Payroll price challenge

Take the Omni Accountancy payroll price challenge

Do you outsource your payroll? What are you paying? What service are you receiving? And is it fit for purpose?

Do you do it yourself but your time could be better utilised to the benefit of your business. At Omni we offer many services and payroll is just one.

We are competitive, flexible and we can save you money. Why not take the Omni Accountancy Price Challenge today to see just how much…

At Omni you will get a very personal and bespoke offering – quality at an affordable price.

Referrals

Do you know anyone who needs payroll, tax or accountancy help right now? Refer us and make sure they mention your name too.

For more information about Omni Chartered Accountants, call 01902 837 408, or request a free of charge call back from our website – www.taxandaccuntancysolutions.co.uk.

We are always happy to help.

3 common misconceptions SMEs have about accounting and tax

Anyone who is thinking of, or has already set up, their own business may admit to having preconceived ideas about how tax and accounting works.

For some, these misconceptions could have put them off even starting up their own business so instead, they have stuck with the security of working for an established employer.

Don’t let this stop you from fulfilling your dream of running your own company.

Below are some of the most common misunderstandings.

1. My business is too small to need an accountant

Regardless of how big or small your business is, you can always benefit from the help of an accountant.

If cash flow is limited then admittedly a full time employee may not be the most practical step. However, many small companies enlist the help of an accountancy practice that can keep track of figures, submit tax returns on time, carry out payroll services and best of all, advise you on the best ways to save your company money.

Even if you’re happy to take on the extra workload yourself, hiring an accountant purely for the money saving advice can be well worth your time. You stay in control of what you want when, but you benefit from the professional knowledge, experience and advice.

2. I can do my accounts myself

This is of course true – you can do your accounts yourself. However, as mentioned above, even though it may not seem like it at the time, an accountant can save you a lot of money in the long run.

Furthermore, very few successful entrepreneurs got to the top because they spent their days bookkeeping.

You are of much better value to your business when you spend time working on new business development and growing the company rather than doing things that you can hire others to do.

3. HMRC is always right

Just like any business, HMRC isn’t immune to making mistakes. Although they endeavour to achieve incredibly high levels of accuracy, human error is part of life.

If you are uncertain about a tax bill, the complexities of filing online, your tax code or anything else to do with your accounts, check out the FAQ’s and help available on the HMRC website.

Alternatively, if you have been left incredibly confused by tax codes and balance sheets, or just want help or advice, contact Omni Chartered Accountants who will be able to advise you accordingly.

HMRC eases stance on late PAYE filings

UK businesses with less than 50 employees will now be allowed three days’ leeway by HMRC before being penalised for late filing of PAYE submissions.

HM Revenue & Customs has confirmed that late payment penalties will carry on being reviewed on a “risk-assessed” basis as opposed to being issued automatically.

No change to PAYE filing deadlines

HMRC have confirmed that there will be no change to the actual filing deadlines, which usually means that businesses need to file them actually on or before each payment due date.

HMRC will be closing close to 15,000 PAYE schemes in March 2015 in a bid to prevent unnecessary penalties being issued, for companies that have not filed a PAYE report since April 2013, and as a result, look to appear to have ceased trading.

These company schemes will be written to, advising them about the planned closure and what they should do if they are - or should be - operating PAYE.

Employers with less than 50 employees are also reminded that late filing PAYE penalties will apply from 6 March.

A discussion document has been published by HMRC in order to gauge views by the deadline of 11th May 2015. Suggestions concerning potential improvements to the way in which penalties apply for PAYE payment failure or to meet deadlines for registration or returns will be considered.

How to run your PAYE smoothly and avoid penalties

Of course, it is not always easy running a business and PAYE is something that a good accountant like Omni Chartered Accountants can help you with.

Seeking help with your PAYE affairs may work out more cost-effectively than you may think, especially when you consider the time saving and potential problems that your company could face if deadlines and payments are not made by the dates as set out by HMRC.

For more information, contact us now by clicking here or request a free of charge call back from our website by clicking on the link at the top of this page. 

A guide to auto enrolment for SMEs

Top of FormA guide to auto enrolment for SMEs

In order to enhance personal pension funding, the government has drastically changed the laws and regulations around pension provisions supplied by employers. 

Employer responsibilities

This article will give you a basic outline of these changes and your responsibilities as an employer.  The government has changed details from the point of first considering auto enrolment until now so it is important that you keep up to date with any changes in legislation going forward.

Ensuring you have the most suitable pension scheme in place is paramount in order to offer a quality benefit to your employees while reducing the costs and time associated with administering the scheme.

The duties of an employer pre-auto enrolment

If you employ less than five members of staff you currently do not have any responsibility or obligation to offer your staff pension benefits. 

If you employ five or more staff the minimum requirement is that you have to provide access to a stakeholder pension scheme.  There is no obligation to make contributions either as an employer or an employee.

The Government’s aim

Due to employees having to opt in to the pension scheme and there typically being no employer contribution the current schemes meeting the minimum requirements have very poor take up. 

