Christmas is coming and that means the long break and the gradual slide into holiday mindset. It is also, apparently, the time of year that your accountant squeezes a Christmas reference into their blog articles so they can remind you about all the last-minute things that get forgotten at this time of year. Alongside all the regular planning for your abridged accounts for the year and the other day to day activities, the Christmas slowdown can give you some down time to get things done.
Here are our partridge free days of Christmas, accountancy tips. Do (or arrange for someone to do) one of these every day on the quiet run up to Christmas and you may well find that 2021 is a bit more cash rich that you expected.
- Clear out the shoe box of receipts under the bed and do your expenses. Get up to date and get your team to do the same. You will feel better for it when you really need that time later.
- Chase your accountant. Why not use one of the quiet days to catch up with your accountant and discuss your business needs for the coming year?
- Speaking of the coming year – think about have a planning day. If this year has taught us anything it is that sometimes the unexpected occurs. However, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan. You will feel much better if you are looking to the new year with a revised business forecast and plan under your belt.
- Save some money. Small changes make a big difference so why not go over your regular expenses and see if there are any you can cut down on. Do you really need all your seemingly small expenses? As a business grows it is not uncommon for them to gather a few unnecessary costs for services and regular supplies they simply don’t use. £10 here and there doesn’t seem a lot but over a year they can mount up to hundreds and sometimes thousands of pounds.
- Check the tech. It’s false economy to keep old, unreliable, office machinery that costs you more in repairs than replacements. Similarly, do you really need to replace your old kit yet? If not, then don’t just replace because of the age of the machine. We tend to just fall into a ‘write down and replace’ habit but a review of your actual spend on IT and equipment may well produce dividends in savings.
- Get on the invoice crusade. December is the worst period for customers pushing invoice times and interrupting your with cash flow. Make the cash flow as important as the mistletoe this year.
Actually, we could probably have easily extended these to 12 but we figured 6 were enough, we didn’t want to sound all ‘Bah Humbug’ about Christmas after all.
