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Kittiwake Business Aid

Solutions for small businesses and self employed

About Us

We would like to introduce ourselves, and offer you our sincere greetings. Kittiwake Business Aid is a new venture based in Corby, Northamptonshire, to help a small business (such as a driving school, child minder, handyman, plumber, gardener, decorator, caterer, antiques dealer, mobile mechanic, manicurist etc) to promote awareness of its presence on the internet for customers then run the business profitably and legally. Almost everybody with internet access will make it their first choice when looking for a service or product We can create a web site to suit your exact needs at a sensible price. To help you if you are just starting out in business and you engage us for your bookkeeping, we will get you a domain name, construct a starter page about you and place it on the internet for one year free of charge, otherwise £50 buys you a bespoke home page with each additional page from £20. Animation, graphic effects and hosting will cost extra. Your bespoke website will be unique to you and exactly how you want it. We will gladly help you to create a distinctive and fitting style for your site, and help with text and graphics. We also offer help in bookkeeping, VAT and payroll. Would you like 1 or 2 hours help a week to attend to your statutory obligation to keep accounts and submit them? If you trade competitively might you be interested in help with local market research, or technical copy writing to support your product or service? We know you are a busy person getting many invitations to spend money on things that you don’t need, but please think about the benefit of trading profitably and lawfully. We can help you do that and sleep soundly each night. We believe that your relationship with firms like Kittiwake should be friendly, discreet, adapted to your needs and fairly priced. Our reputation will depend on how you rate our services. Our charges are low, reflecting our own tight control of overhead costs, and we operate a loyalty discount up to 40% to clients who stay with us over one year. We will always discount our charges to charities and non-profit organisations. We show you our personal profiles below, and we look forward to the opportunity of an informal discussion with you.

With regards and best wishes John Killow and Olga Pogorerlova

John Killow Qualified to degree standard in Telecommunications and has a lifetime of experience in engineering system design and consultancy Olga Pogorelova Qualified as a Doctor of Physics and Mathematics and has since become certificated with distinctions in Information Technology, Bookkeeping and Payroll Management

Contact Us

Principle: Mr John Killow Tel: 01536 741538 E-mail: info@kittiwake.org.uk Corby Northamptonshire NN18 9EL

Accounting Services

- Accounts for Sole Trader, Partnership and Ltd   companies - Bookkeeping - VAT Returns - Payroll management - Management Financial Reports - Annual Accounts - Tax Returns/ Self Assessment - Online Filing

Other Services

- Web site planning, design, and make up - Publishing your site in the internet - Search engine optimisation - Advertising in the internet - Internet market research - Technical and copy writing - Graphic design - Digital photography and scanning - IT consultancy

Weekend and evening appointments with pleasure for coffee and free initial discussion

Kittiwake Business Aid has applied to HMRC to register as an ASP under the Money Laundering Regulations 2007

We can help you with Bookkeeping

We work with small businesses or sole traders, helping them with their accounts while they get on with the job of trading. Especially for a very young business, an hour or two each week will set your accounts on the right road, and you can take them over whenever you are ready – no expensive third party software is required. We provide accounts for a Sole Trader, Partnership or a Limited Company , and we value a close, geographically local relationship; that way we can help the most. Bookkeeping - VAT returns - Payroll - Annual accounts - Tax returns / self assessment (all obligatory) Interim accounts and Management Reports are optional Kittiwake sets up and maintains computerised accounting, flexible to fit your needs but no more complex than necessary. Our charges are based upon time spent posting transactions to your accounts, so while your business is small are our charges are minimal Manual entries using pen and paper are the traditional way of recording money transactions, and for a one person business is the lowest level of organised record keeping, in a single book satisfying statutory obligations and providing the key indicators about the financial state of health of the business. An account book such as Simplex D is laid out ready to receive manual entries, organised into 52 weekly periods with a summary report for each period but excluding VAT or wages. But time moves on and the number of firms using such simple methods is dwindling. Kittiwake only works with computerized accounts and personal computers, and will set up an accounting system on your PC or one of theirs, and your accounts are always accessible . In these days of tight governmental regulation, any person wanting to become self employed either part or full time must register with HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), who will require him to declare his earnings and his profit to them each year, and pay tax accordingly. But unlike former times, we now calculate our own tax liability and HMRC will normally take our word for the correctness of our self assessment process. But they do insist that a full set of trading accounts is kept for six years even though they will often never see them The laws governing how we all run our businesses change all the time but Kittiwake will watch for changes relevant to you, and tell you about them Here is how we might be able to help you, in the commonest situations:-

