For anyone thinking about setting up a new business, who is just getting started or whose business has been established for less than a year, we would recommend you find out what help is available to you.
Starting out can be daunting; you have so much to think about! Not just your fantastic new business idea, but how to market it, who your clients are likely to be, how to find them, where you will find the money to finance everything, how to do manage your transactions, fill out your tax return and plan for future growth!
With this in mind, below you will find ideas for where you can find useful resources and dedicated advice, as well as some financial pointers (of course; Little House Accountants is an accountancy and bookkeeping firm, after all)!
We feel that we are especially well-positioned to offer this advice, given that we have only recently launched ourselves and are one of the lucky few businesses that has just been awarded a grant by The Business & IP Centre Northamptonshire, Build Your Business programme. Little House Accountants has received £2,000 from the UK Government through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund.
To apply for a grant, you must be within the first year of establishing your business. There are two opportunities per year to apply: January and April/May.
What is the BIPC?
The Business & IP Centre Northamptonshire is a government funded organisation, which is run as part of the British Library. It seeks to support anyone who is setting up a new business. The Build Your Business programme and grants are funded by the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (#UKSPF).
What help is available via the BIPC Northamptonshire Build Your Business programme for start-ups?
The Build Your Business programme offers a range of services to new business owners.
BIPC Northamptonshire help and services are all free and available for all start-ups.
The services include:
FREE In person Workshops and Webinars
These cover topics such as branding, protecting your IP, researching your market and writing a business plan.
Whilst webinars can be useful if you are very busy, attending a workshop in person is better if you want to network or chat with other new business owners. In our experience, it is good to build connections face to face, as you never know how you will be able to help each other in the future; who could become your client or friend who shares your business with their own connections?
Start-up Grant of up to £2,000
Raising capital to start your business can be hard. Getting loans can be risky and you might not have much money to invest. To help with your start-up costs, BIPC offers a grant of up to £2,000. In order to apply for this grant, you must fulfil the eligibility criteria. For full details of this and a list of everything that you can’t spend it on, click here.
It is worth noting that the required business plan takes a considerable amount of time to complete, so we’d recommend that you start it as soon as possible. It took us around 3 whole weeks to complete it, but we found it a really useful experience; it made us consider every aspect of the business carefully; who our target client base is and how to reach them, our competitors, our marketing plan and all financial considerations over the next few years.
Even if you don’t apply for the grant, writing out a business plan will really focus your efforts, so it’s worth looking at the various free templates that are available online. Click here for a list of template links compiled by the BIPC. To download the BIPC business plan template, click here.
*Please be aware: If you don’t have a computer at home, you could use one at your local library, but remember to take a memory stick to save your work, as you can’t save to the local hard drive.
Other Grants & Finance
The BIPC website has links for other possible grants or finance/funding schemes for which you might like to apply. They all have different eligibility requirements, so we would advise you to read through the list carefully, to see what help might be available to you: click here for more details on how to raise finance for your business.
Free one-to-one meetings with the BIPC team
The BIPC team are fantastic, offering great advice and support. If you have any questions or need more in-depth support, you can email them to arrange a one-to-one session.
Access to specialist business databases
We used these databases to research our target market and our competitors for our business plan. You will need to go to your local library in order to access most of the databases. The staff there will log you into the databases and then you can access them freely and download all the useful information you find (bring a USB memory stick). The ones I found most useful were COBRA and FAME. For a list of available databases and services, click here.
Networking
The BIPC holds networking events, where there is time to talk to other new business owners. As previously mentioned, the Build Your Business workshops can also be a good place to network, but you don’t get much time for this. The networking events have time allocated for chatting and feature talks on topics relevant to new businesses. For details on upcoming networking events, as well as the BIPC workshops and webinars, click here.
Website for loads of useful information
The BIPC website has loads of useful information which you can access without even speaking to anyone or signing up for the Build Your Business scheme!
Whether you need to know how to register your business, tips on office spaces to rent, details on tax and VAT or even how to be sustainable; you can find it all on their website: https://www.bipcnorthamptonshire.co.uk/
Lastly, whether or not you apply for the grant, we would recommend that you complete the finance section of the business plan.
It consists of:
A personal survival budget: you will need to think about how much money you need to survive every month. You will need to cover this with your business earnings.
Start-up business expenses: How much is it going to cost you to get started (office furniture, computer equipment, marketing materials, stock, insurance, etc)? It will help you think about everything and make sure your total costs aren’t an unwelcome surprise.
A cashflow forecast: How much you are likely to make versus your costs
We are very grateful to the BIPC for all their support with our grant application and for everything we learnt at their workshops.
We hope this blogpost will help you with your new business and if you need help with your self-assessment or tax return, please get in touch!
You can email us at hello@littlehouseaccountants.co.uk, message us via our homepage or
call us on 01536 850940.