needs, you should have a plan, and as ever know what your passwords are! The choice as always is yours, but if you think you need advice, you know where to come.

IS YOUR HOME YOUR CASTLE?

By Bhavani Hogarty, Pardoes

The property market in the south-west has been buoyant this year, fuelled by city dwellers deciding to relocate to more rural locations and the pandemic making homeworking the norm.

The internet has made such purchases possible without stepping foot outside: making it hard to judge a neighbourhood, glean local knowledge, get a handle on neighbours, understand the extent of a garden. It is difficult enough to gauge potential issues when viewing a property in person, particularly when you are bowled over by the perfect country kitchen, but unfortunately disputes can materialise even in the most idyllic surroundings. A tricky neighbour can make life very difficult. Disputes can arise for all manner of reasons from the height of a hedge/tree, the use of a shared driveway, the location of a boundary or even the positioning of satellite dishes and sheds. Throw in the installation of new home offices, extensions and the tweaking of porches and garages, and all sorts of misunderstandings or legal problems can rear their ugly head.

I am a great believer in selfhelp. If possible you should always speak to your neighbour or whoever is causing the issue and try and sort out any misunderstandings or problems with an amicable site meeting (I find a bottle of wine helps!). However, if that does not work please give me a call to talk it over - a problem will become harder to solve once parties become entrenched and I can advise before a matter becomes ‘legal’. Some people decide the best option in such a scenario is to simply move and of course that is a solution, albeit an expensive one when you take into account stamp duty plus legal and moving costs. However, if that is what you want to do, you must ensure that you have not misrepresented the situation to any new purchaser and, of course, if there is an ongoing dispute, you must disclose it to any potential buyers. Very few disputes result in an application to the court. In the majority of cases it is a question of investigation, analysis of deeds, being creative with regard to solutions and finding some common ground. Knowing your legal position early on can avoid a dispute getting out of hand or can prevent you feeling like a prisoner in your own home. As a Legal 500 recommended property litigation specialist, I am here to ensure that your dream home continues to be just that. You are welcome to contact me for a free consultation on 01935 385987 or email me at bhavani. hogarty@pardoes.co.uk. For other legal queries, Pardoes runs a free telephone helpline every Monday between 4pm and 6pm. You can make an appointment on our website www.pardoes.co.uk or please call 01934 385998.