The Umbrella Companies Blog Archive: August 2009
Home of Umbrella Company Gossip Online

Well, by Monday you should be seeing a number of new things on the site. The first and most significant change is that to the umbrella company page, it's a complete re-write that we've been working on for quite a while, it's a much clearer page that I think explains what we do much better than the existing one.

In conjunction with that we have the addition of a new page to the site, and that's our No Hidden Costs page. This is part of an effort to make everything we do as clear as possible, so you know right at the beginning what it will cost you. On the page are all of the costs, if it's not on there you won't be charged for it, it's as plain as that. I think we're the first to do this, but I hope that this is something that other companies adopt because choosing an umbrella company or self employed service is only made more difficult by not having all the relevant facts.

Next we have the pages about the history of umbrella companies, single person companies and composite companies. They are there to explain how umbrella companies have become the dominant payroll structure in the industry. Writing them was a nice stroll down memory lane as in a way they are Gabem's history and many of the people here were with the company through all of them.

Last but not least you have an early Legal Bits, and this time not from Susan but from Wole our resident lawyer talking about an umbrella company contractor's position when it comes to signing contracts. I am assured that Susan will be back next month, so her fan club need not fear.

You'll see that over the next two weeks we'll have other people manning the blog (as I am off on holiday) and hopefully keeping you up to date with any news or relevant information. I'll name two of the people writing here and now so they can't get out of it, the first is Justin from invoicing, who I imagine quite a few of you would have spoken to over the years, and Karen the Credit Control Manager who is taking a step into the internet spotlight for maybe the first time. Go easy on them, and feel free to send in your feedback to the usual email address as I am sure they'll appreciate it.

Speak to you in a couple of weeks, and look after yourselves. In the extremely unlikely chance that any of you are going to PAX in Seattle, see you there.

Hugo
28/08/2009

Finding a good deal on a business bank account is much the same as trying to find a deal on anything else nowadays, the internet is really your first point of call. Unfortunately the net being the way it is anything financial is just filled with mostly useless information, and paid for advertising.

What you need to find is a comparison site that gives you easy access to a lot of information and the ability to filter for criteria you are and are not interested in. The two best I found were:

http://www.moneysupermarket.com an excellent and well known site, it's worth using for anything money related, not just business bank accounts.

http://bba.moneyfacts.co.uk the site of the British Bankers Association and a surprisingly good and unbiased comparison site.

Moneysupermarket has the better filtering, but Moneyfacts has the more helpful initial comparison chart, as it lists all the fees immediately.

You will probably see that the best offers are for new customers and that's always going to be true, but if you don't mind chopping and changing you can get some exceedingly good deals for anything between 12 and 24 months after which you can just move on again. Working this way can potentially save yourself a lot of money, although there is more work involved for you.

A business account is not a must for self-employed contractors, being a sole trader means that you can use a personal account for all your business transactions. Most banks now will happily set up secondary current accounts linked to your primary account to allow for easier tracking of incoming payments and general money management.

Hugo
26/08/2009

The economic outlook appears to be improving, and yet it's as if everyone is crossing their fingers and keeping quiet about it just in case mentioning it ruins everything.

I say "everyone" but that doesn't include "The Metro" who have stuck their neck out and confidently said "Recession 'will end in 40 days'".

It's quite likely that they are right in a very technical sense, all that's needed for the recession to end is one quarter of non-negative growth (the definition of a recession being 2 consecutive quarters of negative growth). The problem is that this doesn't mean we're out of the woods, we have a long way to go before that happens.

Within the last month there have been reports that 50% of UK firms intend to or are thinking about laying people off over the next 6 months. This may be good news for temporary contractors, and good news for recruiters, but it's not so great news for the permies out there, and that's a bad sign for the economy as a whole. If the supply of temporary work is a good measure of how active an economy is, the supply of permanent work is a measure of its stability and overall health. When the supply of permanent jobs starts to pick up that is the point at which we will see real improvement.

What all this means is that things are improving there is light at the end of what may be a particularly long tunnel, and we can all start feeling a little more hopeful. The fact that it's happening in time for Christmas is just icing on the cake.

So here's to the end of the Recession in 40 days, and the hope that the light we see in that tunnel isn't a fast moving train.

Hugo
21/08/2009

There is currently a consultation underway on what the government is calling "False Self Employment in Construction". It's aimed at stopping what they see as exploitation of a self employed tax loophole used by construction contractors who should actually be classed as employees.

This consultation is particularly relevant to contractors because what they are proposing could effectively remove self employment as a payment option for many construction workers. The issues that have everyone concerned are the criteria that qualify contractors for self employment. Under the proposed system a contractor would have to supply either: Plant or Heavy equipment for the job, or all materials required for the job, or workers for the job.

As you can imagine this rules out probably 90% of the people currently working as self employed contractors in construction, and I think we can all agree that the criteria are far too limiting. All feedback needs to be in by the 12th of October, and we are led to understand that any changes that may be implemented will be delayed until after the recession - so there is some silver lining.

We will be submitting our responses via Penningtons and KPMG in the near future, but in the meantime we'd like to know your feelings on the matter, you can just click Hugo below to send us an email. If you feel we can possibly assist in any other way please let us know.

Hugo
14/08/2009

It seems that HMRC have had some fraudulent Self Assessment claims submitted through their electronic submissions portal. Under normal circumstances I think we could be forgiven for assuming that this has something to do with the way their portal has been set up, or poor security, but in this case it seems we'd be wrong. From an email they have sent around it seems that their system is intact and secure, and all the submissions have used valid login details and passwords.

It's unknown currently how the login data has been gathered, and as both submission agents and individuals have been affected it could be hard to establish. Current suspicion seems to lie with malware or virus' on the computers used to make the original submissions, but we'll have to wait and see what the outcome is.

HMRC have said that this isn't a large-scale attack, but it is a serious issue that needs to be addressed.

So what does this mean to you? Well HMRC are handling the problem their side, so that isn't something to worry about. What you need to do is just perform basic computer checks, make sure your PC is up to date with it's security patches, make sure your anti-virus software is running and up to date, and maybe consider using a more secure internet browser such as Google Chrome. Lastly I would say don't just rely on your anti-virus software to just run in the background, actually run a scan now and again, it's a pain to do I have to admit, but your details are at risk here (that goes for Mac users too).

If you have a Windows PC and you're not running any anti-virus software, there are some reasonable anti-virus programs out there that are free for home use. I can email you some links if you need them, just drop me an email by clicking Hugo below.

Have a great weekend folks, fingers crossed this weather holds (unless you're a cricket fan in which case lets hope it rains the rest of the week over Headingly).

Hugo
07/08/2009