Helping your business in difficult times

We wanted these pages to be useful guides for everyone who runs a business. Directors, sole traders, partnerships, and even the boards of charities should find something useful in them. They have been created as a .pdf so you can view them or print them. I know many people still like to scribble notes, so we added a second page with space for action points. When times are tough it is easy to be overwhelmed, to feel lost and unable to see the right path. Hopefully, these guides will clear that fog by suggesting new perspectives so you can then see solutions that work for you. Even if all they do is help re-focus you on sensible financial strategies you already know about, they will have done their job.

We don’t know your circumstances, so in the end, it is all down to you of course, but we hope this content will start you down the right path if things are looking tough financially.

As always, please take advice when you need it. Our survival guides are suggestions, but your circumstances are individual. If you need it, then there is no substitute for professional help.

We are insolvency practitioners so, as you would expect, we see a lot of businesses that are struggling with financial problems. Sadly, it is sometimes the case that a business may have avoided insolvency had the directors taken remedial action sooner. Hindsight brings clear vision as they say.

When we meet with Directors dealing with insolvency, they often say that they felt they had very little access to clear, practical, advice when things started to look problematic. While there is plenty of support around on the internet, and via various sources such as network groups and similar, it tends to be focused on growth and planning. There is also plenty of information, such as our help for director’s pages, on what insolvency is and what it will mean if you if your business ceases to trade. These are also a great resource, but what Directors of insolvent companies often told us was that they also wanted other help. Specifically, they wanted information that was of use from their first concerns about serious money problems.

That was the initial motive for these guides, but it was just the starting point. We soon realised that there was a much greater need for informed guidance.

It may seem counterintuitive for an Insolvency Practitioner to offer support aimed at avoiding insolvency, but it really isn’t for two very good reasons.

Firstly, we are professionally obliged to offer you the best advice. Although we are there to help with insolvency when it is needed, Insolvency Practitioners are professionally required to always offer the right guidance. I suppose you could argue that means we only ‘need’ to get involved with a business once insolvency is on the table. Well, maybe that is true for some, but to us, that seems a little bit of a narrow way to see things.

Secondly, we started Smart Business Recovery with a simple idea… we wanted to help businesses.  That is still our core ethos. We help where we can. For example, we are often asked to present to business groups around the subject of avoiding financial issues. Business owners tell us they have found these talks very useful. Which is great, but that is a handful of people in one room. We wanted to make our knowledge available to everyone who needs it. So, some of the content we present is included in these guides.

At Smart Business Recovery we are here to guide you down the right path in difficult times. Sadly, at some point, it is possible your path may lead you to a place where you need to consider insolvency. If it does, we are here to help. Until then, these are a free resource, based on our decades of experience, that may help you get through in difficult financial circumstances.

The only answer to this question is act now. Call us. There is nothing to be gained by waiting. If you look through these guides and feel you may be beyond the point where they will help, (or if you think things are heading that way and don’t see things changing), you need further advice. Call us or use the online diary and we will work together to find the right solution.  We also have plenty of information in our help for directors’ section covering what insolvency means and what will be involved. If you are concerned about insolvency, then the first, best, option is always to act quickly and set up a free consultation. The sooner we start talking the better.

Every business is different, but every business faces the same challenges. These guides here to help you focus down on one aspect of your business or finances to come up with actions for improving. Some are quite narrow in focus, others are more general, some are ‘back to basics’ reminders of good practice, but all are designed to help you look at your finances clearly.

Use them however you see fit, but we suggest:

1. Start with the cashflow guide. You need to know where the money is first.
2. Look through the other subject areas and select ones that seem most relevant to your concerns.
3. Read the overview page and watch the video.
4. Read the guide then either print it out or overtype the .pdf and:
   1. Start with your thoughts on the points raised in context of your business.
   2. Turn these thoughts into action points. Make them actual actions, with solid dates to be completed and exactly what you will do.
5. Review after a suitable amount of time and see if they need revising.
6. If your actions are not helping and things are still not looking good, contact us for help. Be realistic about how your finances are looking. If you have implemented the changes and nothing is improving, it’s a red flag telling you to take our advice.

In the end, you know your business better than anyone, but that can be a problem. We invest a lot of ourselves in our companies and they mean more to us than numbers on paper. That can skew your thinking without you realising it. Sadly, the numbers on the paper don’t lie, so these guides are here to get you to look at them clearly and logically.