Announcing Proud Partnership With The Bulls

We are delighted to announce a new partnership with the new football club to be based at Edgar Street. Hereford Football Club was set up earlier this year by Jon Hale, former chairman of the Hereford United Supporters Trust (HUST), and a group of local businessmen.

The new 'phoenix club' competes in the Midland Football League Premier Division with other local team Westfields. Known as ‘The Whites’ or ‘The Bulls’, Hereford FC have already sold over 1200 season tickets so are looking forward to bring football back to Edgar Street in the centre of Hereford.

We are pleased to be associated with this new club and look forward to exciting times ahead for the players and fans.

We understand the social and economic value a football club can bring to the community and Hereford Football Club are maintaining the great work Hereford United did with their ‘United In The Community’ (UITC) scheme and continuing to create a pathway for talented Herefordshire youngsters to progress from junior football into Hereford FC’s first team.

If you want any further information about Hereford Football Club then go to www.herefordfc.co.uk 

Xerocon 2015 takes over London

Last month, Battersea Evolution Conference Centre, set in the centre of Battersea Park on the banks of the Thames, was taken over for three days by over 800 accountants and bookkeepers from across the UK.

The team from Xero - the UKs most popular online accounting software, entertained and empowered the attendees with speakers including Karren Brady, Rita Clifton and CEO of Xero, Rod Drury.

There were announcements of in-product launches and updates including, the widely anticipated introduction of Payoll as part of the Xero package. This comes at a fraction of the price of other payroll software providers. Here at Bookkeeping4u, we support businesses with payroll in addition to day to day bookkeeping so we were pleased to see this new feature as it will help to streamline the accounts procedures and ensure that all information concerning a clients accounts are kept together in one place.

The team from Xero, who all wear Xero designed t-shirts, made all the attendees welcome at the conference which included plenty of opportunities to meet account managers and the product development staff, as well as time to find out more about some of the many Add Ons that Xero users can subscribe to. Some of the more popular Add Ons include Vend, a cloud based point of sale (POS) program which is ideal for retailers as it links straight into the Xero accounts, Chaser for credit control and automated invoice reminders and the very popular Receipt Bank which cleverly, with the use of a scanner or mobile phone camera, turns paper receipts into transactions with the Xero accounts.

The hospitality at the conference was outstanding including a Xero branded coach to take the attendees to and from the nearest tube station and London was somewhat, painted Xero blue, by the specially branded London taxis traveling around the city.

Xero as a company are definitely working hard and investing heavily to develop a brand and a product that works well for small businesses at an affordable price which importantly is easy to use.

If you would like to find out more about Xero. Follow this link or alternatively call Rich on 01432 367787 or email mail@bookkeeping4u.biz and arrange a non-obligation demo of the full Xero software. 

Rebrand finally completed

I am excited to announce publicly a major development and change to Bookkeeping4u.

 

With the help and support from Richard and Kerry Low from Character Design, who are one of my newer clients, I am really pleased to present the newly developed rebranding. 

This fresh, modern and dynamic design highlights the future hopes for the business as we move to more cutting edge online accounts packages. I have also created a new tag line "Keeping your business balanced". 

Please let me know what you think? 

RTI Penalty Plans Announced

From April 2013, employers must send, via the Internet, details of salary, tax deducted, NI, etc to HMRC each and every time they pay an employee, instead of just at the end of the tax year. One advantage to this is that you won't need to complete the end of year Forms P35 or P14.
Obviously, as these are being scrapped so are penalties for submitting them late. So new tough penalties will be imposed for missing Real Time Information (RTI) deadlines instead.

HMRC have generously decided that late notification penalties won't apply for the first year of RTI. Instead, they will work on a fair and practical way for these to be imposed from April 2014.

While employer payroll data reports, so-called Full Payment Submissions, won't be subject to fines if they're late in the first year of RTI, HMRC says that they will continue to charge penalties under existing rules on employers who make PAYE errors.

If you have queries and want more information about getting your payroll ready for RTI then contact Bookkeeping4u. Call 07792 080789 or email mail@bookkeeping4u.

Accountex 2014 My Experience Part 2

After our visits to the arena's to watch the speeches we continued to have a wonder round to see what other stuff there was to see before we made our way to Xero village (which is the accounting software we use). Firstly we had a look at SAGE's setup (Xero's main competitor) and just like we had thought they had gone all out, they had a huge space for their display which consisted of some really flashy decoration, flat screens everywhere and of course to top It off a huge smoothie bar serving free and fresh fruit smoothies, which we did really enjoy.

