And finally… A look back at the main news from December 1967 as we come to the end of our 50th anniversary year. We have enjoyed looking back to 1967, as we celebrate our 50 years in business. We may have said it before but it is genuinely fascinating how many similarities we have discovered […]
In case you missed it, interest rates doubled earlier this month to their second lowest ever level… what a sentence. Expected for some time, this is the first of several ‘baby steps’ Governor Carney has been preparing us for, as The Bank of England seeks to balance spending, inflation and GDP growth. Commentators do not […]
Last month we wrote about the lost decade – the ten years since the financial crash of 2008 – and having discussed this theory in meetings with a range of SMEs it feels like the side effect of the lost decade is a numbness to economic uncertainty. That is not to say that businesses are […]
Since the ‘Millennium Bug’ it has felt like there is always an event or new piece of legislation coming down the pipeline which is set to cause a major impact to all businesses or shake up a particular sector. Having only just caught our breath after Auto Enrolment, we are now presented with GDPR (General […]
The Lost Decade? It’s hard to believe that the credit crunch that led to the downfall of Lehman Brothers and the ensuing melee in the economy was almost a decade ago. You would be forgiven for thinking that the time has passed quite quickly, perhaps because we have become used to switching on the news […]
As part of our 50th anniversary, we are looking back at the events of 1967 to see what the founders of our business would have been reading about and facing in their first year of trading. This month we look at the events of September 1967. As if to echo our own news this month, […]
The September meeting of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee gave the strongest signal yet that an increase in interest rates is getting closer. Whilst the September vote saw a majority remain in favour of keeping rates at its long term historic low of 0.25%, the 7-2 result belies the real situation. The statement […]
In recent years, I have taken the chance over the Christmas break to sit and consider the factors most likely to impact our clients over the year ahead. I do not profess to be a commentator nor economic forecaster, although even they missed most of the big events of 2016; but I do think it […]
The 2016 Autumn Statement In recent times client feedback has suggested that most of you feel rather inundated with information following the autumn statements and annual budget delivered by The Chancellor. With the advent of social media, and most professional organisations now issuing commentary or updates immediately following the announcements, we believe these events have […]
With over 200,000 small organisations using HMRC Basic PAYE Tools (BPT), it has become one of the most recognised payroll systems for many employers across the UK. But recent legislation over pension Auto Enrolment (AE) is likely to challenge the traditional system. Prior to now, BPT users have not had access to software functionality that […]
Many financial analysts believe that women are not fulfilling their aspirations and more could, and should be done to help women follow their dreams, which would provide a significant boost to the UK’s economy. Women represent a significant proportion of the workforce, but the number of female small business owners is alarmingly limited. As of […]
On Friday 24th June we awoke to the news that Brexit was a reality and the UK had delivered a somewhat unexpected shock to the western world and decided that it intends to leave the European Union. But should it have been such a shock? – was this not a ‘Black Swan’ moment that we actually […]