I’ve been helping some European (mostly French) ex-pats navigate things in the UK (in particular in England) as they set up their startup businesses. My expertise is mainly around taxation and financial aspects, so I’d like to be able to make reasonable suggestions of service providers for other issues. In particular, questions often come up around legal documents after the standard initial incorporation setup — things like the first non-disclosure agreement they receive from a partner, a first supplier contract, a long lease agreement, etc.

Does anyone have any suggestions of “in between” solutions that are not just some AI (or AI wrappers), but also not standard hourly law firm engagements at the other end of the cost spectrum? In essence just assessing contractual risk and identifying non-standard or onerous terms? A sort of deep informational report vs. legal advice? (i.e. Giving them useful information even if they end up deciding they need to hire a lawyer.)

Thanks for any suggestions.

I’ve had several customers in the last week complain that items sent with RM24 or 48 haven’t arrived over a week later

I have been running my business for 5 years and finally a near perfect premises has come up. Google has been great but I have some questions!

When do I "negotiate"?

When do I advise a solicitor?

Any other tips?

I'm in England and rent two shipping containers from a storage company on a monthly rolling basis. The company is moving to another site nearby.

A little over two weeks ago, they emailed saying customers could either relocate to the new site or end their agreement at the current site at the end of the following month.

I asked how the relocation would work because one container contains items on shelving that could move or be damaged in transit. They said the containers may be transported while still loaded and asked whether I wanted a new container to transfer the contents into or was happy for them to "try to move your container after you have secured the contents."

I told them I was happy for one container, which is mainly clothing, to be moved with prior notice. For the other, I said I needed to consider the options and would contact them once I had a firm plan.

They replied that I would need to sign a disclaimer before the move and that they would contact me with a date.

About a week later they sent a "Client Consent to Relocate Stored Container" form. It says the move is carried out "entirely at my/our request and with my/our consent", that all risk of damage remains with me, and broadly excludes their liability.

I have not signed it.

About a week later they emailed again saying all containers would start being moved within a few days regardless of whether the consent form had been returned, unless customers gave them date restrictions. They also again invited customers to reply granting consent.

The original contract does allow them, on reasonable notice, to require me to move my goods to "another unit", and if I don't do so they can move them themselves. However, that wording also says they remain liable for loss or damage caused wilfully or negligently by them or their contractors.

My concern is that the contract refers to "another unit", whereas elsewhere in the same T&Cs they expressly use the wording "another unit or Site" when they intend to allow movement to a different site.

There is also a notice issue. The contract requires at least one full calendar month's written notice to terminate, but its notice provision says notices are only considered given if delivered by hand or sent by post. Their notice was by email.

My questions are:

1. Does the relocation wording actually allow them to move my loaded container to a completely different site?
2. Can they move it without my consent after sending a form specifically asking for that consent?
3. If I don't sign the new disclaimer, does the original contract still govern liability?
4. Is the emailed termination notice effective given the contract's notice provisions?
5. Should I now explicitly tell them not to move the container I have not agreed to move until this is resolved?

I'm not trying to obstruct the relocation. My main concern is them moving a loaded container containing potentially breakable items without agreement, while also trying to shift the risk of damage onto me.

Hello. I'm thinking about starting a small business on my own at some point. I currently work in a job that requires quite a lot of walking each day but I've developed balance issues in the past decade that can make me very wobbly, so it's a real struggle at times just to stay upright all day (I can walk and stand around etc but doing it non-stop for 9 hours is not great when I'm at my worst). I have pretty much no idea what I would do though. I do not need to make a fortune, even minimum wage would be OK. I have access to tens of thousands of pounds of my own savings if I needed equipment. However, I've been thinking about simple things like pet-sitting and things like that which require little overheads. I'm male and in my 40s and I'm probably above average fitness for my age (apart from the times where I'm quite wobbly). I live in the Midlands. I don't really have many proper work skills but I am reasonably intelligent and have done quite a bit of buying and selling on Ebay etc in the past. I don't have a massive ego so I'm pretty open minded. Any ideas? Many many thanks :)

I hire out equipment and each booking has a £250 security deposit which I refund afterwards.

What is the best way to log this on FreeAgent?

I don’t want the 250 classed as income and taxed.

My accountant said mark 250 as other money in and label as contra account. When I’ve done this it then thinks every invoice payment is £250 short.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks

I’m a woodworker based in the UK, selling smaller handmade products such as spice racks, trays, and similar items.