 
Xero Village

 
With our look at everything else over, we took a brisk walk across the room to Xero Village, which I have to say wasn't as cosmetically appealing as say SAGE's setup but was definitely a lot more people friendly and helpful. They had stalls all around the village consisting of the different partners to the Xero software which they've only just started trying to push forward to current Xero users, we then started our round of visiting each stall to hear the details on what the services were and how much they cost and just exactly how they run alongside Xero.

 We came away with at least three of the add-ons having been of interest to us, one of which was called RecieptBank in which you photograph receipts and there company generates the data and returns all valuable and needed information back and into Xero for you! This to us is a massive step towards eliminating the most tedious and longwinded jobs such as actual data input so we will definitely be looking into this!

 In the end we had an overall really good day, gained lots of new contacts and lots of useful information, so anybody who's looking to attend the business show or Accountex I would highly recommend it!

Accountex 2014 My Experience Part 1

 On Thursday the 15^th May myself and my colleague Rich visited London for the day to attend the business show 2014 which itself involved many shows, but most importantly for us Accountex! A simple easy drive down to London was to be welcomed by us both as we arose at 5.30am to get ready to start the journey down there.

 
We Arrived!

 
We arrived in London at the excel arena (never been before, must say a very impressive building) and our day began, we managed to park just down the road so after sorting the car out we made the walk to the arena to start having a look around before our first seminar started at 11am. We approached the steps to the doors to find the place already absolutely full of people and buzzing with atmosphere!
We walked in the main doors and approached the ticket bay to have our passes scanned for entry, as we approached we saw motivational speaker and author Brad Burton so that immediately set us on the track of finding out if and when he was doing a seminar that day so we would be able to attend (which we later did!) so with that pencilled in and passes scanned we headed towards the entrance to Accountex to begin our day!

 
First Look At Accountex

 
We spent the first hour or so having a general look around and speaking to the various professionals on each stand, which for a first timer like me was really interesting! After just half an hour of wondering around I began to feel like a pack mule from how much promotional produce I had already acquired!
These products included a variety of things from a light bulb shaped stress ball to some real funky M&M's with a company's logo on each individual chocolate. And apart from the Xero stuff I got later on in the day these ended up being my favourite thing id acquired all day from the stands (easily amused I know!).
By this time we were ready for our first seminar which was with Microsoft's Ex Head of Marketing about the way technology is changing business and how it has changed it and will constantly continue to change it!
We got some rather interesting look ins on some brand new technology, one example were Google Smart contact lenses which are in clinical trials now and has been designed to read the blood sugar levels from diabetics teardrops and alert them when and if they need more or less sugar, the initial design I have to say was rather ugly but never the less absolutely amazing to hear how far we have come, considering twenty years ago we didn't even have the internet! So overall was really impressed with this seminar and left feeling like I had seen and heard about technology I never thought would exist which was extremely cool.

The Best Of Hereford Event 20.05.2014

Event Layout

This post was republished to Bookkeeping4u at 12:04:26 28/05/2014

On the 20^th of May, Bookkeeping4u appeared at the Best of Hereford's Event, this was held at TGS Bowling in Hereford in the evening.
We were one of seven companies who had a business stall setup, and the rest of the people that came were invited guests. We had an expected turnout of over 70 people from local Hereford businesses so it made for a really good atmosphere which further on led to us overall having a really good night.

 Overall I was really pleased with how the stand looked once we had finished setting up. We had a nice lit up spot in the corner of the room that dragged attention to our lovely little display featuring Xero our partners!

 Pictures of Our Stand

Myself And My Colleague Rich At The Show!

Me with our stand at the show

 



 








The night continued with Hannah from The Best Of putting on a show and calling up all new Local business owners to deliver a two minute speech about their business and to collect The Best of Hereford Awards, we were very happy to be one of the companies to gain an award. There was also a really interesting talk on social media by Heather Gorringe from local Hereford Company Wiggly Wigglers (pictured below).
Well done Hannah and Chris on a great evening highlight some of the new Hereford businesses and the work that The Best of Hereford do to promote local businesses and the community together.

Heather Gorringe from Wiggly Wigglers giving her social media talk!

Our Best Of Business Type Award!