Business Support

A simple dictionary definition of cost of living would probably say something like:

The level of prices relating to a range of everyday items…

The problem is, the price inflation for food, or fuel for your car, or heating costs will vary. Although inflation is quoted as just under 9% in the UK, this disguises the true rate of cost increases in different sectors. For example:

• Petrol and diesel prices were much higher in 2022 that currently. In which case prices in this area have reduced.
• In the year to May 2023, food and non-alcoholic beverages rose by 18.4%, much higher than the current rate of published inflation.
• According to the Office of National Statistics energy prices rose 8.1% in the year to May 2023. However, energy price caps will have artificially held down price increase due to government interventions.

To further complicate the issue, inflation is measured in two ways:

• CPI – the Consumer Price Index, and
• RPI – the Retail Prices Index

The Retail Prices Index (RPI) is no longer classified as a National Statistic because the way it is calculated does not meet international standards.

In general terms, when the press discuss inflation, the measure they are quoting is the CPI. The CPI inflation rate in May 2023 was 8.7%, the same as in April 2023.

The other factor that is entering the equation on this topic is interest rates. The Bank of England only has one weapon in its armoury to bring down inflation and that is to increase interest rates to dampen demand.

As rates increase, the cost of repaying loans – particularly mortgages – is increasing. Stories abound of monthly repayments doubling in recent weeks.

And so, care should be taken when interpreting price increases. The CPI hides a wealth of price increases and decreases that are no where near 8.7%.

Business owners are not exempt from the effects of inflation, but unlike waged individuals, they may have more options to increase cash flow. Here’s a few ideas you may like to consider:

• If you have slow-moving or dormant stock sitting on your storage racks, consider a sale. Anything you can convert into cash will have a positive impact on cashflow.
• Are staff fully utilised? If not, could you offer short-term placements via employment agencies? Failing this option, do you need to consider redundancies?
• Do you have unused storage or production space that you could rent for short periods?
• Are your company vehicles fully utilised? Could they be hired to other firms on short-term hire contracts?

Wage earners will have other options to increase their monthly cash flow. For example:

• Taking on a second job, albeit part-time.
• Make a list of all those unwanted items languishing, unused, in your loft, outhouse or storage spaces and consider selling on E-Bay or similar platform.
• Could you let out your drive 9am to 5pm to workers unable to find regular parking spots in your area?
• Do you have underutilised equipment that you could hire out?

And earning £1,000 or under in a tax year from either renting out part of your home or selling/hiring under-utilised assets is tax free.

And finally, if you have spare rooms in your home, you may be able to rent these tax-free as long as annual rents received do not exceed £7,500 and you are resident in the same building.

If you would like to expand on any of these ideas, be happy to discuss your options. Please call.

Copyright protects your work and stops others from using it without your permission.

You get copyright protection automatically – you don’t have to apply or pay a fee. There isn’t a register of copyright works in the UK.

You automatically get copyright protection when you create:

• original literary, dramatic, musical and artistic work, including illustration and photography
• original non-literary written work, such as software, web content and databases
• sound and music recordings
• film and television recordings
• broadcasts
• the layout of published editions of written, dramatic and musical works

You can mark your work with the copyright symbol (©), your name and the year of creation. Whether you mark the work or not doesn’t affect the level of protection you have.

Copyright prevents people from:

• copying your work
• distributing copies of it, whether free of charge or for sale
• renting or lending copies of your work
• performing, showing or playing your work in public
• making an adaptation of your work
• putting it on the internet

Having the right type of intellectual property protection helps you stop people stealing or copying:

• the names of your products or brands;
• your inventions;
• the design or look of your products; and
• things you write, make or produce.

Copyright, patents, designs and trademarks are all types of intellectual property protection. You get some types of protection automatically, others you have to apply for.

You own intellectual property if you:

• created it (and it meets the requirements for copyright, a patent or a design);
• bought intellectual property rights from the creator or a previous owner; and
• have a brand that could be a trademark, for example, a well-known product name.

Intellectual property can have more than one owner, belong to people or businesses, and be sold or transferred.

If you have concerns that your ideas or business brands are vulnerable contact a professional patent or trademark attorney.

From 14 June 2023, the latest set of changes mandated by the Charities Acts 2022 came into force.

Changes now in place include simplified legal requirements that charities must comply with before selling, transferring or leasing land, and new statutory powers to enable:

• Charities to spend, in certain circumstances, a proportion or all of their permanent endowment fund where the market value of the fund is (£25,000 or less) without Commission authorisation.
• Charities to borrow, in certain circumstances, up to 25% of the value of their permanent endowment fund without Commission authorisation.
• Charities that have opted into a total return approach to investment to use permanent endowment to make social investments with a negative or uncertain financial return, provided any losses are offset by other gains.
• The Commission to direct a charity to stop using a working name if it is too similar to another charity’s name or is offensive or misleading.
• The Commission to delay registration of a charity with an unsuitable name or delay entry of a new unsuitable name onto the Register of Charities. Working with the principal regulator, the Commission can also use these naming powers on exempt charities.