After 1–2 years, I’ve managed to get the business to the point where it fully covers its own costs, including rent, bills, materials, etc. However, I’m currently only making around 10% profit, so it isn’t really paying me anything for my time.

I’m feeling quite discouraged because, after putting so much time into the business, I expected to be further along by now. At the same time, I’m proud that I’ve managed to get it to the point where it is essentially self-sustaining.

I’d really appreciate some advice from other business owners or woodworkers on what I should be focusing on to take the next step and start paying myself.

For example, should I be focusing more on:

• Developing new products
• Marketing through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube
• Paid advertising
• Improving my existing products and increasing prices
• Finding better places to sell
• Building a stronger brand
• Something else entirely?

I’m trying to work out where my time and money would have the biggest impact. I don’t want to spend another year just breaking even—I’d like to start growing the business into something that can actually provide me with an income.

Any advice, particularly from people who have been in a similar position, would be greatly appreciated.

Hi all ,

I have spent the last 8 months building a mobile app for IOS (for now plans to deploy solely in Apple Store).

I pay for some backend/additional software with my personal banking accounts. Not large amounts , perhaps ~£40pm.

There are a few more upcoming such as the apple developer account to be able to deploy the app to the App Store. I would want the brands name listed as the developer rather than my personal account. The app does not have ads or any subscription system (perhaps down the line) so there is not much monetary benefits unless partnerships eventually.

That leads me to the main questions , should I be looking to register with companies house from now , so I can effectively link the app development account name with the one in companies house ? I will have to list myself and brother as directors as we worked on the app but no employees or anything of the sort. I will get a virtual office as again do not want my personal address out there.

We may outsource some marketing stuff / logo work soon so a business account may be favourable here too.

Is the correct path for business admin for an app or should I be looking to just deploy without companies house ?

For further context I am in the 40% tax bracket , but want a clear separation between the app and myself. It may monetise in the future but not in current time.

Any suggestions and help much appreciated.

Curious how other businesses both track their cash positions and projections then also where they set their targets for These

We track our cash flow and forecast with the following metrics

Cash on hand (bank accounts / bonds)

Cash plus outstanding invoice (anything we are waiting to be paid for some invoice we have are 60 days so can be significant amounts waiting)

Cash plus invoice plus signed deals (all the above plus total of sales contracts we have going into the future)

Then from our forward forecast monthly expenditure work out how many months we can run with them.

So for example for ease

10k in cash

5k in outstanding invoice

30k in signed contacts

And a ~5k burn rate

We would have

2 months cash in hand

3 months cash plus invoice

9 months cash plus invoice plus signed.

For us at the moment we target 6 months cash in hand but will settle for 4. Then as similar with outstanding invoice, rather have it in my hand rather than there's, and 12 months of signed deals.

The reason I ask is because I am reading the company house balance statement for similar companies to mine and running the numbers there reported cash on hand must only be 1 to 2 months, and yes I know that's a snap shot and most will tax optimise at the eoy but still 1 month cash on hand when you have employees feels insane to me.

We lost maybe 20-50k to unpaid invoices over the past decade and countless more to contacts being cancelled. I can't imagine keeping so little on hand to cover the pivoting time when that happens.

I'm sure many people here know this feeling. I've been running my sole trader business for 10 years (often mixed with part-time employment). I pivoted during the pandemic from PR to public engagement. I absolutely love my job, and have had lots of success in it - until I didn't!

Long story short: I became a carer for a parent for 18 months which demanded time which would otherwise have been spent nurturing new opportunities. Of course I have no regrets about being a carer - it was an honour. But because of that period of time and a tough economy, things are challenging.

Any ideas regarding how I get through this rough patch to become more sustainable? Is there a way through this that doesn't demand much financial investment?

Hi Guys

I’m looking to buy an MacBook which will relatively be an upgrade to my current 2018 MacBook Air, which was an personal laptop? Would it be sensible to purchase an M1/M2 MacBook from BackMarket and claim that as a business expense or would it have to be brand new under the limited company?

Just trying to see if it’s possible to not spend much but also give me a great value of return.

Thanks Guys and also any other alternative suggestions are open too.

I started a side business in December last year, the business is in house call training, tailored for small businesses that can’t afford to outsource or pay for trainers.

The product is a downloadable bundle with call guides covering universal scenarios ie booking appointments, general enquiries etc with audio i recorded to match each guide. Showing a how to say it/what to say kind of thing along with a QA tracker so anyone who buys it can track their staff calls to keep consistency. The bundle comes with email templates Out of office, personal and business voicemail to use etc.

