Caprica Online

  • Home
  • Services
    • Caprica Business
    • Caprica Contractor
    • Auto Enrolment
  • Xero
  • About
    • About Us
    • FAQs
    • Cloud Accountants
    • Terms of Engagement
    • Recruitment
  • Contact
  • Learn.Caprica
  • Sign up

Caprica Online

  • Home
  • Services
    • Caprica Business
    • Caprica Contractor
    • Auto Enrolment
  • Xero
  • About
    • About Us
    • FAQs
    • Cloud Accountants
    • Terms of Engagement
    • Recruitment
  • Contact
  • Learn.Caprica
  • Sign up
Menu

Transferring from an Umbrella to a Limited Company

  • July 18, 2016
  • /
  • Comments Off on Transferring from an Umbrella to a Limited Company
  • /
  • Blog

Following recent changes to rules around the tax deductibility of travel expenses, the tax advantages of changing from an Umbrella Payroll scheme to a Limited Company for your Contracting work are more than they ever been. To such an extent that Umbrella companies are actively trying to transfer their clients.

The actual transition from umbrella to Limited Company is actually very simple and more or less the same as it would be if you were transferring from permanent employment to being a Limited Company contractor.

The steps are as follows:

  1. Confirm with your client/s that they are happy for you to change the structure. This means that the Contract will change from being between Your Umbrella Company and your client to being between Your New Limited Company and your client.
  2. Setup a Limited Company – we can do this free of charge as part of our Contractor Accounting package.
  3. Have your accountant work out the best salary / dividend mix – As a Limited Company Contractor you would want to take a mixture of salary and dividends. The optimal mix depends on how much you’ve already earned from your umbrella this year. This is all part of our service.
  4. Amend your contract with your client to the new company name
  5. Obtain a P45 from your Umbrella, this will state how much pay you received whilst with the Umbrella and the amount of tax they deducted. This is vital for preparing your income tax return.

You need to be aware that running a Limited Company does come with additional responsibilities. A good Contractor Accountant should cover all duties for you though.

The advantages of Contracting through a Limited Company are that you can structure it so that you get full tax deductibility for your business travel, benefit from the VAT Flat Rate Scheme and avoid National Insurance by paying yourself in dividends.

Need help with your tax return for 2011/12?

  • January 17, 2013
  • /
  • Comments Off on Need help with your tax return for 2011/12?
  • /
  • Blog

Tax Return 2011/12 | Tax Return HelpPersonal tax returns (SA100s) are due to be filled with HMRC on 31 January 2013, for the year of 6 April 2011 to 5 April 2012.

There are all sorts of reasons why someone might be required to file an income tax return but the most common are:

  • Being self-employed or a part of a partnership
  • Being a very high earner
  • Receiving a significant amount of interest or dividends
  • Receiving rental income

We’ll be here to help you prepare your tax return right up until the deadline so if you are struggling please do get in touch and we’ll take the pain away for you.

Our fees start at £150 + VAT.

HMRC RTI Q&A (20/11/2012) Storified

  • November 21, 2012
  • /
  • Comments Off on HMRC RTI Q&A (20/11/2012) Storified
  • /
  • Blog

On 20th November 2012 HMRC held a Twitter Q&A to discuss the upcoming PAYE RTI changes, which will require companies to submit payroll information to HMRC on a monthly basis.

[divider top=”0″]

How Caprica Online Accountants can help

Online Accountants | Xero AccountantsAt Caprica Online Accountants we’re well prepared for the forthcoming RTI changes. If you want to discuss whether your company is ready please contact an accountant now.

Caprica Online Accountants is an online firm of Chartered Accountants based in Reading Berkshire.

Make secure UK credit card payments on your smart phone with TradeTill

  • August 10, 2012
  • /
  • 1 Comment
  • /
  • Blog, Everything else
TradeTill | Online Accountants | Xero | KashFlowIf you go to your business bank account provider wanting a system that allows you to take credit or debit card payments you’ll quickly find out how ridiculously convoluted and costly the process is. Consequently some startups have identified in person card payments as an area ripe for innovation.

Square, innovating in the US

In the US a company called Square, set up by Twitter founder Jack Dorsey, is making a huge impact. Just this week they signed a big deal with Starbucks. Square allows you to take credit card payments in a simple way via any iPhone or Android phone using just a dongle and an app.

Unfortunately Square’s not yet available in the UK so forward thinking UK businesses have been continuing to wrestle with merchant accounts and big banks.

TradeTill in the UK

Last week we came across TradeTill, who offers something similar in the UK. It’s primarily aimed at tradesmen but works in any situation where you need to take card payments in person. All you have to do is enter the card details directly into a browser, which can be on a laptop or smart phone.

TradeTill uses PayPal to process all their payments, which means that if you use some good online accounting software like Xero or KashFlow you can easily import your sales into your accounting system. It should also give you confidence that everything is nice and secure.