The Director of Legal & Accounting Services at the Charity Commission said:

“The latest changes introduced by the Charities Act 2022 give the charities we regulate more flexibility and greater powers. These are positive changes that will impact a significant number of charities, so it is important all organisations, big or small, take the time to check what this means for them. This is especially important if they are looking, for example, to dispose of land. We have updated our guidance to help trustees understand the changes, and our contact centre is open to those who need further support.”

The Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, has announced a new £650 million package of measures to help boost UK life sciences.

The new ‘Life Sci for Growth’ package brings together 10 different policies including £121 million to improve commercial clinical trials to bring new medicines to patients faster, up to £48 million of new money for scientific innovation to prepare for any future health emergencies, £154 million to increase the capacity of the UK’s biological data bank – further aiding scientific discoveries that help human health – and up to £250 million to incentivise pension schemes to invest in our most promising science and tech firms.

The package also includes plans to relaunch the Academic Health Science Network as Health Innovation Networks as well as changes to planning rules to free-up lab space and updating a route for East West Rail to improve connections between the UK science powerhouses of Oxford and Cambridge.

Launching the package, the Chancellor said:

‘Our Life Sciences sector employs over 280,000 people, makes £94 billion for the UK each year and produced the world’s first covid vaccine.

These are businesses that are growing our economy while having much wider benefits for our health – and this multi-million pound investment will help them go even further.’

The GOV.UK website offers the following guidance if you are considering a patent application.

A UK patent may help if you want to take legal action against someone who uses your invention without your permission. For example, if they sell or manufacture your product in the UK.

A patent lasts 5 years. If you want it to stay in force after that, you must renew it every year, up to a maximum of 20 years.

What you can patent

Your invention must be:

• new – it must not have been made publicly available anywhere in the world, for example it must not be described in a publication
• inventive – for example, it cannot be an obvious change to something that already exists
• either something that can be made and used, a technical process, or a method of doing something

What you cannot patent

Things you cannot patent include:

• literary, dramatic, musical or artistic works
• a way of doing business, playing a game or thinking
• a method of medical treatment or diagnosis
• a discovery, scientific theory or mathematical method
• the way information is presented
• ‘essentially biological’ processes like cross-breeding animals or varieties of plants
• software that has a ‘non-technical’ purpose

Only software with a technical purpose can be granted a patent. For example, software to control a driverless car could have a patent, while a chess playing app could not. If your invention is software, you may need professional advice whether it can be patented (for example, by consulting with a patent attorney).

In a recent post we warned of the likely loss of billing opportunities if you give away service advice just to demonstrate how informed you are.

In this post we outline when it may be appropriate to volunteer information or other free offers in order to secure additional sales.

For example, when you deliver goods to your customers, do you insert information about other goods or services that they might find of interest? A car dealership may be the place where you go to purchase or lease a car, but once you have chosen your vehicle you will likely be offered insurance or service plans as add-on sales.

Fishermen will “give-away” bait by broadcasting it in areas of water where it expects fish to reside. This process is an invitation. Invite your customers to sample more of your goods and services, don’t be shy.

Don’t assume that customers will know what is on offer, tell them.

You have done the hard work and converted business prospects into business customers. Be sure that each sales point is also a business development opportunity.

If you sell services, rather than supply goods, this usually involves you providing advice for a fee.

If your advice is sought after, the amount you can charge for your service(s) may be considerable. Which is why you should be wary of giving away your advice FOC.

Why would you do this? Why would you part with your hard-won expertise without charging a fee?

Perhaps you would be prepared to offer free advice if you are tempting a business prospect to join your customer list. And you may have clients who may be suffering a temporary downturn in activity, and you might be willing to offer pro-bono advice in limited amounts to help them through hard times.

The time to bite your tongue, and apply caution, is if a client reveals that they have a specific problem, and you can immediately see a fix. The urge to “blurt” out your solution will be irresistible but resist you must.

The skills you have acquired to provide the services you offer demand a return on this investment and giving away your solutions – whilst delighting your client – will defeat the object of you being in business.

Next time you are tempted in this way simply suggest that you may have a solution to their problem, but you will need time to check out a few details and promise to get back to them the following day. This will give you time to firm up your ideas and represent your pitch as an outline of what you can achieve, how this will benefit your client – and importantly – how much it will cost for you to deliver the solution.

Conversation takes a turn for the worse if you have an opinion that your client has no idea how to solve their problem(s) and all they need to do is listen to your solution.

And you may be right in your interpretation of the facts, but will the client appreciate your apparent unwillingness to listen?

If AI systems ever crack this particular nut and develop the ability to listen, empathise and then advise, human advisors will quickly find themselves out of a job.

Being interested in your clients’ problems is different to knowing what they need to do to solve the problem. For instance, how is the problem impacting their stress levels, their family life. Have they been so worn down by their issues that their GP has prescribed anti-depressants?

Sometimes, we need to be heard, and communicating how we feel is as important as having the underlying problem solved.

As a bonus, if you are interested in your clients, they will return – and willingly – to share their difficulties and seek out your advice knowing that you really understand how they feel.

A simple process to exercise your empathic muscles is to ask open questions. It may take no more than a “How are you?” to create additional advisory fee billing opportunities.