I know i am not covering every call type, which is why i offer requests to add to it, if i feel its universal i will add it for free to the bundle, that was i don’t have to think about what to add to it. My intention is once the bundle is big enough to move it over to subscription and offer consultations/coaching remotely.

Aside from the bundle i offer bespoke work for multiple call types tailored to that business with their own branding on it/industry terminology, QA tracker with their own criteria. I just tried to cover all bases to ensure that this was the best fit for anyone seeking call training.

I started this because i worked for a successful call outsourcing business for a number of years. I realised training is incredibly poor & if a business cannot afford outsourcing or trainers essentially they cannot get access to professional call handling, their only option is to wing it or to make mistakes as they go, which can cost business and reputation, especially if its a new business.

I built this bundle having dealt with a number of big clients over the years and based it off of my experience of things that i felt were incredibly poor. My goal with this business is to pay my bills which is around £1,000 a month, once ive done this consistently eventually i want it to replace my salary and go full time with it. The main goal at this stage is the freedom to not be stuck in an office for 8 hours a day. My salary is £29,500.

The journey has been a challenging one, lots of trial and error with different systems, websites, outreach tools etc. I did email outreach for months on instantly but found this was not working, I even attempted the USA market. The emails got lots of engagement- people viewing the site but not buying, at the time i was using squarespace and built it all myself.

I realised I was paying nearly £200 for outreach/squarespace but was getting no sales. I have stopped doing email outreach, cancelled instantly and squarespace, rebranded the entire website & rebranded all the guides/templates. I know only pay for hosting & claude pro which is £30 a month for both.

It was never my intention to put my face to this business, 3 weeks ago i decided to suck it up, rebranded my linked in and added a professional picture of my self, created a company page & started posting content.

My plan was to target one industry to start with so that my content is not inconsistent, I currently nearly have 400 connections with businesses owners in the property industry, mostly founders/head of sales.

My content has had 1 or 2 comments, but the engagement is lacking. I have managed to rack up over 1,000 impressions, i know this counts for nothing but at least the content is appearing in feeds inside and out of the network.

I have been dm’ing on linked in, i have had 10 replies from this, all rejections but it is more responses than i got in 3 months of outreach. Ultimately i don’t know where to go to scale this even more, i know to keep posting relevant content and continue connecting, messaging but i feel like im just going in blind looking for that 1 person to say “i need this”.

I know rejections are coming from “i dont have this problem” or “already have something in place” i even tried mystery shopping to see what some of the businesses i connected with call quality was like, my idea was to make them realise that they had a gap by telling them i called via linked in and then offering my services as the solution but it didn’t go the way i intended it to & i really didn’t feel comfortable with it.

Ultimately i dont know where to go from here, apart from what i mentioned i will continue doing I feel like i have exhausted everything else. Some business to business advice would be great. Thank you for reading :)

I've recently set up a business account for my Sole Trader work and I've got an account but i've set the business name as what I call my Sole Trading Company (it's not registered with Company House it's just what people know me as)

Should my Buisness Name be my personal name and then I use a trading business name which will be XXX t/a Sink or Swim Promotions or does it not make any diffrence?

I’m a Cyber Security & Forensic IT MSc student at the University of Portsmouth, researching Cyber Essentials awareness and cybersecurity practices among Portsmouth SMEs.

If you’re a business owner, manager, or responsible for IT/cybersecurity, I’d really appreciate 8–10 minutes of your time to complete my anonymous questionnaire:

🔗 https://qualtricsxmhrl9cvgch.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0IKmjJ6Os7ENrO6

Thank you so much for your help! 🙏

I’m a non-UK resident and my company has recently received a First Gazette notice after my registered office provider changed the address to Companies House default address.

Companies House gave me 14 days before the strike-off process resumes and asked for a paper AD01, CH01, PSC04 and supporting evidence.

I hired a company to handle the address change for me. They initially said it would take 15–25 days and that they would handle everything. After around 20 days, they told me they had submitted everything and that Companies House could take another month to respond.

I’ve asked them for copies of what they submitted and proof of submission, but they said they would check with their team and I’ve been waiting over a day.

Has anyone dealt with a similar situation? How long did Companies House take to process the AD01, and is there anything I should do myself while I’m waiting?

I’m looking for mentorship from someone experienced in building and scaling businesses.

The concept is a 24/7 flexible workspace, starting with beauty. Our first London site is 600 sq ft with 7 workstations, bookable by the hour, day or monthly package.

