The Admin
What an accountant actually does for you
The value of a good accountant is mostly in the questions they ask before a decision, not in the forms they…
· 3 min read
Tomas Bergqvist
Reporter, Biz Wealth Focus
Tomas has written about starting out, pricing, cash flow for most of the last decade and prefers a plain explanation to a clever one.
15 articles
The Admin
The clauses that do most of the work in a small agreement
A short agreement covering six things prevents nearly every dispute a small business actually encounters…
· 3 min read
Starting Out
Nobody sets your week now, and that is harder than it sounds
A self-employed week arrives without any externally imposed shape, which sounds like freedom and behaves…
· 3 min read
Starting Out
Selling to a business and selling to the public are different trades
Who your buyer is changes how the decision gets made, when the money arrives and which rules apply, and…
· 3 min read
Starting Out
Decide in advance when you will judge whether this is working
A business that has never agreed with itself what a good result would look like by a particular date tends…
· 3 min read
Pricing
Urgency is a service, and it can be charged for
A deadline that forces everything else to be reordered has a genuine cost to the business meeting it, and…
· 3 min read
Pricing
Know the number you will not go below before the conversation starts
A floor worked out in advance turns a negotiation into a decision, and it’s the main thing preventing a…
· 3 min read
Pricing
An estimate and a quote are two different promises
The word used when a number is given changes what happens if the work turns out to cost more, and a…
· 3 min read
Cash Flow
Work in progress is money you have spent and not yet asked for
Between starting a job and sending the invoice, a business is carrying its own costs on somebody else’s…
· 3 min read
Cash Flow
A seasonal business has to fund its own quiet half
Trades with a predictable annual peak are not unstable, they are regular in a way that requires the good…
· 3 min read
Cash Flow
Some of your work loses money and the total will not tell you which
A small business generally knows whether it’s profitable overall, and inside that single figure there are…
· 3 min read
Clients
A referral is somebody spending their own reputation on you
Recommendations produce the cheapest work a small business ever gets, and they arise from a mechanism most…
· 3 min read
Clients
Working through an intermediary means somebody else owns the client
Agencies, brokers and marketplaces supply work you did not have to find, and in exchange they take a share…
· 3 min read
The Admin
The parts of a job you want to use again
Small businesses build methods, templates and components while they work, and whether any of it can be…
· 3 min read
The Admin
What you promise about the work after it has been delivered
Every sale carries some obligation to put things right, and whether that obligation is defined in advance…
· 3 min read