In order to improve take up and therefore increase private pension funding, the government are taking away these two main barriers by bringing in auto enrolment and compulsory employer funding.  This means that instead of employees choosing to enter the pension scheme they will be automatically enrolled into the scheme and contributions taken.

Your staging date

The date by which you have to be compliant is governed by your number of employees on the 1 April 2012 and your PAYE reference number.  The earliest date was 1 October 2012 for employers with 120,000 or more employees gradually working through companies with less employees with the earliest start date for a company employing 30 or less employees will be 1 June 2015.

There is a comprehensive list of staging dates available from the Pensions Regulator.

Employers’ responsibilities

From their prospective staging date, any employer employing at least one person will be legally obliged to

•             Set up and register a pension scheme suitable for auto enrolment
•             Assess all staff eligibility at every pay period
•             Automatically enrol and make contributions for all eligible jobholders
•             Enrol and make contributions for non-eligible jobholders who wish to join
•             Manage the auto enrolment: including the joining and opt-out process
•             Keep records on how they have fulfilled their responsibilities

Scheme contributions

In order for the scheme to be classed as qualifying it must meet minimum contribution levels. There are different methods of assessing qualifying contributions but below is the simplest and is based on percentages of the employees total remuneration. The contribution level is to be bought in over three stages.

October 2012 – September 2017

Minimum Employer contribution = 1%

Minimum Member contribution – 1%

Total minimum contribution = 2%

October 2017 – September 2018

Minimum Employer contribution = 2%

Minimum Member contribution – 3%

Total minimum contribution = 5%

October 2018 onwards

Minimum Employer contribution = 3%

Minimum Member contribution – 4%

Total minimum contribution = 7%

Enforcement

In order to ensure compliance with the employers’ responsibilities, the following three stage process for non-compliance has been put in place by the Pensions Regulator.

Stage 1: compliance/ unpaid contribution notice

This will detail the breach and detail the timescale over which the employer has to put it right. Interest may be required on unpaid contributions.

Stage 2: fixed penalty notice

If the breach has not been rectified by the given time a fixed penalty of £400 will be applied.

Stage 3: escalating penalty

If employer continues to fail to comply with the first and second notice, then a daily penalty will be payable based on the number of employees.

Ensuring you have the most suitable pension scheme in place is paramount in order to offer a quality benefit to your employees while reducing the costs and time associated with administering the scheme.

These changes are likely to have great implications on business planning so be sure to understand the effect it will have on your business over the coming years.

For more information and impartial advice, you can be sure to count on Omni Chartered Accountants, who are here to advise you at every stage of your business journey. Request a free of charge call-back from this website or click here to find out more today.

5 tips to being successful in business

Everyone has their own unique working habits and you are unlikely to ever find two people who work in exactly the same way – regardless of whether or not they are successful.

However, research has shown that hugely successful people do often share certain habits and personality traits that are thought to be a massive contributing factor to their success.

1.     Work hard

When it comes to running a successful business, there are no shortcuts and there are very rarely any overnight success stories.  You can’t be truly great at anything unless you put an incredible amount of effort into it. Successful people have a long list of things they want to get done which means they put in a lot of time and work more hours that the average person.

2.     Have big ambitions

Right from the outset, successful people identify where they want to end up and set that as their goal. Once they know what they want to achieve, they work backwards and lay out every step that is required to meet their goal.

Smart leaders find that this helps them to make better decisions and makes it easier for them to work harder because they know that their ultimate goal is success.

What’s more, achieving a goal, no matter how big it is, merely acts as a launch pad for successful people to set another equally ambitious goal.

3.     Sell, sell, sell

The vast majority of very successful people will agree that the one skill that has contributed the most to their achievements is the ability to sell. Selling is the foundation to success because being good at it means that chances are you will know how to negotiate, deal with people saying no to you, can maintain confidence when being rejected, can communicate effectively and very importantly, build long term relationships. All of these skills are vital to success but those who truly believe in what they do find that they don’t need to sell – they simply communicate their feelings about something they truly believe in.

4.     Don’t have a back-up plan

Whilst many people might argue that a back-up plan is a sensible thing to have, highly successful people feel that this merely creates an easy out when things get tough.

Chances are that you will work a lot harder and a lot longer if your primary plan simply has to work and you don’t have any other fall-back options.

5.     Don’t let pride get in your way

Even the most successful people in the world will never be too afraid to admit when they are wrong, when they have made a mistake and when they need to say sorry.

This grounded nature makes them much nicer people to work with and as a result, professional and personal relationships thrive and so does the business.

Summary

If you would like to be successful, these are of course, general pointers to help guide you in the right direction. Having the right accountant and getting the right advice when it comes to your business finances should also be a crucial part of any plan that you may have to make a success of your venture.

Omni Chartered Accountants are here to guide you along the way and offer impartial advice; our years of experience make sure that clients always get a cost-effective solution to managing their tax and accounting affairs.

For more information, call us today on 01902 837408 or request a free of charge call back from this website. Alternatively, click here to make an enquiry and we will contact you by return.

Why trusting your accountant is key

Is it possible that the big players can ever really take over the position of the “high street accountant” or the reliable online accountancy practice that is always happy to offer one-on-one advice?

