The good news is that if you appoint us as your VAT agent, we do the online filing for you. You just need to make the payment to HM Revenue & Customs electronically by the due date or, alternatively, you can set up a direct debit instruction which allows the VAT man to take the amount you owe per your submitted return (and no more!) directly from your account. You also get a few extra days to pay this way, so an added bonus!

• Outline your terms of payment in writing with your customer before trading with them, and again on every invoice you issue

• Consider doing credit checks and asking for trade references

• Consider checking the company’s compliance with Companies House

• Ensure you raise invoices promptly

• Ensure that you chase invoices as soon as they are overdue and regularly after that – issue statements or pick up the phone

• Consider offering an early payment discount

• Consider stopping all work for the customer until payment is made in full

• Consider accepting instalments from your customer, getting paid gradually is better than not getting paid at all

• Use the Small Claims Court if all else fails, but sometimes, walking away and learning your lesson is more important

I have recently had cause to use Sage in order to convert a client from Sage into QuickBooks as they now wish me to do their book keeping for them and my system of choice is QuickBooks.

Sage suits some people and some accountants swear by it, but personally I find it inflexible and difficult to run good easy to read reports. Add to that the lack of the ability to drill down to transactions from a report, it had me tearing my hair out after about an hour.

QuickBooks is designed for small businesses but I use it for a company with a turnover in excess of £1m without any problems at all. You are able to edit transactions, run a good range of well presented reports and you can drill down from a report or any screen down to the underlying transaction, be it a sales invoice, bill payment or cheque. It is easy to use. You can teach yourself using the demos with the software or I can offer you training at a very competitive rate. For most businesses, a training session of 2 to 3 hours split over two visits is usually ample.

If you’d like to buy a copy of QuickBooks 2008 Pro Edition, I have one (and only one!) copy for sale for £120 plus VAT. If you are interested, please e-mail me on andrea@fast-accounts.co.uk. I will update this post once the item has sold.

UPDATE – The copy of QuickBooks 2008 Pro Edition has now been sold to Fast Forward Direct Limited, a courier and light haulage company based in Lincolnshire.

The office will still be open whilst I’m taking a break from 28 May until mid June, but please do ring first if you are popping by to make sure that someone is in. By all means e-mail me with anything urgent as I will be checking my e-mails whilst I’m out of the office (can’t let go, I know!).

If the credit crunch is biting and you are looking for an alternative to the usual summer holiday abroad, don’t forget that you can holiday from home! Just make sure you get all the chores done before you start your holiday, get the food shopping delivered, allocate a budget of what you’d normally spend on days out and eating whilst on holiday, and then plan your break. There are lots of fabulous places to visit nearby, some of which are free.

And do try to forget about work – hard when you’re self employed I know!

• Budget 2009

Should you have any queries following the Budget, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Silver Birch Ventures Limited have designed the site and assisted greatly in both the content and look and feel of the site. In addition, we must thank Brace Design Limited for their work in providing images for use on the website.

We hope you like the new website. If you have any comments about the website or any suggestions as to how we may improve it, then please do get in touch using the contact us facility.

We will be posting a PDF of the main items from the Budget on our website as soon as it is available, so please visit us to get the full round up and analysis of the day’s announcements.

We can provide the initial supply and installation of the software, as well as training to get you started. We provide ongoing support should you need us as new updates or situations come to light within your business.

Smaller business may well be best suited to SimpleStart which is very cost effective but generally, due to VAT accounting limitations in this option, we would advise clients to buy the Pro edition. This is very cost effective as a copy of the software costs around £180. You would need to update your version every two to three years, so this needs to be considered when making a decision.

We can assist you in registering for VAT as well as advising you as to whether a scheme such as the Flat Rate Scheme is the optimal scheme for your business.

We can of course prepare your quarterly or annual VAT returns for you, be it on a cash or invoice accounting basis. We use QuickBooks to do the bookkeeping and VAT preparation which allows for full tracking and reporting on VAT should you be unfortunate enough to have a VAT enquiry.