Here’s a promotional video for TradeTill which explains the concept much better than I can ….

[divider top=”0″]
Full disclosure – If you click on the link to TradeTill above and sign up with them Cloudfindr.com (a company connected with Caprica Online Accountants) will receive a fee. We think it’s important to be transparent about this but bear in mind we would never ever ever write about a third party app or service on this blog unless we really liked it and would be happy to recommend it to our clients and use it ourselves.

PocketRent – BTL property management software that talks to Xero

  • July 13, 2012
  • /
  • Comments Off on PocketRent – BTL property management software that talks to Xero
  • /
  • Blog
PocketRent - Buy to let management software | Online AccountantsAt Caprica Online Accountants we believe the future is built around small businesses using industry specific web based software to manage their business and integrating that with awesome web based accounting software, like Xero.

PocketRent fits that vision perfectly. They have designed some great property management software that’s ideal for UK based Buy to Let investors. It’s features include:

  • Automatic rent reconciliation (via Xero integration) so you can check if your tenants are paying on time
  • Alerts when tasks require your attention, such as gas certifications being due or a lease coming up for renewal
  • Maintain inventory lists and marketing photos
  • Record inspection dates
  • Record all tenant details and reference reports
  • Invite tenants into the software to view limited information
  • iPhone/iPad app to view everything on the move

PocketRent uses a Freemium pricing model making it free if you have just one property then charging  NZD 10, currently £5.13,  for each additional property (discounts begin at five properties).

We’ve used it ourselves and think it’s great.

[divider top=”0″]

How Caprica Online Accountants can help

Online Accountants | Xero AccountantsAt Caprica Online Accountants we’ve developed great knowledge of the cloud and love specialist web-apps. If you are looking for an accountant that embraces technology and can help you implement awesome software  to streamline your business have a look at our packages or sign up now.

   

       [contact-form-7 404 "Not Found"]
   

Cloud software comparison site

  • May 22, 2012
  • /
  • Comments Off on Cloud software comparison site
  • /
  • Blog

We recently contributed reviews to the website Cloud Accounting Comparison.

It’s been set up with the aim of providing in depth reviews and comparisons of the major online accounting packages (Xero, FreeAgent, KashFlow and Clear Books), a resource that has been needed for some time.

In our experience clients are quick to appreciate the value of cloud accounting software but are then faced with a difficult choice as to which particular system is best for them.

At Caprica Online Accountants we cover all the major online accounting systems and generally find that Xero is best for most but there are definitely specific requirements that might give, say, KashFlow an edge over Xero (usually to do with third party integrations) and it’s good to see these fleshed out a bit.

So if you are a small business struggling to decide which software to go for, the site is well worth checking out.

 

Plumber convicted for tax evasion – eBay traders beware

  • May 21, 2012
  • /
  • Comments Off on Plumber convicted for tax evasion – eBay traders beware
  • /
  • Blog

eBay HMRC investigation | eBay accountantsPrior to HMRC’s investigation into eBay and Amazon traders they were investigating plumbers.

One such plumber who evaded £88,000 of tax has recently been sentenced to four months in jail, suespended for 12 months as detailed in this post on AccountingWeb.

I mention it just to stress the seriousness of this sort of fraud. With eBay traders it’s easy to start off trading as a tax free hobby and slowly have it morph into a professional trade over time.

If you are concerned that you might have unpaid tax please get in touch and we will help you understand the risk and how much, if any, tax is due.

 

Transcript of HMRC's second e-marketplace Twitter Q&A

  • May 17, 2012
  • /
  • Comments Off on Transcript of HMRC's second e-marketplace Twitter Q&A
  • /
  • Blog

We previously published a transcript of the first HMRC e-marketplace Q&A held on Twitter. Yesterday (16 May 2012) they held a follow up session. The transcript is below.

The e-marketplace campaign is HMRC’s investigation into what they perceive to be a large amount of professional traders (mostly eBay and Amazon) that are not paying taxes on their profits. If you are concerned that you may be at risk please get in touch and we’ll help you work out your risk of being investigated and how to move forward.

e2cargo | cloud software for small freight forwarders, carriers and hauliers

  • May 3, 2012
  • /
  • Comments Off on e2cargo | cloud software for small freight forwarders, carriers and hauliers
  • /
  • Blog

e2cargo is a web based app for freight forwarders, carriers and hauliers.

The problem

I was recently talking to the director of a client working in the freight industry about how they record their sales and job data it led me to discovering a great niche bit of software.

My client showed me a HUGE spreadsheet with a row for each job over the last 3 years. Every time anyone in the five strong sales team made a sale they inputted client details, job details, departure location, arrival location, carriers used, cost, invoice date and date paid.