Sole proprietor, not VAT registered, no employees

Your position as owner of the business, personally responsible for its success or failure, puts you in the tax category of self employed, and you must pay tax on profit from the business as well as NI contributions On day One of a brand new business entries are made of the opening capital, or on day One of a new financial year of an existing business the assets and liabilities are carried forward from last year. Thereafter, all money spent and received is written into the computer files which form the separate ledgers, to analyse where the money is going to or coming from. A double entry system checks for errors as items are typed in. A Profit or Loss account for the business, and a balance sheet setting out assets and liabilities is kept up to date as data is typed in. Probably you will prefer to simply gather all incoming and outgoing invoices and receipts into a box awaiting K ittiwake to collect and promptly return them say once a fortnight after which you will file them in a safe place. If you ask us to we will check the actual balance from your monthly bank statement and post direct credits, standing orders, direct debits and bank charges to the proper accounts. We will produce a bank reconciliation statement to explain any reason for disagreement, like a delay in presenting a cheque for payment until a later time. Quarterly or half yearly, some profit-conscious traders may wish to produce Interim Final accounts so that they can get an indication of their likely profit for the whole year, perhaps to discuss with the bank manager. We can do this for you, following the same guidelines as for the annual Final Accounts. Annually, a sole trader must produce a set of accounts which show his profit or loss for the year. These accounts comprise the Trading Account, the Profit and Loss Account and the Balance Sheet of the business. Then he must complete the statutory Self-Assessment Tax Return by the due date, copying the figures asked for by HMRC from your accounts. We will do this for you.

Sole Proprietor, registered for VAT, with or without employees

Registration for VAT is optional if you are sure that your annual turnover will reach the minimum required and that the VAT you will reclaim on purchases justifies the extra cost of accounting for it. All VAT transactions must be recorded in a separate account, and the total of VAT you have collected must be remitted to HMRC quarterly without fail. There are several alternative VAT schemes to suit different types of business. We can help you choose the right one, then operate within its rules and avoid penalties for being late

Partnership

A partnership has the benefit that each partner can cover for the other to keep the business running at all times. Being in partnership changes nothing except for the legal requirement of a written agreement about how the profits and liabilities are to be divided.

Sole Proprietor with one or more employees

If you employ someone, either part time or full time, either temporarily or permanently, tax and NI contributions must be deducted from their wages, and remitted to HMRC together with your employer’s NI contributions. Your legal position as self employed owner liable to tax remains, and you must pay both Class 2 and Class 4 National Insurance contributions for yourself. So employing workers increases the accounting burden considerably and this is where many small businesses decide to seek help because of the work involved of managing payroll and PAYE.

Sole Director of a Limited Company and its only employee

Under this arrangement, very popular when a worker’s stock in trade is personal skill to sell, he sets up a limited company called a Personal Service Company or PSC which legally employs him. The PSC invoices each client for the worker’s services to them, the client pays the gross amount due to the PSC which then pays the worker a salary within his personal allowance and so there is no tax or NIC to deduct. If the PSC has enough profit after Corporation Tax at the year end, the PSC is allowed to pay a tax-paid dividend to the worker because he is the sole shareholder. It offers some valuable tax advantages and is legal provided that he trades with a diverse clientele, not critically dependent on one client, because in that case HMRC may rule that he is, for tax purposes, employed by that client and must pay tax on what they pay his PSC. A business should not be set up this way without taking advice about restrictions on its operations and the extra bureaucratic burden it imposes to ensure compliance. The Personal Service Company must operate a proper PAYE tax structure even for one employee, and must self-assess itself for Corporation Tax annually, without fail

And finally ........

All your records must be accurate, in balance, and submitted in the correct way and ON TIME. We will nag you to accomplish this, for your real benefit

We can help you with Payroll

Payroll accounting is quite different from general financial accounting and VAT because of all the HMRC rules for PAYE and the weekly or monthly deadline to get the wages paid. So accounting systems for payroll have developed separately from other products, for example Simplex publish a separate wages book for manual entry, but the complexity of income tax accounting requires something better. Outsourced payroll services are often specialists in that branch alone, because some rather specialised knowledge is needed to manage payroll quickly and accurately. We can install the necessary accounting arrangements for your small business. Employees wages and tax deductions are accounted for and wage slips issued on the due date, but we would not be responsible for handling your cash. Any new employee must have his personal tax record and his NI number integrated into your payroll records after he hands over a P45 issued by a previous employer so that when his gross pay for the week or month is calculated the amount of taxable pay is worked out by consulting the PAYE tax tables, taking into account the employee’s tax code defining his tax free allowance. Then the tax due for this pay period, summed with any other deductions such as NI is subtracted from gross pay to determine nett pay. Now a wage slip must be printed, possibly a BACS bank transfer arranged, and all pay records stored so that at the close of the tax year on 5th April a P60 can be issued to show the employee’s pay and tax for the year. If an employee leaves, his tax record must be conveyed to his next employer by a P45 which you must prepare. The total tax and NI deducted must be accounted for and remitted to HMRC with more forms… and Statutory Sick Pay and maternity pay issues may arise. You must also take responsibility for any employee's and/or director's expenses and benefits which must go through the payroll account. It is a lot of work to do for each employee and you may wish you could get on with making the business prosper. We will make sure you get any HMRC bonus payment for submitting payroll returns early. This is better than incurring late penalties which knock a hole in your hard-earned profiits. But we can manage your payroll for you.

