Do you find you don’t have time to do any business planning?  Are you too busy getting on with the actual business side of things, the things that get the income coming in? Or perhaps more honestly, you think that “planning” or “strategy” is:-

a) boring as heck?
b) a mystery?
c) irrelevant?

So What Is Business Planning?

START-UP PLANNING

Well there’s the start-up business plan which is your tool for setting out your initial goals and how you will achieve them. It takes a detailed look at your proposed business idea and how likely it is to succeed. It includes financial forecasts covering what money you see coming in and going out of your business. It usually covers a 3-5 year period. This video explains more about it – https://www.gov.uk/write-business-plan

ONGOING MONITORING & PLANNING

You’d be forgiven for thinking that “business planning” was only something to do when starting up rather than running a business. If you google “business planning” for example, a high proportion of articles will be about start-ups and creating you first  business plan.
But once you’re in business, it pays to refer back regularly to your original plan to see whether things are going according to plan, financially and in relation to your other goals.

If you aware that things are not going to plan, you can do what is necessary to address any issues before they become critical. Also unexpected changes can be positive developments. You may find a market for your audience that you hadn’t been aware of before. If you take the time to look at how these changes fit in with your overall goals, it will help you keep focussed.
In addition to regular monitoring of your cashflow, you might once a year, review your goals & make plans in the areas of finance, sales, marketing, HR, for example.

Setting measurable objectives for the year ahead makes it easier to monitor your performance. So rather than vague goals such as “increase sales” or “raise company profile” set specific and realistic targets such as % increase in sales, 3 articles in local paper, x number of facebook fans, reduce overdraft by x amount.

I’ve talked to several people who run small businesses over the years and I’m always amazed that planning is often so far down on their agenda or sometimes not on their radar at all!

If you applied that logic elsewhere it would seem a bit odd. For example, you don’t step out of your front door in the morning without an idea of where it is you’re going.

A while back I was working as Communications Officer for an organisation and had been asked to produce a Communications Strategy. I was talking to my boss one day about the importance of strategy and said “if you don’t have a strategy, you’re in the dark, a bit like trying to pack for a holiday without knowing where you’re going “. He said “Oh! I’d happily go with an empty suitcase!”.
That taught me a valuable lesson. To remember that not everyone has the same outlook on life, the same values or personality. Luckily for me, I like planning, I’m more of thinker than do-er, so it’s not a chore for me to spend time analysing and committing ideas to paper. But if you’re a do-er I can quite understand that you may well prefer to watch paint dry than sit down and write business forecasts.

If for whatever reason, you find yourself saying “no” to the task of business planning, at least be aware of how vulnerable that makes your business.  Lack of planning is often cited as one of the reasons for small business failure.  There’s plenty of guidance on planning out there. Here are a few sources of information to start you off:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/small-business-network/2012/jul/06/business-plan-writing-tips

For further business tips, check out our blog post on simple accounting tips.

With Windows 7 or Vista, turning off a PC is simply a matter of clicking the Windows button on the left of the task bar and clicking the Shutdown button. Having just installed Windows 8, it took me a while to work out how to turn the PC off as there is no longer a Windows button and the Start menu is completely different. Here’s how to do it:

1. Bring up the Windows 8 Charms buttons (a strip of buttons arranged down the right of the screen) by moving your mouse cursor the very top right of the screen.

2. Click the Settings charm button.

3. In the Settings, click the Power button:

Of late, we’ve been using Twitter more frequently but twitter keeps displaying a message saying that it is failing to send emails to us “Is your email address active? We’ve tried to send emails to … “.

However, the email address was fine and emails from other sources sent to that address were getting through OK. Investigating more into our twitter account showed that we’d missed several weeks of direct messages from followers. Missing notifications, especially direct messages from Twitter followers could be quite serious as we may have missed out the opportunity to follow up on leads and enquiries. A little experimentation showed that adding the twitter.com domain to the email/ firewall whitelist allowed the emails to come through properly. Quite why this worked I’m not sure but since adding *.twitter.com to the whitelist, I’ve continued to receive twitter email notifications about new followers, direct messages and so on.

If you want easy-to-use, professional-looking invoices that are customised to suit your requirements, then look no further than SliQ Invoicing Plus.

Our handy template editor means you can create any style of invoice, to fit with the look of your business.

We have a range of fully adaptable styles, which can be used with different types of company logo. All you need to do is select the style of invoice or billing template, then add your logo. It really is that simple!

Our templates are not only useful for creating invoices, they can also be used for creating quotes, credit notes or statements.

