Latest from pet accountant Vicky Clark on salon accounts

from Total Grooming Magazine June 2021

Growing your business – the role of quality photography in your establishing your brand

Victoria Clark - the Pet Accountant

Delving Into the Realms of HMRC

By Victoria Clark - The Pet Accountant

The Pet Accountant is a business dedicated to helping Pet Professionals with all things finance and taxes. Since the start of the year I have taken part in many live chats with various facebook groups and more recently joined the lovely Colin Taylor on an episode of his podcast. What this highlighted for me, was the industry is in serious need of some help around these topics and in a way that is jargon free and relatable to the industry. HMRCs website as we all know is not easy to navigate at the best of times.

My mission is to get people in the grooming industry talking about this topic, to understand its importance and to take control of their finances. I want to give you industry specific answers and advice in a way that’s easy to understand and follow. And of course to show you that not all accountants are generic Geoffs or corporate Carolines. So let’s get started.

One of the most important aspects of any business is finance, yet this is the one topic that I have come to learn, is not spoken about much in the grooming world. Since I started to dedicate my services to this wonderful industry at the beginning of the year, it has become clear that this is an area that people don’t feel comfortable with and tends to be last on the ‘to do’ list.

The UK has been through some difficult times over the last 18 months and it is more important than ever to get your finances in order. It has been tough on a lot of businesses, especially groomers, with the constant stopping and starting and the ambiguity around welfare grooms, business rates and those local authority grants…if you managed to get one.

The pandemic has highlighted to many that they were not in control of their finances and also shone a light on the self employed and tax returns. People quickly realised that they were not going to receive any help from the government because they had not submitted their tax returns on time or even at all, which had a detrimental

effect on many businesses. Many who didn’t pay much attention to their tax return or how it was completed are now frantically trying to find those receipts and making sure they are recording every penny to get the most out of their grants (The application for the 4th grant is now open. You can check your eligibility on the gov.uk website).

Over the last few months I have had long conversations with over one hundred new and established dog groomers all over the UK. One of the most common themes throughout these conversations was a lack of understanding around HMRC, tax returns/expenses, and the importance of getting your accounts completed on time and completed correctly. You may now be thinking, ‘have I completed mine?’ Or ‘have I even registered?’ or more worryingly like some ‘I didn’t realise I needed to register straight away’. Don’t worry, you’re not the only one.

Let’s start with the basics. You may be sitting there reading this article and thinking ‘what do I do now?’. This is where I come in. You are now at the start of the new tax year and at the stage where you need to think about submitting your return for the last one.. confusing right. On top of this, you now have to think about the bounce back loans, the local authority grants and the SEISS payments and how on earth you record them. DON’T PANIC! My first tip is not to bury you head in the sand and hope that the tax man will forget that you’ve not submitted your return. The longer you leave it the worse it will get..and they never forget. Pencil a day in your diary to sit down, gather all your invoices, receipts and bank statements and collate them on an excel spreadsheet or in whatever form you feel most comfortable. This may take a couple of hours, but once you’ve done it that’s half the battle over. Second tip, don’t forget to include the grants and payments that you received, these are taxable and need to be included in your return. How, I hear you ask? There are specific boxes in the tax return that will ask you to input the amounts you received. Third tip, make sure you register your business within 90 days or you could face a fine.

Once you have all this information it’s time for the fun to begin by logging on to the HMRC website. I can imagine the comments you are all making about how easy it is, right? If the thought of even typing the letters HMRC fills you with dread, there are people out there that can help. For one, someone like myself. Accountants are not as scary as you think. I sometimes think we are put in the same category as car sales people. We were put onto this earth to save you time and money. Who wants to give more money to the tax man than they need to? I never have a client say to me, ‘Vicky please make sure I give as much money to the government as possible’. Unfortunately over the last few months, the individuals I have been speaking to have been doing just that. I can’t stress enough the importance of getting this right if you want to see a profitable and growing business.

Let’s take action now and start talking about this topic and helping each other. Don’t be an ostrich and bury your head in the sand hoping it will go away. Get those invoices out and receipts organised and let’s get cracking.

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