Starting a Business No 7 - Financial Strategy - No 1 Budget Forecasting

A budget forecast has several purposes. It can be used, for example, to obtain the following:

• an estimate or preview of the likely profit (loss) from one of your projects, eg a gig;
• an estimate of the yearly profit (loss) from your trading enterprise, eg as a retail outlet.

Thus budgetary control is an important aspect of running your business. Prior to the beginning of given period, eg a year, you  make estimates of items of income flows and expenditure flows within shorter regular periods, eg months. 

For the year the difference between income and expendityure is your profit.

You will need to portray the year as a table of 14 columns. The first column shows the names of  incomes and then expenditures, ie in successive rows. The next 12 columns are for the months with another column showing in successive amounts of the income and costs for  type of income and expenditure. The final column shows totals for each row. The last row at the foot of the table shows the totals for the columns.

A comparison of the sum of the totals of the final column and the sum of the totals of the bottom row should be the same. If not you will need to do some checking! The final correct result is your estimated profit (or loss).

For a shopkeeper the income flow will usually comprise sales (turnover), The expenditure will usually include: a) purchases of stock, b) wages and national insurance, c) heating and lighting; d) rent, and e) local taxes.

How to Choose a Career or Job - Ideas No 2 - Work "Contexts" and "Styles"

After sorting out your life-record in line with the kinds of items in the Ideas No 1 it is time:

A] To think through the kind of situation(s) in which you might like to work, such as:

1. Do you like or want to work outdoors?         Yes / No / Maybe.    Farming / Transportation / Outdoor leisure / Gardener /....
2. Do you like or want to work indoors?            Yes / No / Maybe.    Factory / Office  / Shop / School / Leisure centre /....
3. Do you like or want to work with animals?    Yes / No / Maybe.    Farming / Veterinary clinic / Zoo / Animal rescue /...... 
4. Do you like or want to want with people?     Yes / No / Maybe.   Care home / Nursing home / Hospital / College /.... 
5. Do you like or want to work with children?   Yes / No / Maybe.    School / Play centre / Nursery / Holiday park /.....
6. etc.....

B] To think through the kinds of knwledge and skills you have or could develop:

1. Do you have or want to develop writing skills?   Yes / No / Maybe.    Author / Playright / Language teacher /....
2. Do you have or want to develop caring skills?     Yes / No / Maybe.     Carer / Nurse / Nanny /....
3. Do you have or want to develop animal skills?     Yes/ No / Maybe      Stable hand / Groom / Jockey / Animal welfare worker/...
4. Do you have or want to develop teaching skills?   Yes / No / Maybe   Teacher / Animal trainer / Childminder / Coach / Mentor/..
5. etc......

Starting a Business No 7 - Financial Strategy - No 1 Types of Accounts

Job Club members who start a business must have some idea about accounts. Members who work in a business usually find it useful to have some knowledge of accounts. From a businesss  start-up member's perspective money is the root of all business so you will have to have money for your business activities. It is useful to divide money into the following basic accounts:

1. Capital accounts - expenditure on and receipts from assets which will subsist for some time and occupied or operated by the business, eg buildings, vehicles, machinery, tools;
2. Revenue accounts - expenditure on consumables, and receipts taken from customers for sales or the provision of services;
3. Value added tax accounts - mandatory accounts required when registered for VAT; and,
4. Income taxation accounts - mandatory accounts to arrive at profit for income tax purposes; and
5. Capital taxation accounts - mandatory accounts and/or calculations to arrive at assessments for capital tax purposes.

Two of the other types of accounts you may decide to use for evaluation are:

1. Management accounts - optional accounts used in various ways to evaluate the quality of operations; and/or,
2. Project accounts - optional accounts used to evaluate a particular project(s).

The last two may be important if the business is growing: but the first bunch will begin to swing into action from scratch or within about a year. As indicated, taxation accounts are essential.

Personal Time Management No 6B - Complete To-Do List

Since posting Personal Time Management No 6A I have been given a very useful tip. It is a Complete To-do List.

It works like this - every time you identify a task that will need to be done in the future add it to the end of your  "Complete To-do List". Thereafter, a task will be deleted from the list when it is achieved or when you decide that it need not be done afterall.