Of course not – not in our opinion, anyway.

An accountant should be there for you to advise you on the best way to manage your business finances and tax affairs. Let’s face it; this is a huge responsibility and one that you should only ever hand over to a company that you 100% trust in.

For example, you may be looking for the best price, but do cheap prices always mean great value?

Save more than just your accountancy bills

At Omni Chartered Accountants, we do what we say on the tin. We are direct, honest, experienced and – like our title says – we are Chartered Accountants, so you can be sure you are getting a professional level of service at all times.

We offer our clients excellent value for money but at the same time, we don’t scrimp on client service. All of our customers are given an initial consultation and we are always on-hand to offer advice in all aspects of their accounting queries when they need us.

In short, we are in business to save our clients money – we don’t put our profits first.

Why trusting your accountant is key

If you are unhappy with the way in which your company affairs are being managed, or if you would like to review your current accountancy bills, why not contact us for a free review? We will be happy to speak to you over the telephone initially and put forward our ideas as to how we feel our services could benefit your business.

Call 01902 837408 today or request a free of charge back from our website – also, check out our pricing page now to see how competitive our fees actually are.

And that is before we have started helping you to make the most of your company finances and tax affairs! Call Omni today: you won’t look back.

EU accounting directive could be threat to UK economy

A radical new accounting regime set to shake-up the UK's small business reporting landscape could pose a risk to the British economy as an unplanned by-product of an attempt to slash red tape.

That's the stark warning from Nigel Sleigh-Johnson, the ICAEW's Financial Reporting Faculty head, as the government publishes its final recommendations on how the new EU Accounting Directive will be implemented in the UK.

Sleigh-Johnson said;

"Only time will tell whether the reduction in the information required in small company accounts is a sensible reduction in red tape or a source of risk to the UK economy.

“ICAEW for one has persistently warned against the potential risk that over-simplifying reporting requirements can have on the ability of small companies to secure credit."

What are EU Accounting Directive recommendations?

Under the BIS proposals, set to be enshrined in company law by July 2015 and become effective for financial years beginning on or after 1 January 2016, the most profound changes relate to small businesses.

A legal restriction will be placed on the amount of information required in small company accounts, while small businesses will be denied the option to file so-called abbreviated accounts at Companies House. But they may be allowed to both prepare and file a new simplified form of ‘abridged' 

accounts.

Accounting thresholds for SMEs due to rise

Accounting thresholds for small companies are also due to rise, meaning more businesses will have access to the simplified reporting regime.

Sleigh Johnson said he was encouraged that BIS had listened to some of its key concerns, especially that access to the proposed abridged accounts regime for small companies will be restricted to companies that have secured shareholder buy-in first.

But he expressed disappointment that the introduction of the new accounting regime for small companies, especially at an EU level "has overall been an exercise in damage limitation rather than one of well-considered, proportionate simplification, and that subsequently the time available for debate about UK implementation has been so restricted".

Small businesses, their advisers and lenders would be well advised to prepare for implementation of the new accounting regime, irrespective of the outcome, he added.

The Financial Reporting Council is expected to consult shortly on detailed proposals for revised accounting standards for small and micro companies, also due to come into force on 1 January 2016.

Have your say about the EU Accounting Directive proposals on Twitter @OmnitasTax or Facebook. Omni Chartered Accountants are here to help guide you and provide affordable accounting solutions for your company – contact us now or of course, you can request a free of charge call back.

PwC dropped by Sainsbury’s after 20 years of representation

After 20 years of being their auditor, PwC – one of “the Big Four” accountancy firms – have been dropped like a hot potato by Sainsbury’s, after facing an investigation into the £263m Tesco accounting outrage.

It has been confirmed that EY will now be appointed as auditors for Sainsbury’s from March 2015 following a formal tender process in 2014 and as stated in their accounts.

Sainsbury's decided to de-instruct PwC after recommendations by its audit committee and also as a result of increased audit rotation. A spokesman for the supermarket giant also stated that the company highlighted its intention to review its auditors last year and confirmed the decision was not related to events over at Tesco.

Chairman of Sainsbury's audit committee, Gary Hughes, said;

“We would like to thank PwC, and specifically the Sainsbury's audit partners, for their significant contribution as the company's auditors over many years. Going forward we expect an orderly transition and look forward to working with EY into the future.”

Tesco accounting scandal

In December, the FRC launched an investigation into Tesco's accounting ‘black hole’ and audit work that had been carried out by PwC - it is also being investigated separately by the SFO (Serious Fraud Office).

Going back further to September 2014, a team of Deloitte forensic accountants identified that the first half profit estimate that Tesco gave the City was falsely inflated.

Since this time, PwC has said that companies were changing auditors frequently as a result of new regulations and as a result, it had gained as well as lost clients.

What do you think about ‘the Big Four’ and the Tesco accounting scandal? Let us know your thoughts on Twitter and remember that we are here to provide honest, impartial advice for your company for whenever you need it.

Omni Chartered Accountants are here to save you money, time and hassle – call 01902 837408 today or click here to contact us by email. You can also request a call back by selecting the tab at the top of the page.