They knew there was a lot of risk relying on a spreadsheet like this and regularly struggled to reconcile the spreadsheet to their accounts. They’d previously enquired into getting custom software but received quotes of around £50,000 + maintenance costs. Apparently this is normal and has traditionally forced small to midsize hauliers into using spreadsheets.

The solution

As an online software obsessive I looked into whether there were any cloud solutions available and came across e2cargo. I signed up to a 30 day trial and was pretty blown away. It solves the problem 100%.

For a business of my clients size the cost is £79 per month (though check out our 10% discount below) the time saved and better control it gives over the business makes this an absolute bargain.

It works in a nice intuitive way following a job through it’s life from quotation to shipment to invoicing. The full list of functions is as follows:

  • Quotations
  • Shipments
  • Invoicing
  • VAT for all EU countries (B2B and B2C)
  • Profit and loss calculation
  • Master data
  • Multi-currency
  • Clear dashboard
  • Address book
  • Store transport documents
  • Export data
  • Invoice and revenue statements

Rather than write about it more, if you are in this industry I would really encourage you to take out a free trial and play with it for 30 minutes. I think you’ll quickly see how it transform your business processes.

I have one issue with the software, it doesn’t integrate with Xero Accounting Software. It does integrate with FreeAgent but I find this a bit of an odd choice. As much as I like FreeAgent it works best for one man bands, which isn’t the case for most of e2cargo’s target clients. You can though export invoice data and then import it into Xero manually, which doesn’t take long at all.

Discount

e2cargo have provided us with a code that provides a 10% discount, just put it in when signing up for the free trial. The code is: COA2012

Follow this link to try a free trial

 

If you want like it and want any help implementing e2cargo then don’t hesitate to contact us.

Invoices need QR codes to achieve a mobile future

  • April 26, 2012
  • /
  • 2 Comments
  • /
  • Blog
Cloud Accounting Software

I’ve just got back from the Xero Roadshow. For me the most interesting part of the day was hearing Gary Turner, the UK MD, talk about where Xero is heading.

As you would expect they think the future of accounting software is mobile. In my view there is one major challenge, at present bookkeeping still requires a significant amount of data entry. It’s just no fun inputting an invoice into any system with only a touchscreen keyboard.

One solution might to be to use a camera to take a photo of an invoice and then using an OCR tool to convert that into the necessary data fields. Though this would probably be pretty hard given the myriad shapes and formats that invoices have.

A more workable solution might be to instead adopt something similar to QR codes (a modern day barcode system). A QR code should easily be able to contain all the necessary data contained in an invoice. Then all it would take to add an invoice into an accounting system would be to take a photo of the QR code and let the software do the rest (mapping to a particular account might then need a bit of manual input).

A QR code solution would turn a boring two minute task into a simple five second mobile friendly task.

The really hard bit would be to get the many accounting software vendors to accept a standard. Getting someone like Sage or Intuit (QuickBooks) to lead is never going to happen. How hard would it be for the much more adaptable Xero, KashFlow, Freeagent and Clear Books to agree something between them though?

Recent Posts
  • Transferring from an Umbrella to a Limited Company
  • Migrating your accounts from Sage to Xero
  • What’s it like being a Caprica Client – Results from a recent client satisfaction survey
  • Using Xero to see how big a dividend you can pay
  • Raising invoices when VAT registration is pending
Recent Comments
  • [email protected] on Basic Guide to Income Tax
  • john boatman on Basic Guide to Income Tax
  • Barry James on Make secure UK credit card payments on your smart phone with TradeTill
  • Adrian Pearson on Should you migrate your entire accounting history to Xero, KashFlow or Clear Books?
  • Gayle Buchanan on Should you migrate your entire accounting history to Xero, KashFlow or Clear Books?
Archives
  • July 2016
  • September 2015
  • October 2014
  • July 2014
  • April 2014
  • February 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
Categories
  • Blog
  • Company Administration
  • Contracting
  • Corporation Tax
  • Everything else
  • Expenses
  • Income Tax
  • Must Reads
  • Reading
  • Tax
  • Uncategorized
  • VAT
  • Xero
Meta
  • Log in
  • Entries RSS
  • Comments RSS
  • WordPress.org

Ready to start?

Request a Call Back

Sign Up Online

  • learn.caprica
  • Blog
  • Dividend guide for small businesses and contractors
  • Save money with the VAT Flat Rate Scheme
  • Tax deductible expenses for contractors
  • Basic Guide to VAT
  • Basic Guide to Income Tax
  • Cloud Accountants
  • Terms of Engagement
  • R&D Tax Credits
Copyright © Caprica Online Ltd 2014 - All rights reserved
Menu
  • Home
  • Services
    • Caprica Business
    • Caprica Contractor
    • Auto Enrolment
  • Xero
  • About
    • About Us
    • FAQs
    • Cloud Accountants
    • Terms of Engagement
    • Recruitment
  • Contact
  • Learn.Caprica
  • Sign up