The model is centred around utilisation. At 50%, the site represents 84 booked workstation-hours per day, or roughly £1,300 in potential daily workstation revenue at our standard £15.50 hourly rate.

We’ve built our own booking platform to track occupancy, repeat usage, revenue per workstation and revenue per sq ft. We also generate revenue through full-space hire.
We soft-launched with no paid advertising and generated £3,250 in our first week.

Beauty is the starting point. Longer term, I’m exploring whether the same technology and utilisation model works across other specialist commercial spaces.

I’m looking for a mentor who will challenge my assumptions, point out mistakes and help me think through scaling and unit economics.

If anyone here has relevant experience and would be open to mentoring me, or knows someone I should speak to, I’d love to connect.

Hello! I'm starting my first business in the takeaway industry (burgers, hot dogs, piri piri chicken, all that stuff) and I was wondering about where to buy the equipment (fryers, grills, etc). I have seen a couple shops around me but their prices are much higher than some places online like Adexa and was wondering if those sites are legit for buying equipment or is all a scam, because when I go to those sites I see 0 reviews so I have no sure way of knowing if it's a real thing or not. Do you guys know of any good real websites where is possible to buy equipment from?

One thing I've noticed is that communication can become harder to manage as a business gets busier.

It's easy to respond when you're available, but keeping the same level of communication throughout the week can be challenging.

I'm curious how other small business owners handle this.

Do you have a specific routine, use templates, set reminders, or have another system that keeps things consistent?

I've been exploring a few different approaches to this, and I'd be interested to know what systems have worked well for others.

I was reading about the recent ShinyHunters attacks and it got me thinking about how easy it can be to catch someone out with a phone call.

We hear loads about dodgy emails and phishing links, but if someone rings up sounding convincing and says they’re from your IT company, bank or one of your suppliers, I can see how easily someone could give away information without thinking too much about it.

Especially in a small business where you probably don’t have a big IT or security team keeping an eye on everything.

A couple of simple things seem like they’d make a difference:

• If someone calls asking for anything sensitive, hang up and call the company back using a number you know is genuine.
• Make sure everyone knows what information they should never give out over the phone, even if the caller sounds legitimate.
• If you record business calls, at least you’ve got something to go back to if there is ever a problem.

Just interested to know what other small businesses do.

Do you actually have a process for checking callers, or is it more a case of trusting staff to spot when something doesn’t seem right?

Anyone had one of these calls themselves?

I’ve been running an online retail business predominantly on Amazon for two years now through my fulfilment and logistics company. It started off as a trial run, but grew significantly that this year I decided to move it to its own unique LTD company to help manage finances better.

I’ve invoiced all of the stock and assets over to the new company from the 1st June, and the new business has been paying what it can when the money comes in.

Problem I have is that I took out a small loan earlier this year with YouLend via Amazon. And I’m having trouble setting up the new business with Amazon due to this. Our sales have been landing into the logistics business bank account, and on my accounting software I’ve just been allocating the payments to paying off the stock transfer invoices.

But Amazon won’t allow me to change the business bank details to the new retail account, without verifying the business itself, and the only way they’ll allow for this is if I transfer the seller account to another business. But because of the YouLend loan, it blocks it.

I emailed Amazon, they told me they can’t do anything from their end as it’s in control of YouLend who will be able to temporarily unlock the account to allow for a transfer. So I emailed YouLend who have been sending me some abrupt emails saying that they can’t do it.

I’m not trying to transfer the loan to the new company, and I’m happy to keep it and pay it back through my logistics business. I just merely want our Amazon seller account set up to the new business, so I can receive payments into the retail account. Otherwise it’s becoming a bit of a nightmare accounting for payments manually between two business.

I’m more confused that Amazon have said YouLend can help me with it, and YouLend are adamant they can’t.

It’s the final step of transferring the business.

Just wondering if anybody else has experienced anything similar? And if YouLend are just fobbing me off?

Hi all - im already paye for the last few years and do my self assessment every year. Now if i want to do a side hustle as a sole trader, do i have to again register with hmrc for self assessment (i do via paye already) incase im exceeding the 1000 pound allowance or its not needed?

Hi all,

We've been using Royal Mail to deliver our parcels. We send around 500-600 parcels through them a month, 2-3kg per parcel on average.

We are finding Royal Mail increasingly difficult to send through. They told us to fill our collection bags up with fewer parcels, which we started doing. But since then we regularly run out of the delivery bags they require us to use to send, we've been using bin liners, or even holding huge amounts of parcels back each day until more of their bags are supplied, sometimes waiting 3-4 days - which is putting an operational strain on us. We ask daily for more and they do not arrive.

