Recent Posts

Forum Questions

Recent Posts

Selling my Shopify skincare store?

fisicx
Codeunkie1992 said:
I run a profitable Shopify Skincare store but want to sell it due to health reasons and I am unsure how my current in-house production setup will affect its sale on platforms like Filppa.
Click to expand...
It will make it very difficult to sell. If you employed someone to produce the goods it would be far more attractive to a potential buyer. Right now you aren’t selling a business, you are selling a job.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Beware the union rep

S
U.K. seems to want to catch France up at a rate of knots in terms of size of State (fastest tax growth in the developed world) / workplace protections yet we're nowhere near as productive as the French per hour worked - this reads really terribly to me for UK growth prospects (and I mean private sector growth too, public sector growth is a given under a Labour administration). Coupled with the highest energy costs in the developed world and more and more regulation, what is the plan here? Seen nothing but my taxes go up, services get worse, and more regulation so far.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Verifying you are not a robot on own sites

gpietersz
UKSBD said:
Unless you're running your own servers, is it just a case of leaving everything to the hosts and relying on the fact they don't have their settings set too strict?
Click to expand...
You can do some things like throttling and blocking particular IP blocks yourself, but that does not cover everything, and if its on top of what your host does. it might be too much.

You can definitely stick Cloudflare in front of your site.

Its very hard to know how many false positives there are. If you use Cloudflare they will tell you they have block x thousand bots, but that is really x thousand blocks - you have no idea how many people they blocked, or how many bots they let through.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Goldmine for finding new clients?

Ozzy
James4B said:
I came here to share a business idea with like mined people which is what I thought this forum was for? To gain insight, solid advice and feedback.
Click to expand...
Well, the issue you have is that you seem to have relied too much on AI. You've created a service and are using data, and if prompted a certain way, AI will tell you that the service you offer is lawful and that 'legitimate interest' is allowed. However, for LI to apply you need to assess if the individual would agree with your assessment. If the individual, if challenged in court, did not agree with your assessment of use of their data meets the legitimate interest test then you lose.

You are not allowed to message these people any marketing messages until they have confirmed their interest. Companies House and the ICO have documentation that states that the public record data itself cannot be used for marketing purposes, as that does not meet the intent by which the data was provided by the individuals for the public record.

The only exception to this is if you do not record the individual names of the directors/PSCs. If you direct mail to the company and not to a named individual, that moves outside the scope of GDPR and then you just have Companies House and their TOS for the use of the data.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Writing for other people’s websites

lmkeller14
Richard Huskey said:
Yeah, you can still help him without directly quoting. One simple way is to write a separate article on his website covering the same topic in more depth, then subtly reference “additional resources” or “further reading” in your newspaper piece (if allowed). Even without links, people often Google phrases or experts mentioned indirectly. Also, timing both articles together can help capture that search traffic while interest is high.
Click to expand...
This is good strategy.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

How do pre-order sales work within the tax year?

MyAccountantOnline
Jack Robinson said:
Sorry if this is a dumb question, I'm new to selling. I recently sold some stuff via preorder on ebay. This was done at the start of April before the current tax year began. However I didn't pay for them until today due to some issues with my wholesaler.

Do I deduct these costs for the current tax year when they were actually bought (this is what I'm assuming) or would they be deducted for the tax year they were sold?

Any help is much appreciated!
Click to expand...

If you are a sole trader you will (by default) use the cash basis - that means you record payments and receipts when they are made. So the sales you made will be in last years accounts, and the stock purchased will be in this tax year.

If you trade via a limited company, or are a sole trader who doesnt use the cash basis, you record income and expenses when they are invoiced and need to include in your accounts debtors (monies owing), creditors (monies owed) and stock.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Insolvency Act claims

E
Here’s another write up of Zedra.

Summary: there is a limitation period on unfair prejudice claims


The Limitation Act 1980 (LA 1980) does not expressly mention unfair prejudice petitions anywhere, however an unfair prejudice petition was an ‘action’ and therefore fell within the broad scope of that statute. In particular, unfair prejudice petitions are caught within the scope of LA 1980, s 8 which imposes a limitation period of 12 years for actions upon a specialty. LA 1980, s 8 is itself disapplied in the event that another provision in LA 1980 prescribes a shorter limitation period. LA 1980, s 9 provides a limitation period of six years for ‘an action to recover any sum recoverable by virtue of any enactment’.

The Court of Appeal accordingly reasoned that a general 12-year limitation period applies to unfair prejudice petitions but a shorter period of six years applies where the relief sought includes a money judgment.
Click to expand...
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Share your SEO tips and tricks?

ThatDevAaron
Richard Huskey said:
One thing that consistently works for me is focusing on search intent first, not just keywords. If your content actually answers what users are looking for, rankings usually follow. Also, updating old content can give quick wins. Page speed and clean structure matter more than people think too.
On a side note, when I work on SEO while traveling or on public Wi-Fi, I use fastvpn — it’s simple and keeps things secure without slowing me down much.
Click to expand...
i'm gonna give this a shot.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

The World of "AI Agents" the Good the Bad and the Ugly

Keynote Speech
Data Swami said:
So here is the "Bad" what i learnt in this specific case was that many agents gets messy. In total i had 58 "agents" each with a specific job and workflow that it would do. The problem came with orchestrating them all. Individually they were fine but orchestrating at that many levels meant things became confused if I just wanted it to run one of the skills. So lesson learnt was to have the specialisation but keep it to those "leadership" roles as otherwise they were just there not doing much apart form orchestrating approvals.
Click to expand...
That’s a really interesting breakdown, especially the bit about orchestration becoming the real headache rather than the agents themselves.