We can help you with Web Design

If you are looking for a website designer in Corby, Kettering and surrounding areas, Kittiwake could be right for you. Why? Because we specialise in web site design for small businesses and self employed who need a really cost-effective business tool which brings you to clients' attention, rather than a status symbol which just costs money. And if you are accepting help from Kittiwake with your accounts and profit objectives then you may agree that a web site by Kittiwake would integrate better with those plans.

The services we offer are:

Website concept and planning What is its purpose? What will be its limitations? Who do you want it to attract? What message do you want it to give them? Agree on the style and function of the site. How much will it cost? How long will it take? Decide on the breakdown of the site, like the chapters in a paper publication, develop a house style for the website, and design a logo for your business, so giving it a distinctive character when viewed by your customer Design the pages content to put your message in front of him. This involves inserting text, and graphics into the page, where they can be edited at any time Publishing your web site in the internet Obtain a domain name (your unique website address in the Internet) "Hosting", choose where your web pages will be stored (on a third party computer). Technical support and maintenance of your web site Updating the page contents, adding new pages etc Search engine optimisation Inserting the right keywords to get your site found by as many as possible searching for your product or service Advertising a web site in the internet Digital photography and scanning Make your website a friendly place to be in - use personal images Show your services and products as pictures

What can the Web do for you?

Suppose you have a small business (or maybe just an idea for one) and you want to make it grow by selling more. What will you do? Rent shops, hire staff? Not for the faint hearted ! But why not consider how the Web could bring you customers without high overhead costs How? Just imagine ……… if for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, you pay one person to stand outside your place of business handing out handbills about what you can do. Cost effective? Very doubtful ! But now imagine ……… if you had 100 people working and paid 24/7 to hand out leaflets in colour all over your local town. Cost effective? Suicidal, more likely – just think of the costs. But now imagine if thousands of multi-page full-colour brochures a week were being read nationally by people looking for something you can provide. Possible and Affordable? Yes, certainly, by using the Internet! It draws no wages and never takes time off. It can deliver your brochures anywhere while you sleep. No salesman could ever do this. As your trade gathers pace, you could make your site interactive, inviting a client to order from you online. Now, whatever goods or services you offer to supply, orders flow into your electronic postbox anytime and your client can pay you direct into your bank online - no more sending invoices by mail. But this is jumping ahead of ourselves - this requires web programming at extra cost.

Welcome to the world of e-commerce!

In 2005 56% of the UK's population used the Internet regularly, and by 2011 that will rise to 73%. In Europe it is higher and has doubled in just 5 years..… and growth continues everywhere. 79% of all Internet users use it to find goods and services - but they won’t find yours unless you are there to announce yourself. You need a presence on the Internet and that is exactly what a web site gives you. You can even think globally, if your business permits it, the Internet does not stop at local or national boundaries. Just imagine …… You have a brochure or catalogue describing your goods or services in full colour with illustrations. That is what your customer is searching for, but instead of it reaching him as a printed document, he can read it on his computer screen, even on his mobile phone. This is basically what a web site does. And of course, your potential client can be anywhere in the world. This is remarkable because the cost of putting your offer in front of him is not measured in terms of postage stamps or advertising cost, as it used to be. As long as your web site is on line it is accessible to anyone anywhere who knows where it is, or finds it by searching. The cost to you is that of creating your web site and installing it on the Internet – there is no further cost to send your brochure to 1 or 100 or 10,000 people – neither numbers or distance matter any more. Try as you may, you will never find a more powerful or cost effective way of advertising your business And if you wish to change the brochure or catalogue? Add or remove an item, change its price? Think what this would mean if you were relying on a printed document. But your web site is accessible by you on your computer to make changes which take effect immediately – everywhere. No waste, no delay, no hassle.

What kind of web site?

