Don't let the Decrease in VAT Increase your costs

Yellow Brick Road Consulting – Press Release 25th November 2008

Don’t let the Decrease in VAT Increase your costs

So how will the recent cut in VAT affect local small and medium sized businesses? Will the impact have a positive effect or not? A recent release from Wise & Co states the following:

“In a move that will affect all businesses registered for VAT, the standard rate of VAT has been cut from 17.5% to 15%, effective from Monday 1 December 2008. The rate will remain at 15% until 1 January 2010 when it will revert to 17.5%.

Zero-rated supplies, such as basic foodstuffs, children’s clothing and books; exempt supplies, such as education and health; and supplies subject to VAT at 5%, such as domestic fuel and power are not affected by this change.”

There are other small changes to the legislation detail but the key point is whether any potential benefit from increased sales from non VAT registered customers will outweigh the incremental administration benefit for business. Probably not is our view. Customer activity is unlikely to be radically changed by this small reduction in the cost of products and the increased administration is a pain.

In this market businesses are much better off looking at the bigger picture. Are they doing the business basics right? In business we are no longer order takers as we have been for the last ten years. We have to work much harder for our sales and ensure that the sales that we do make contribute fully to the bottom line. Only the most efficient businesses will come out of the current economic situation on the front foot.

For more information on how Yellow Brick Road can help your business get the business basics right call the contact numbers noted below.

Alex Warren
Yellow Brick Road
www.yellowbrickroadconsulting.co.uk

Office: 08447 706320
Mobile: 07771 682673

Alex Warren gets his IIB accreditation!

On 7th November 2008 Alex gained his accreditation from the Institute for Independent Business (IIB).

To gain the accreditation Alex had to prove that he had held senior executive positions in business over a number of years. Having proven that Alex was put through a number of assessments to ensure he was fully entitled to talk business to owner managers of small/medium sized businesses.

"It was tougher than I thought to get the accreditation, however it confirmed to me that the quality control processes within the IIB were tough - they don't just let anyone in!"

Now Alex has the benefit of over 5,000 senior executives worldwide to use for the benefit of his clients.

"It's great, now I can deliver benefits to my clients via experts in Sales, Marketing, Finance, HR, IT and Operations. The owner manager now has all this resource available to him which he couldn't otherwise obtain. My role is to co-ordinate that resource to create maximum value!"

To learn more about the IIB please follow the link below:

http://www.iib.org.ws

YBR logo - CSR at the heart of what we do

Do you know how the YBR logo was devised?

Well we ran a competition with the University of the Creative Arts (UCA) whereby the winning student got a small fee earning contract to design the company letterheads, business cards, imagery for the website and the first brochure.

The winning student was Dave Lawrie who performed superbly and the least I can do is attach a link to his website and his blog below.

http://www.davelawrie.com/davelawrie/home.html

http://www.thecreativepilgrimage.blogspot.com/

Dave and I are still working together on various projects and it was great to know that there is this fantastic pool of skills available at UCA.

It is also a great example of how YBR seeks to work in partnership to create value. Yes YBR got great value for design but Dave also gets a leg up by kicking off his portfolio with a live piece of work. A perfect example of Corporate Social Repsonsibility in action.

You can check out Dave's imagery on the following link

http://www.yellowbrickroadconsulting.co.uk/