All Money talk articles – Page 3
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News
Money Talk: If forecourt crime is such a problem, why isn’t more done to prevent it?
BOSS’s Forecourt Crime Index has just appeared in the news pages again, this time because it shows forecourt crime at its highest-ever level during Quarter 1 of this year. Sometimes it takes an outsider to ask the most obvious questions. On this occasion it was a colleague who’s recently come ...
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Money Talk: We’re back to ’business as usual’ - inflation and falling demand...
With hindsight it now seems strange that just a few years ago it looked as if we were entering a period that few retailers had previously experienced deflation whereby retail prices were falling month-on-month. And if you’ve been watching the news recently and caught the most recent release of inflation ...
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Money Talk: Forecourt crime is more than just drive-offs and no means of payment
Interesting to see that BOSS (the British Oil Security Syndicate) has launched a ’forecourt crime index’ to help retailers gauge their own experience against a national benchmark. It’s a good idea, and one not to be dismissed, however, the real limitation is that the index appears to relate specifically to ...
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Money Talk: Selling up and getting-out - there are several ways of valuing a business
Last month we looked at valuing a business for potential sale using its most recent balance sheet and noted several good reasons why any prospective buyer might not take even an accurate and up-to-date balance sheet at face value. In particular, that the figures are at historic cost, and that ...
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Money Talk: Selling up your site and getting out...
In the course of any business there comes a time when the owners think about selling up. If the business is successful they might want to get out at a reasonably early age and enjoy a long retirement somewhere sunny. If the business is very successful, someone may come along ...
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Money Talk: Petrol versus pub
How’s trading been so far this year for you? While it’s too early for any figures, conversations with retailers in both the petrol and hospitality sectors (regular readers will know that at EKW we’ve had a foot in both camps for many years), suggest that the recent post-Christmas ’quiet period’ ...
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Money Talk: Looking for a light in the January darkness
Welcome to January, the bleakest of months what with the darkness and the bills arriving after that little self indulgence at Christmas. And that was just in the good times. Following the events of 2016 (think Brexit, Trump, US interest rate rise, etc), the economic outlook is the most uncertain ...
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Money Talk: Autumn in the wilderness
If there wasn’t really much drama around the Autumn Statement that the Chancellor delivered on the 23rd of November, there was at least a little of the flavour of pantomime: this was to be the last ’Autumn Statement’ because in future the ’real Budget’ will move to autumn; so what ...
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Money Talk: Interesting times...
The new Chancellor Philip Hammond, in case you hadn’t noticed is due to deliver his first mini-Budget, more formally known as the Autumn Statement, in just a few weeks time on November 23. As these things go, there seem to have been remarkably few hints or leaks as to what ...
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Money Talk: Make sure you take time to take stock
Sometimes it comes as a bit of a shock to end up discussing something as basic as stocktaking with a retailer. We all tend to assume that the principles of stock management including knowing how much stock is really there are so fundamental to any sort of retail activity as ...
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Money Talk: How hard are you sweating your assets?
In every business there comes a time when major expenditure is required just to be able to keep that business going. In the world of petrol retailing that could be new tanks and underground plumbing (maybe every 20-25 years); new pumps or rollover washes (maybe every 15 years); new canopy, ...
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Money Talk: Brexit means business as usual... for now
It seems like a very long time since June 23. Yet as this is being written, the new Prime Minister is still making the last appointments of her new government team and everyone else is still grappling with the possible consequences of the referendum result. So it was quite interesting ...
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Money Talk: Your car wash - dead space or profit centre?
Hundreds of forecourts have the same problem: a large and heavy piece of equipment taking up quite a lot of space in its own dedicated area which, although costly to install and maintain, has produced very decent profits for many years. But that was before a no-tech alternative sprang up ...
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Money Talk: Keep it simple and make sure you keep it separate
Some business operators do like to make life complicated. Not just for their accountants, but potentially for themselves. One way in particular is very common among small, owner-operated traders using the business as just another personal cash and bank account. A look through a month’s worth of bank statements for ...
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Money Talk: Paper still supports your accounting system
Whenever we meet someone about to go into business for themselves, eventually the conversation gets down to practical matters: things like business bank accounts, choice of book-keeping system, EFT terminals, etc. A few even ask how long they’ll have to keep their ’records’... ] Unfortunately even in these cases we ...
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Money Talk: Budget 2016 - not so sweet for all of you
Rather surprisingly, the Chancellor decided to leave Fuel Duty unchanged in his March 2016 Budget perhaps influenced by the recent upward creep in pump prices- largely due to the pound/dollar exchange rate or maybe he just decided to keep his powder dry and save that option for the future. Of ...
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Money Talk: The big question - will fuel duty rise in the Budget?
Many retailers will doubtless remember that increases in duty were once routine - in fact automatic at virtually every Budget. Between 1993 and 2000, the increases were explicitly intended to be significantly above general inflation, regardless of which government was in office. Only the massive disruption of nationwide fuel protests ...
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Money Talk: Don’t let tax years and accounting dates fox you
Having just passed the annual self-assessment tax return deadline, hopefully your own return was in by January 31. Of course, that particular submission related to your personal tax calculations for the tax year 2014/15. Currently we’re in tax year 2015/16, which runs until April 5, 2016. What you do between ...
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Money Talk: Business health is still all about the cash flow
It started as so many of these contacts do a call from someone who had originally spoken to us about his prospective business nearly a year earlier, but then had gone quiet. This call was slightly awkward for him he’d taken up a friend’s offer to ’look after’ his accounting ...
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Money Talk: Some things change, others never seem to
Whatever the eventual fall out from the VW emissions scandal, there is a feeling in the air that we might come to look on 2015 as representing the high water mark of diesel road fuel here, across Europe, and almost certainly in the US. Of course, it’ll take years for ...