Category
An ongoing arrangement where a client pays regularly rather than per project. It converts unpredictable project income into recurring revenue — and badly structured retainers are one of the most
Fewer than consultants suggest and more than most small businesses have — and the useful test is whether a policy answers a question that will otherwise be decided inconsistently, not whether it
Through a formal process appropriate to the structure and to whether the business is solvent — and the distinction between solvent and insolvent closure determines everything, including whether
Enough detail that both sides know what is being delivered, when, for how much, and what happens when something changes — because almost every dispute in service work comes from one of those four
Money passes through several parties before reaching you, each taking a share — which is why the headline rate a provider advertises is rarely what you end up paying. Who is involved. The customer's
By being specific about what the person will actually do, and by testing for it — because small businesses feel each hiring mistake far more sharply than large ones, where a poor hire can be
Through a long, multi-person process in which the decision is rarely made by the person you are talking to — which is why techniques borrowed from consumer selling fail so consistently. What makes it
A running record of money moving between a company and its director personally, outside salary, dividends and legitimate expense reimbursement. It is one of the most commonly misunderstood things in
Enough to support every figure in your accounts and tax returns, kept for a statutory minimum period that varies by record type and jurisdiction — and the burden of proof is on you, not on the
For limited companies it is effectively a necessity because the company's money is legally not yours. For sole traders it is not usually a legal requirement and is still the single highest-return
Culture is what actually gets rewarded, tolerated and punished — not what is written on a wall. It can be shaped deliberately, and the levers that work are structural rather than communicative, which
Far more negotiation than litigation — the overwhelming majority of commercial disputes settle, and the ones that reach a trial are a small fraction. Understanding the process matters mostly because
Buy, unless the software is the thing that makes you different — which is the general rule, and the interesting part is why businesses so consistently talk themselves out of it. The case for buying:
Considerably more than shipping further — you acquire tax, regulatory, contractual and logistical obligations in the destination, and the ones that catch businesses out are almost always tax and
Selling through someone else's sales relationships rather than your own — and the reason businesses do it is reach, while the reason it so frequently disappoints is that the partner's incentives are
Independent verification that your business operates a management system meeting a published international standard — and the honest answer on value is that it is frequently worth it for access to
By treating supply as a managed relationship with concentrated risk, rather than as a series of purchases — because the failure of one supplier can stop a business that is otherwise perfectly
The terms that govern what happens when things go wrong — because when everything goes right, nobody reads them. A contract is a risk allocation document, and the clauses that matter are the ones
Statutory accounts are prepared to a legal standard, once a year, for filing and for tax. Management accounts are prepared for you, as often as you need them, in whatever form actually helps you
Borrowing against money customers already owe you — releasing cash from unpaid invoices rather than waiting for payment terms to run. It solves a genuine problem for growing businesses and is
Stock is cash converted into a form you cannot spend, and the cost of holding it is consistently larger than businesses estimate — commonly a fifth to a third of the stock's value per year once every
Substantially more than selling in a shop — because distance selling adds a cancellation right that has nothing to do with the goods being faulty, plus specific information duties, and the penalties
A general duty to ensure health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable, plus a short list of specific requirements. The phrase does the heavy lifting: it means weighing risk against the cost
Two very different forms of public support: tax relief claimed retrospectively for qualifying innovation spending, and grants awarded competitively in advance for specific projects. They are confused