Henceforth, almost every to-do on your daily to-do list shoild come from your complete to-do list! Although I have not yet done so, you might like to add:

1. a date for its completion;
2. where no date is needed, relative priority note may be denoted by "U" for urgent, or "I" for intermediate urgency (Non-urgent tasks need not be denoted until they become U or I);
3. a note of an estimation of how long a task may take in hours or days. 

Training No 1 - Fund Finding for the Future Update No 1 - 18 January 2012

Although there are and will be problems it seems that full time students are assured of being able to obtain loans to fund their time at Universtity.  Some on the more expensive courses are, it seems, subsidised by those on the cheaper to run courses!  Likewise many of those in employment will obtain support from their employers - in the form of time off to attend courses; a books allowance, travel expenses, etc. Even the tax authorities have been known to chip in with income tax relief , eg for training expenses for certain types of courses and a scheme which I call "buy-a-bicycle". 

But, what of the general unemployed..? Are they able to obtain long-term loans, tax reliefs or other kinds of official support? Yes, I know that "benefits" could be used by the unemployed to "invest" in training  in their future but is it a realistic notion?

I suggest an official scheme of a)  training loans; and/or b) training vouchers. Firstly; they should be aimed at helping the needful unemployed to seek basic knowledge and skills in:

1. reading competency;
2. writing competency;
3. first aid;
4. health and safety;
5. risk assessment; and,
6. time management.

(Of course many students and those in employment may lack some of the last four items but I guess they are not the priority!) 

Level 2 training needs will be dealt with in a later post on this site.

Update 18 January 2012
A Twitter follower had a note that part-time students can get loans but ther only item I have found is that they may be eligible for "tuition fee loans". Is there any way of going the whole hog by offering loans for books, equipment and any protective clothing needed for the part-time courser? Also, what loan  is the non-higher education unemployed person going to be eligible for their future personal development?
  http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/EducationAndLearning/UniversityAndHigherEducation/StudentFinance/DG_194804

Personal Time Management No 8 - Three Picked Time-saving Tips

On a normal day it is likely that your metabolism slows down by about 11 am - So:

• Tip No 1 - at the beginning of the week have one picked big job and four picked small jobs planned for each day. All these picked jobs for a day are to be completed by 11am. (Of course you may have more than 25 jobs to do in every week.)  Endeavour to complete the five big jobs by Wednesday. 

On some days you will find it difficult to think how to put jobs in priority- So

• Tip No 2 - at the beginning of the week against each job on the list in Tip No 1, put "Do-fast", "Do-next", or "Do-fit-in".  The Do-fast are priority one; the Do-next are priority  two; and the Do-fit-in are priority three.

Have a period of smart-time every day:

1. when you will only take calls in an emergency (life and death) or from your boss, spouse/partner, and children;
2. when your colleagues know not to disturb you;
3. your PC, smart phone, etc are off-line; and,
4. your telephone is closed.

[Note: your spouse/partner and children will know for what reason they can call you!]

• Tip No 3 - use the smart-time to complete outstanding Do-Fast jobs, to think about and work on policy and/or important operational tasks.

Books for Job Clubs No 4 - How's your dissertation going? (Book Review)

Book for a job club??? Maybe not: but the skills required to write a disseration are not too far away for the skills required for a) deciding on a career, b)  finding the right employer,  c) writing a targeted CV and covering letter,  d )  getting an interview,  and, e)  handling an interview.

"How's your dissertation going?" by Liz Hampson was published in 1994 by Unit for  Innovation in Higher Education, Lanchester University.

It is written from interviws with undergraduate and postgraduate students - it is quote-ridden in a pleasant manner so as to draw out themes - such as on Selecting a topic (topic = career); How do you choose a supervisor (supervisor = employer),  Who else might help? (eg other students = job club peers(?)), Is it worth it in the end? (degree = job).

Many of the skills needed by a student who wants to achieve a successful dissertation are, it is worth repeating, not unlike those displayed by a jobseeker who wants to achieve a successful job hunt.  [I recall having a discussion about methodology used by detectives, property valuers and biology reserachers - we agreed (a Home Office researcher, a property valuer and a biology teacher) that the skill-sets required were similar in their fundamentals.]