All web sites whatever their purpose contain a number of pages containing text and graphics in infinite variety, just like the world of books and printed publications. But a web page is a file of data - text and graphics, stored in the memory of a "server" computer somewhere, transmitted on demand over the worldwide web to the computer of the person "visiting" the website Anybody can publish his own website on the net, resulting in incredibly diverse sources of information about anything imaginable.The style and presentation covers a spectrum from depressingly dull plain text to mind-boggling psychedelic stuff, from tasteful to tasteless. Content covers the spectrum from dull-as-ditchwater legalistics to outrageous and offensive topics. The standard of literacy from pig ignorant to ultra erudite. As an advertising medium there has never been anything to equal it, and huge personal fortunes have been made. Fortunately, most web designers do their best to present interesting and pleasing images. The simplest possible web site, your first effort maybe, might have just one page to announce your existence, using some attention-grabbing animated graphics. On this“home page” will be buttons to navigate to other pages (if any), like turning to sections in a catalogue. Whatever we may think about the content,we may be impressed with how easy it is to arrive at the information we want ........ or we may finish up lost in a page without a visible button to get us out. Sites like that are a waste of money because they infuriate customers, who may not come back. Good navigation is paramount to make the website a joy to use and customers easier to find. Kittiwake will create a website for you which will bring credit – and sales – to your business. We provide any style and content you want but our preference is for simple good taste in the colour scheme and text style, plus a literate choice of words - and navigation buttons accessible at all times. We work directly in HTML for very fast page loading A website can be much more than just a source of information from static web pages, it can also be programmed to work interactively as your online store assistant dealing with enquiries, orders, bookings and payment by credit card - although such facilities increase the complexity and cost of the site. We can work on all types of websites whether business, personal or private using the latest CSS, Flash, Java and ASP technologies (the optional add-on software that drives these extra features). We have a commitment to each of our clients to ensure that their website succeeds. Our service is affordable and reliable, with discounts for charities and non-profit organizations.

We can help you with Internet Market Research

Hundreds of professional consultancies employ thousands of researchers to find answers to questions put by clients about how best to grow their business. A large corporation may spend millions commissioning customer surveys, opinion polls, interviews, focus groups etc. but even so there have been some spectacular failures, because market research is not an exact science. Small firms may be shy of this new science because of cost and risk but they too need help to grow just like the big firms. How can it help them? A businessman starting out or expanding can look to market research to supply answers which he cannot get for himself, for reasons of time, geography, language, culture etc. If he gets the answers, he can adapt his plans so as to minimise risk of failure. This is true for all sizes of business, although with a difference in scale. A multi-national may be planning to build factory and distribution facilities round the other side of the world, but you may be thinking about opening an outlet in the next town. Both of you need answers, but to different questions. Market research delivers its answers as facts and figures, in two categories (you need to know some of the jargon used by the industry). The first is Primary Data which is information obtained by talking to people directly to collect their opinions and preferences, focussed specifically on your problem. It could be obtained by discussing your hopes with family, friends, staff and customers, This Local Primary Data should be very highly valued compared to data from the mouths of strangers in some distant place. Observations and experiments are also useful – you might spend a weekend in the town you plan to trade in, just watching, listening, looking for your competition, looking at estate agents and employment agencies etc to get a feel for the town as a place to do business. Commercial Primary Data answers more general questions about your market in places not so local to you, and may be only partly relevant. It has to be paid for and is usually collected by students or other casual workers in places where people congregate, then gathered up and passed through many processes of sorting, merging and analysis before ending up in a report somewhere on the worldwide web, where it contributes to the second category, Secondary Data, available to anybody on a seemingly infinite range of topics. Somewhere in a vast mass of records is the evidence you need to support or reject your idea. Secondary Data is abundant, although often compiled into comprehensive online subscription-only databases often accessible via your city library or university together with innumerable printed records. Thousands of large organisations including governments publish reports, statistics, censuses, directories, indexes, yearbooks, journals, monographs etc, on every topic imaginable. Often, results of a search will include irrelevant information but it can be photocopied, cleaned, reduced and merged to reveal the answers although at some cost in time and effort. But the ongoing transfer of printed material on to the internet makes most existing secondary data accessible without the need to even leave the office, which is why it is often called “desk data” . Once captured it can be processed into tables, graphs or whatever best reveals the answer. Not to be overlooked is Internal Secondary Data coming out of your own business records, your sales and purchase ledgers, your expenses, your final accounts for past years, your general trading record, all yielding priceless clues about how your business might grow. And of course you can obtain it yourself, if you have the time. Common sense says that external secondary data sources should be searched first on the internet to see whether anything published free comes close to what is needed, before considering the time delay and expense of obtaining commercial primary data. And local primary data should be gathered at the start of the research Kittiwake offers Internet searching for information relevant to your problem, using advanced search software which finds maximum results in the shortest time. Then present the material in the clearest way for you to consider. Kittiwake can also analyse your business accounts for figures which when interpreted alongside other data can show valuable trend information in your business We will willingly discuss this with you without charge, and offer our advice for you to consider.