To give you maximum flexibility, our billing software comes with a range of predefined invoice templates, so that your perfect invoice is only a click away. Simply select the invoice you prefer from the Template Setup tab. SliQ then shows you a preview of your selected template to help you decide which one is right for you. Then just click the Print Preview button to print an example invoice so you know what your documents will look like.

Invoice Template Preview

Have it your way…

While all of SliQ’s templates are pre-designed with all the essential elements you may require from an invoice template, we also offer a helpful template editor, meaning you can fully customise your invoices as required. So if the templates don’t quite suit your preferences, they can be edited in a matter of minutes, using SliQ’s nifty invoice designer. Using the designer’s template editor, you can tweak the layout, change fonts and colours, as well as adding new labels and images to better suit your business.

Your invoices, credit notes and statements really can be completely bespoke. The templates are provided for use with and without a company logo, and a range of options are provided to customise the template, including a function to change the data columns, an option to add standard messages, plus the ability to alter the footer.

You can see some examples of the invoice templates provided with SliQ Invoicing on our website (http://www.sliqtools.co.uk/invoice-templates.aspx).

Already have a specific company style for your stationery? No problem. Simply use the template editor to make the SliQ templates match your other paperwork. Not only that, but with our easy-to-use editor you can even add extra bitmaps and logos, so if you need to add quality of trade accreditation logos or similar, it’s not a problem at all.

In fact, there are no limits to the range of invoices you can design! By using the template editor you can change the fonts, colours and layouts of items on templates, with the option of editing and saving as many different templates as you like. You can even configure the columns that appear on your templates, meaning you can add a date column to an invoice or show customer delivery addresses for invoices on a statement.

And the great thing is, once you’ve designed your invoice, you can use our clever software to add even more fields to an invoice, and map fields to values from the SliQ database. This function allows you to include a payment summary table that shows all payments made against the invoice. And you can include a VAT (or tax) summary table showing total amounts charged on the invoice at different tax rates.

To recap, there are a whole host of benefits to using the SliQ Template Editor. These include:

1.    Function to change the fonts and colours used on a template
2.    Option to add new logos and bitmaps
3.    Option to add or delete labels and fields
4.    Ability to rearrange the positions of items on a template
5.    Function to change borders and fill colours of items.
6.    Tool to resize columns in tables
7.    Tool to add extra columns to tables – add an item code column to an invoice or a purchase order column to a statement.
8.    Function to change column headings
9.    Option to add boxes, e.g. add a signature box

Want to find out more? Why not download a free 30-day trial of SliQ Invoicing Plus which includes our invoice template editor. You don’t even need to register or make any payment up front, just go to our Downloads page, download and install one of our packages and you’ll be invoicing in style in no time!

You can also find out more about the template editor by reading the SliQ Help File online.

These days the big move is toward online Software As A Service such as online accounting and online invoicing software. However, in a number of aspects, desktop software still holds a strong position. Here are 7 areas where desktop invoicing software can still beat online invoicing software:-

1. Desktop software is more mature with respect to online apps. Although RIA (Rich Internet Application) technology is advancing, traditional desktop software still allows far more sophisticated and powerful user interfaces to be created.

2. The costs of desktop software are usually less than those for online software. With an online software, the software vendor always has to charge on an ongoing basis for the cost of hosting the application. This usually means an ongoing monthly subscription to continue to use the online web application. With desktop software, although the initial cost of purchase can be higher the costs are usually a one-off except for occasional upgrades.

3. The speed of operation of desktop software is often greater than that of online invoicing software. Even though broadband speeds increase annually, many web applications have a spongy feel, making the user wait for new pages to be loaded.

4. Many online software enforce data and bandwidth limits whereas most desktop software are only limited by the size of your hard disk. Online vendors need to enforce price breaks since the cost of hosting their web applications rises as users need to store more data or use more processor time.

5. Although the best online invoicing applications have rock-solid security, many users would still prefer their financial data to be held on their own PCs, entirely under their own control.

6. Desktop software is always available for use. If you load it on a laptop or portable computer you can use the software while travelling. Online software is only as available as an internet connection, e.g. arranging for an internet connection while on holiday on a remote farm in Tuscany is not always easy.

7. As long as you have an internet connection on your PC, a desktop package can offer as many possibilities as an online system for things like emailing invoices and purchase orders.

Deciding between online and desktop invoicing is not a black or white decision, each system will has pros and cons. Often it’s the specific features of a particular software package that will make the decision. To try out a free trial of SliQ Invoicing to see if it suits you and your business, please visit our downloads page.