23 things to expect from your Birmingham Accountant in a recession

Recent research shows that 82% of business owners want more support from their accountant to help them beat the recession.

All good accountants understand this and have already geared themselves up to be able to deliver it.

This simple checklist has therefore been independently produced to help you ensure that your accountant gives you all the proactive support and guidance you need to beat the recession.

All you need to do is this... tick the areas where you are completely satisfied that your accountant is already giving you all the help you need and want.

And if the score is not 23 out of 23, ask your Birmingham Accountant how they can give you the extra help you need in the areas you have not ticked.

General support you should expect from your Birmingham Accountant

1. Diagnostic review and report to identify the key options for strengthening your cashflow
2. Explore the 20 sources of cash to see which have the most potential for you
3. Give you a performance measurement and improvement system - and help you summarise everything that really matters on a Balanced Scorecard or One Page Plan - to give you all the information you need to make better decisions and get better results
4. Help you understand and manage your breakeven point so you are more able to survive falls in demand
5. Benchmark you against others in your industry to identify the areas where you can most easily improve
6. Create an initial improvement action plan covering all the key areas listed here
7. Attend regular meetings with you, and use a BoardView style methodology to help you continually update your action plan in the light of new issues, information and opportunities as they arise
8. Produce regular cashflow forecasts to ensure your plans can be funded & you do not get into financial difficulties
9. Give you free access to a library of relevant "Beat the recession" resources eg videos, software, reports etc

Strengthening your cash flow by making more profitable sales & getting paid more quickly

1. Identify which of the 8 key profit drivers has the greatest potential for you
2. Review the 23 profit strategies that lie behind the 8 profit drivers - prioritise and action them
3. Identify and manage your profitability by customer and / or product line - so that you can build on your higher profit areas and deal with your lower profit areas
4. Analyse your sales pipeline - & use sales improvement software such as SSTW to identify how to drive sales up
5. Evaluate alternative pricing strategies using software such as SSTW - since getting your pricing right is usually the fastest and easiest way to increase the profitability of sales
6. Review the 43 ways to improve your debtor collection

Strengthening your business and personal cashflow by using better tax planning to...

1. Pay no tax on the profits from new products/services/divisions for 5-10 years
2. Pay as little as 1.9% tax when extracting profits from your company
3. Cut your corporation tax bills to zero (or close zero)
4. Cut your personal income tax bills to zero (or close zero)
5. Reclaim much of the income tax you paid in recent years
6. Halve your stamp duty and capital gains tax bills - and perhaps even eliminate them
7. Claim your full Tax Credit entitlement (it is surprising how much you can claim with specialist help)
8. Use IHT and care home fee planning to put extra cash in your bank during your lifetime