It feels like a lot of these setups start off with the idea of loads of specialised agents, but in reality it just gets messy quite quickly. I’ve seen similar where keeping things simpler and focusing on a few solid workflows tends to work better long term.

The cost side is a good point as well. It’s easy to get carried away with what it can do and forget how quickly usage can creep up.

Have you found a decent balance yet between keeping it flexible and keeping it manageable, or is that still the tricky part?
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Writing a book that names real people

Newchodge
FreddyG said:
Assuming that they can prove the facts reported, yes, they are "allowed".

Though I do bristle somewhat at the use of the word "allowed". This would be a civil case of libel and so there is no permission. Only the danger of litigation!


Certainly safer and less likely to ruffle feathers.
Click to expand...
If the real person can be identified by other means from the writing - description of house, car driven, business run, changing the name makes no difference.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Looking for Sale or Return Guarantee Wholesale suppliers

fisicx
Anthony015 said:
That's why I really need a guarantee that if I don't make any sales, I can return the products and get my money back. This way, I won't end up stuck with inventory that I can't sell, which is exactly the situation I'm trying to avoid.
Click to expand...
If you want sale or return you will be paying more for the products than your competitors which means they will always be cheaper than you.

And those buying in bulk will always get bigger discounts and will again be sell more cheaply than you.

If you want to sell and succeed online you have to take a risk and trust in your marketing skills to shift stock.

What happened to Merkandi?
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Recording rental income

Tigris
Ziggy2024 said:
This is fine for a rental business. Cash basis is the default so using the bank to process the incoming & outgoings will suffice.

You can do it accruals basis by posting supplier invoices but you don't need to, just keep a copy of them.

Check your profit & loss, if you have posted the transaction correctly it will show there.
Click to expand...

I usually just allocate the money landed in my bank under the tenants name (as a customer). I then attach a copy of the invoice from the estate agent which shows a breakdown.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

US company shipping to UK and insisting sale is VAT exempt

C
paulears said:
I do indeed use freeagent, but I'm shifting to xero shortly. So at the moment, no idea how the next chapter will work. With alibaba - depending on which agent they use to ship, I usually get no VAT, unless UPS decide to charge it and then I have their VAT number to use against that one.
Click to expand...
UPS don’t charge the VAT at import they will however recharge what they have paid to HMRC ( that HMRC calculate) on your behalf. If no import VAT looks like it has been charged then it’s likely postponed VAT procures have been used.
In both cases the proof HMRC need for input VAT purposes is either a C79( when VAT has been paid) or postponed VAT statement. Both these documents must be downloaded by the importer .
www.gov.uk/guidance/get-your-postponed-import-vat-statement
www.gov.uk/guidance/get-your-import-vat-certificates

You may also find this useful.
www.gov.uk/guidance/vat-imports-acquisitions-and-purchases-from-abroad
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Legal action to stop Spam mail?

Lucan Unlordly
DontAsk said:
Are they to a personal email address, personal corporate address or generic corporate address? It matters, see https://ico.org.uk/for-the-public/online/spam-emails/
Click to expand...
Business addresses.....
JEREMY HAWKE said:
Come on your Lordship

Don't let it get to you and dont spend to much time on it
Its just something coming through the internet Its not real 👍
Click to expand...
I get dozens of corporate style emails, for finance, energy, recruitment etc., The one's that have the look of a leaflet/flyer, on top of those received that brought about this post. I mean, I like to be popular but not this much.:D A whole new thread - and a genuine one - is the rise in middle aged women following my business page on Facebook., the majority of users of which are male?
HFE Signs said:
When you unsubscribe are you unsubscribing from a specific list or campaign? It could be that the unsubscribe is only removing you from that campaign rather than their complete database. I would contact them and ask to be put in touch with their data controller.

I have known people do this, so I am speaking from experience, hope this helps.
Click to expand...
I just hit unsubscribe and cross my fingers!

UPDATE: I replied to the latest email with attachments of every piece of spam sent in recent years with notification of action through legal channels if my email addresses weren't removed from their lists and received an apology and assurance that it would be done.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Corporation Tax Liability

fisicx
numbersrule said:
In my experience, you don't generally find out enough to be sure about anything until you have not only engaged with the Client and been working with them for a month or two but also requested and obtained Tax Agent status and gained visibility of the HMRC accounts which can take a while.
Click to expand...
And it's at that point you decide if you want to continue the relationship. I've often started projects with clients where it all seemed hunky dory only to discover they didn't have the necessary authorisations or whatever and I invoked the break clause.
Click to expand...
Upvote 0

Anyone here taking benefits of AI in their everyday business?

Richard Huskey
Yeah, I use AI pretty much every day in my business now. It saves a lot of time on things like content drafts, emails, and brainstorming ideas. But I’ve noticed raw AI text can feel a bit robotic, so I usually refine it before using. Lately I’ve been using cleverhumanizer.ai/ for that, and it really helps make the content sound more natural and readable. Definitely made my workflow smoother overall.
Click to expand...
Load more

Filter

Join UK Business Forums for free business advice
Top Bottom
Community
Articles
Menu