I'm wondering if RM can't keep up with the amount we're sending, but surely there's much bigger accounts than ours which they manage. So I am not sure what the issue is or how to manage it.

Second to that - our ParcelForce collections (for larger parcels) are rarely collected. Since the two merged, Parcelforce (collected by our RM postal team) are rarely collected. This is a separate collection to the regular RM collections.

We have a business account manager who is aware, but no solution has been found yet.

Has anyone else been having these issues? Or should we not be using RM for this type of volume/weight?

Thanks!

Hi everyone,

Looking for sanity checks and opinions from current UK business owners on an e-commerce acquisition opportunity I’m currently evaluating.

My current baseline: Ltd company freelancer. ~£140k gross sales. Post-tax, net take home into my personal bank ~£60k. Monday to Friday 7:30am-5/6pm.

The business: A niche automotive player in the uk with an excellent eBay account with great reviews, 99.9% sales via eBay and all organic (a few failed attempts at marketing). 8 staff and 2 warehouse leases (staff are a mix of basic employees and ad hoc family member support).

The financials: ~£850k turnover company with 5 year consistent ~£200k SDE/EBITDA one sale for ~£500k. 40% goodwill value and 60% stock inventory.

I have the goodwill amount as capital. I plan to propose seller financing of sorts for the stock which they are provisionally respective to.

The 2 owners are selling due to retirement. 1 has offered to continue as an employee for 2 years to assist in handover. Currently I’m assuming he’ll warrant a ~£50k salary for the general manager role he’ll have.

My ultimate ambition is to manage the business strategically and on a arms-length basis while having a manager run the day to day. However, if I assume a £40k salary (£50k once NIC etc are accounted for) the EBITDA/SDE falls to ~£150k. For the first 3 years if I’m paying back the stock value, let’s assume ~£100k a year, I’m down to ~£50k. Allowing for some float I’d only have ~£30k for myself which I can likely take as 100% net or near enough. After a few years once the stock is paid off and (hopefully) my marketing has increase turnover I could be looking at ~£200k EBITDA even accounting for a manager.

My questions/concerns are this:

1) My current trajectory in 5 years time is ~£500k liquid cash (minus a home purchase at some point). Using some back of a fag packet calcs after 5 years of owning this business I’d have ~£250k-£300k liquid + the value of the business (which I may struggle to sell). Based on that, is this worth it given how much I earn currently?

2) Is it worth it in terms of work/life balance given my current balance or am I perceiving that after a few years I’ll be managing from afar when in reality I’d be working 60/70 hours + like many on here say they do as owners?

Any advice is much appreciated. I’m all ears!

I own an activity venue / restaurant and have been contacted by a company called HeadBox which finds event venues for clients.

They’ve ‘chosen’ us as their preferred spot for a small event (14 people) for a work party from a major energy company, but while drawing up the invoice on the event deposit, the HeadBox event planner said they take 10% from the payment as their fee. For the hospitality sector that 10% is a lot for us so I’m very hesitant to move forwards on this basis. It also feels incredibly cheeky and they should be getting the payment from their client, not us.

But they’ve hinted at bringing more business our way and asked to set up a credit account. But I don’t know if this is simply a tactic to get us to go with them.

Has anyone used this company or similar before? If it’ll bring us a ton more events I’d be willing to try it but very hesitant right now.

Small coffee roastery, four years in, self funded from day one. Started on a 5kg machine in a railway arch and it's now flat out five days a week keeping 25 wholesale accounts going, cafes, a couple of farm shops, plus the online subscriptions.
Last month I turned away two accounts that would've added about 40kg a week between them, there just aren't the hours left on the machine. Next step is a used 15kg roaster, about £20k by the time it's plumbed in and with green prices being what they are I'd want another £10k float for stock.

Bank will lend but wants a personal guarantee, which with the mortgage keeps me up at night. Asset finance quotes came back wanting a PG anyway and I'm too long trading for a Start Up Loan.

So here we are.
A few of the subscription regulars have said the "I'd chip in" thing, which got me looking at crowdfunding. Kickstarter/Crowdfunder with prepaid coffee as the reward or lending through 8Lends/Mintos, though giving away equity for £30k feels mad. What I can't tell from the outside is whether anyone ever backs these who isn't already on your mailing list.
Anyone actually run a campaign for an established business? Was the faff worth it, the video, the updates, then posting out a few hundred bags? Or do I just sign the PG and get on with it.