Information Technology

Very probably you already use a computer at home, but maybe not in your business. Kittiwake offers you help in that situation, where using the computer for business could increase your profitability. If you are large enough to afford an IT manager then he will have organised your several computers into a network, whose operation he supervises. But you do not have him yet, while you want to get the most out of your internet connection and your web site Kittiwake can examine your computer to see if it is capable of doing what you want. If it has shortcomings we can advise you what to do and supply any hardware or software needed. If you have nothing at all as yet, or if you use equipment pre-Windows, Kittiwake can help you find what you need at an affordable price, once your needs have been agreed. Now, assuming you use a modern computer running Windows operating system, your system will be connected up and commissioned to do as you want, maybe within a network of 2 or more PCs and a common printer. Connection issues to the internet will be resolved. Kittiwake will provide training, and will be available to resolve any difficulties, so working for you as your part time IT manager. The Windows operating system from Microsoft provides all the basic functions to support an industry standard application package such as Microsoft Office which will give you Word processing, Excel spreadsheet and Access database without needing anything else – these programmes are very comprehensive in what they are designed to do. But all Microsoft products have very many optional facilities and settings through which the system functions can be customised to suit the needs of the business, or personal preferences, or the needs of a disabled operator. Many of these choices are not well known and may often never even be considered. Kittiwake will configure the system to be of maximum benefit to you.

We can help you with Technical and Copy Writing

The written word is still the most powerful way in which information is passed around between people. And we are privileged to have English - the richest language in the world - in which to express ourselves. But the way we write determines whether or not the intended meaning gets across. A young man returning from the North West Frontier as a Daily Telegraph war correspondent in 1897 wrote " I have always thought that if an author cannot make friends with the reader, and explain his objects, in two or three hundred pages, he is not likely to do so in fifty lines". His name was Winston Churchill, who is still the doyen of most authors of English. Churchill shows us how to choose English words to create razor-sharp descriptions, thus William Duke of Normandy’s invasion force is described as "a gathering of audacious buccaneers", King William Rufus’ taxes as "shameless exactions", and the youthful lapses of Henry the Fifth were the "vehement ebullitions of his nature." He loved to rescue descriptive words no longer often spoken, such as efficacious, pusillanimous, noisome, jaunty, riparian, destitute, squalid, sombre, valorous, lofty, intricate, contumacious, serene, turbulent, odious, sullen, and (a favourite Churchillian adjective) prodigious He uses sentences and paragraphs to devastating effect and said "To make a short sentence or succession of short sentences tell, they should be sandwiched in between lengthy and sonorous periods. The contrast is effective" and "I affected a combination of the styles of Macaulay and Gibbon, the staccato antitheses of the former and the rolling sentences and genitival endings of the latter; and I stuck in a bit of my own from time to time. I began to see that writing, especially narrative, was not only an affair of sentences, but of paragraphs. Indeed I thought the paragraph no less important than the sentence. Macaulay is a master of paragraphing. Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so the paragraphs must fit on to one another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages. Chapterisation also began to dawn upon me. Each chapter must be self-contained. All the chapters should be of equal value and more or less of equal length. . . . Finally the work must be surveyed as a whole and due proportion and strict order established from beginning to end." If your business involves producing or distributing a product which needs some technical description, owner's manual, operating instructions, assembly instructions, application notes, specifications etc, please consider the good impression created for your customer if you give him a helpful and professionally prepared document to help him, in which these principles are followed. It must be friendly, literate and accurate - we have all had to try and decipher something written in pidgin English, and resolved not to buy from that source again. Brevity without omitting anything, explanation aided by diagrams, and plain English are what we offer in any literature we design. We know how to write good letters and documents for important purposes. We can create documents from a wide choice of typefaces, and we can deploy software for desktop publishing, graphics design, photo editing and computer aided design if it helps to produce what you want. Your document can include drawings, plans and diagrams, and we have a large library of standard symbols for schematics. And although we are not in the printing business we can produce camera-ready artwork that a local printer can use to run off your publication, or of course we can incorporate the publication into your own website. We will willingly discuss this with you without charge, and offer our advice for you to consider.