[Wolves] Business Start Up (Was Proposed Talks)

[David Goodwin]

> 
> I would add ....
> 
> No Limited Company = No Business Account.

Obviously, considering the defintion of a sole trader...

> 
> Also join relative organisations like UKITA BCS , etc, etc.

We've not bothered with UKITA (heard bad things about them by previous
employers etc).

> 
> I am going Ltd soon.  My accountant said you will save 7% being limited
> if you take a minimum wage (£6k per year I think) and pay the rest in
> dividends.  At about £30k turn over and above it becomes a viable option
> - of course he would say that as I will have to pay him circa £200 more
> next time round. 

The issue with paying yourself via dividends is that you can only pay
a dividend if you're making a profit ... so if your business is
reliant on one large customer who then leave, or the market deteriorates
you face the prospect of having to repay those dividends (as you'll
probably be paying yourself dividends 6 times a year as an effective
salary). 
For this reason, I prefer being a salaried employee... and if at the 
end of the year we make a profit, then I'll take a dividend payment.

We made a concious decision when starting Pale Purple that we wanted
minimal personal liability. So far we [ as directors ] have just the
overdraft liability ... so should things ever go wrong, we should be
able to move on without e.g. loosing our home or whatever.

> 
> I would recommend  some sort of system also as it will make thing easier
> in the long term and give you visibiltiy of wtf you are doing!

Yes, unfortunately I've not seen any decent accounting package on
Linux. However, there are web based ones - e.g. kashflow which I'd
like to move over to using at some point in the future.
Quickbooks and Sage are really the only options I've seen.


David
-- 
David Goodwin 

[ david at codepoets dot co dot uk ]
[ http://www.codepoets.co.uk       ]