As you start to wind down your operations at the end of the year, there are a few tasks to bear in mind before we welcome 2025. Think of this as your one-stop shop for your year-end planning – a small business checklist for the new year, if you will.
The first of our many tips is mainly relevant to your accountants and revolves around summarising your financial position for the end of the year. By this, we mean calculating things such as your profit and loss ratios, refreshing the balance sheet, and tying up any unpaid invoices.
Ensuring these tasks are ticked off gives a fresh financial start for the new year, safe in the knowledge of where you stand, and that your outgoings are addressed. Financial wellbeing in business is fundamental, as it underpins all of your growth plans, competitive abilities, and overall stability. Plus, these details need to be circulated among all your shareholders, HMRC, and Companies House.
It’s important to be proud of your accomplishments. Whether they’re business-wide or specific to certain departments or employees, recognising all the hard work that everyone’s contributed is key to keeping those spirits high.
Sharing these sorts of achievements is a great way of boosting morale among your teams, helping them feel motivated to enter the coming year on a high note. As for how you do this, you have a few options:
To assist your planning activity for the new year, it’s good to take stock of all your assets and inventory. Doing so can allow you to accurately assign resources to different projects or teams that need them, and ensure your new year customers are satisfied.
Exactly how you do this will, of course, depend on the kind of business you’re running. If you’re a retailer, for example, a lot of this will revolve around stock checking. However, for construction companies, inventory checking will be focused on equipment, materials, tools, and vehicles.
The 2024 Autumn budget introduced many changes for businesses to consider. Some of those changes are particularly relevant for your year-end plans, so it’s worth bearing them in mind while going through your checklist.
For example, this year’s budget called for increased national insurance contributions from employers. Of course, this money must be funded somehow, which may demand shuffling around your budget for the coming year. Plus, with changes to capital gains tax, if you were planning on selling off high-value assets, the total funds you’d get back will ultimately be lower given the higher rates of tax you’ll now need to pay.
Familiarise yourself with the rest of the changes by reading our article: The 2024 Autumn Statement – what should my business know?
Having concluded your financial performance evaluations for this year, you’ve undoubtedly identified potential areas of improvement.
This potential may primarily be achieved through new tools and equipment and, thankfully, there are strong incentives available for businesses looking to adapt. For example, the 100% first-year allowances available for certain assets like equipment, machinery, and business vehicles, allows businesses to deduct all or some of their value from profits before paying tax. This results in lower tax liability which, if you’re dealing with particularly costly items, can be a substantial saving.
You can find out more on the government website: Claim capital allowances: Overview - GOV.UK
Cybersecurity is paramount in these modern times, especially in business. While maintenance tasks on your tech like system updates and virus scans can feel more like a nuisance throughout the earlier months, the end of the year is a good opportunity to ensure your computers and staff phones are secure.
By this, we mean things like installing those pesky software updates, making up-to-date backups of all your machines, and taking stock of any company-issued hardware like phones, laptops, headsets, etc.
However you choose to enter the new year, do so with a dependable business banking provider with thousands of happy customers and years of experience. That’s exactly what you get with Aldermore.
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