Book Keeping Information
Single Entry Book Keeping
February 28, 2011 By admin
Single-entry book keeping is an easy system of accounting, in which a single line is utilized to record each exchange. A book-keeping book or statement is often used to record financial entries as they happen with credits or debits entered once. Single-entry book-keeping is usually matched against that of a check-book register or a straightforward [...]
Accounting Advice
Scandalous Accounts
December 13, 2011 By Reece W
There have been many famous accounting scandals in the last few decades, and most of us have heard of some of the major ones such as Enron and Arthur Anderson. America seems to be the biggest playground for up-to-no-good financial wizards, but maybe that’s just because the country is so large. Financial scandals make news [...]
Tips on Trading
Do you need to hedge?
December 12, 2011 By Reece W
Do you need to hedge currencies and don’t really have a good grasp on how to go about it? There are lots of good reasons to hedge currencies. Obviously, if you’re involved in any kind of importing or exporting business, you should think about hedging if your exposure in any one area is too great. There have been some pretty seismic currency shifts in recent years and if the Eurozone crisis is telling us anything, it’s telling us that there’s more turbulence ahead.
No-one really knows which way the chips will fall here. If they did, they’d be sipping a cocktail on a yacht in the West Indies, chatting with George Soros and Warren Buffett about where the world’s currencies are going next!
Hedging currencies may also be wise even if your business has no international trade exposure and buys and sells all its wares in the home country only.
Let me explain; imagine you’ve been merrily going about your business in the UK only – buying and selling just within that country for the last decade or so. The fact is that you’ve lost a lot of money in real terms versus the bulk of Europe which has been in the Euro or pegged to it just by virtue of the fact that sterling has weakened.
You may think this irrelevant but it’s not. Had you chosen to hedge 10 years ago by buying Euros with some of your sterling – and you now decided to unwind that hedge, you’d be quids in. Simply the opportunity cost of not hedging was, therefore, costly.
There are very easy ways to hedge. One that’s very easy is to take an online tutorial with sunbirdfx.com and maybe even to open a demo account to see what kind of trades and currency hedges are possible for your business.
The American dollar, sterling, the Euro, Japanese Yen, Canadian dollar, Australian dollar and the Swiss franc are all very readily and easily tradable and the website even shows you how to develop strategies to maximise or minimise your risk depending on your preferences.
This article was written by David, who fancies himself as a bit of a finance whiz. He often checks out sunbirdfx.com to keep up to date with the latest news.
Business Advice
Does DIY accounting work for small businesses?
Should small businesses do their own accountancy work to save money?
Having run a very small business for over a decade now, my own experience can be split into roughly two halves. For the first half of my business’s existence, I did all my own accounting, but for the last five or six years, I employed the services of an accountant to do this work for me.
And in my opinion, there is simply no contest between the two; the latter is far and away preferable to the former. But this isn’t born out of any kind of laziness; it’s simply a matter of the bottom line. From day one the accountant saved me real money. I use the word “real” here to be quite clear about the difference – because the accountant has also saved me a great deal of “invisible” time and money. But it was the real stuff I was most concerned about.
I was always happy enough doing my own accounting. No one really enjoys the process, but if you have no fear of numbers, then it’s relatively easy to do your own small accounts and tax return etc. But accountancy is like any other specialized discipline. There are things you simply don’t know about unless you really have your finger on the accountancy industry’s pulse. And if you do, but you aren’t an accountant – then why is that?
So a good accountant should be able to save you real money from day one (unless your business is really tiny). But more to the point, he or she should also be able to save you real time – allowing you either more leisure time or the ability to concentrate on the stuff of doing whatever your business is; rather than worrying about accounts records etc.
After all, this is what you’re in business for. For me anyway, it’s been something of a “no-brainer”.
This article was written by financial blogger David. He pretty much covers every topic in his writing, from Payday Loans from Wonga.com to student loan repayments, helping everyone understand their finances better!
Are accountancy firms good contrarian investments?
You don’t need me to tell you that these are very tough times to be an accountant.
According to a recent David Lichtenstein interview, they’re still tough times in the real estate business, but we may be close to the peak of the trough, to mix metaphors, and there are some good contrarian and deep value shrewd buying opportunities around.
Maybe the first in really are the first out, and if real estate starts to do well again, accountancy will follow suit?
Who really knows? But even some of the biggest and the best accountancy firms are really struggling to survive out there.
So are we just about at the bottom of the black accountancy hole right now when it comes to investing? And are any of the listed accountancy or related area firms good contrarian investments at this moment in time?
I would say that there are some good buying opportunities, but you have to be prepared to take a high risk-reward gamble.
For example, RSM Tenon’s share price has been absolutely trashed this year and the firm has recently warned on profits, saying it isn’t in breach of its banking covenants – which though good news on the surface level, can also intimate that such is a possibility in the future.
The warning had investors spooked and the shares – which were already on their knees – dipped further again. The same is true of Begbies Traynor. Now at 25p, Begbies stands at a healthy discount to its net asset value and in the last full year, made a pre-tax profit from continuing operations of £5.2m, yet is currently valued at around just £25m.
Begbies’ shares suffered when fellow accountancy firm Vantis went into administration earlier in the year.
It could be a case of the fittest surviving and prospering but it takes a brave investor to try and discern the wheat from the chaff. Be careful.
Finance And Accounting For Non-Financial Managers
Offers an introduction to the elements of financial reporting, budgeting, and analysis. This book provides case studies and statistics to help readers relate to the numbers they see every day. //
The New Successful Large Account Management
Robert B. Miller, Stephen E. Heiman, Tad Tuleja //
DRAGON Dictate 2.0 for Mac – Wireless Version
Nuance’s Dragon Dictate 2.0 for Mac software provides speech-recognition capability for your Macintosh computer, and can turn your voice into text at a rate of three times the speed of typical typing speeds! Powered by the award-winning Dragon speech recognition engine, this wireless version of the software comes with a Plantronics Calisto Headset and Bluetooth [...]
AAT – 6/7 Costs, Revenues, Reports and Returns
BPP Learning Media Ltd //
Scandalous Accounts
December 13, 2011 By Reece W
There have been many famous accounting scandals in the last few decades, and most of us have heard of some of the major ones such as Enron and Arthur Anderson. America seems to be the biggest playground for up-to-no-good financial wizards, but maybe that’s just because the country is so large. Financial scandals make news headlines because of the vast sums of money involved, and the numbers of people affected. The public also has a huge capacity to devour gossip and so the more outrageous the details the better the story. Some stories even make it from article to book status would you believe! Fact is often so much better than fiction. In years gone by before computer records, tracing any accounting discrepancies would have involved trawling through paper records – unless the … [Read More...]