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In Business & Blogging, Reviews / Sponsored

Due Diligence

Nicki CawoodFebruary 26, 2013February 26, 2013

I hate finances. I hate accounts, ledgers, spreadsheets and invoicing. I have an enormous respect for anyone in the accountancy business as I simply don’t have the mathematical flair which means that I can enjoy such tasks. When it comes to my to self assessment I have mine done in May each year, purely to get it out of the way! Needless to say, spending time on my business finances is time I would rather be doing something (anything) else.

That said, keeping on top of records, invoicing and payments is a necessary evil if I wish to be paid (and I do). Unfortunately over the past few years I have spent far too much time chasing late or missing payments for work I’ve done. I have a fairly simple invoice system and all clients know what they need to pay me, and when. Sadly it doesn’t always run so smoothly.

In the past I have spent ridiculous amounts of time chasing payments. You get either complete silence (so frustrating!), excuses (I know business is tough for everyone however I need to feed my children and pay my bills too!) or my personal favourite, told off. Yes, I have been known to be told off by clients when I chase them money as if by asking for what is already very overdue I am committing some heinous crime. To be honest, it is all rather tiresome.

As a self employed / freelance writer I don’t have one boss who pays money into my account on the last day of the month therefore I rely on clients to pay as agreed to ensure that my cask flow keeps flowing. What is the answer? I have toyed with sending my six year old and two year old round to act as my “heavies”. After ten minutes of “Why? Why? Why? What’s that? Why?” I’m fairly sure most people would cough up quick to stop the torture.

There are ways and means of reducing the risk of non-payment or payment worries nowadays as there is a way in which you are able to look up business details of UK companies in advance. What this information contains are things like their information with Companies House, whether they have any CCJs etc against them and so on. There are times when I have wished that I had been able to know more about a prospective client before I agreed to work for them and while some of this information is a matter of public record, having the time to search it all out is an issue. Whilst a couple of red flags in the information doesn’t necessarily mean that a particular client is untrustworthy, far from it, it would enable myself and of course many other businesses to approach a working relationship better informed.

Duedil is the tool in question and while I haven’t used it properly myself, other than a quick tinker to find out more, I am able to see the merits of it! What is more, the service is free to use therefore is worth having a nosy at.

Working for yourself has many benefits and personally I can’t imagine myself ever working for someone else now. There are however downsides and chasing payments in the main one for me. My question for all of you good folks is, what do you do regarding overdue accounts? Do you send in a persistent toddler? Do you do some sort of due diligence in advance? I’m curious!

Don’t be fooled by their cuteness, these two would make excellent debt collectors!

Written in collaboration with the mentioned business yet true to my thoughts, feelings and experiences

In Business & Blogging

Hosting Meetings When You Work From Home

Nicki CawoodFebruary 19, 2013February 19, 20131 Comment

As many of you know I work from home. We moved house back in October partly because my previous office had been nabbed by a beautiful boy back in 2010. What I now have is space. Wonderful space to work in and to store my files, folders and everything else that I need.

This is my gorgeous (to me) desk…

After a couple of years of working with my laptop on my knee or at a cluttered kitchen table this is indeed a thing of beauty. Having to walk past the pushchair downstairs, the wash basket at the top of the landing, the chest of drawers littered with library books, odd socks, a night light and then onwards to find this beautiful desk is probably not something I want to invite a client or prospective client to try.

Meeting new clients, discussing their needs, working out budgets and making plans are all part of my weekly work. Fortunately I manage to usually convince people that Skype is the best way forward for these meetings however what do you do as a self-employed person with a less than glamorous home office when the client wants to meet in person? Other than panic I mean.

I can tell you from experience that coffee shops or similar venues, while they may serve delicious coffee and all too tempting cakes are really not fantastic locations for such meetings. Confidentiality in a crowded cafe is hard to maintain and holding onto your concentration over the noise of chatter and the hiss of the coffee machine is not ideal either.

It really isn’t appropriate for me to rent out an office away from the home. 95% of the time it is a perfectly adequate for my needs and I don’t see the need to pay a lease for an office that I would hardly use. I suspect that this issue comes up quite often with many self-employed business owners and freelancers struggling to find appropriate and affordable places to hold meetings.

One alternative to this problem is to perhaps find a serviced office nearby. Whoever thought up the idea of having offices ready at the drop of a hat for those face-to-face meetings that you simply can’t do at home is nothing short of a genius. Having a serviced office at your disposal means that you only pay for the time that you need it for, that you have a clean, tidy and modern office space to use as and when without having to clean and tidy it yourself (this appeals to me!), you have a choice of room sizes so that you are able to choose to an appropriate setting for your needs i.e. a small room for a 1-1 meeting or a larger space for a conference or similar. Added to this there are all the mod cons and the usual refreshments and what not available so that you may wow your client and not have to worry about a huge bill.

I haven’t personally used a service such as this however am able to see the huge benefits that it offers and it is something that I am likely to use in the future, especially as if I was to have more than one client in to visit my office at the same time that the extra person would probably have to sit on a bed.

A question for all of you self-employed people who are reading, when you can’t get away with using Skype for meetings what do you do about meeting up with clients?

Photo Credit

*Written in collaboration with the mentioned business yet true to my thoughts, feelings and experiences