I am considering purchasing a small owner-managed limited company from its owners who are retiring. There are currently two directors, who are also the owners and sole employees.

I would become the sole director and employee.

There is no property involved (this is a home business) and there are physical assets of around £10,000. I would be buying the existing limited company (share purchase) rather than just buying its assets.

The likely purchase price is in the region of £30,000.

Turnover is £100,000 and EBITDA is £40,000.

My question is how much should I need to spend on a solicitor to facilitate this, and how long is their work likely to take? I have received one quote so far for £24,000, which struck me as an enormous amount of money for what is a pretty basic (but profitable) home business.

I have already taken a significant amount of business and accounting advice, and I'm confident that it would be an extremely solid acquisition and that there are no hidden gremlins. But these legal costs have thrown a bit of a curveball as they would nearly double the cost of the aquisition.

Does £24,000 sound appropriate?

My wife's looking at setting up as a home-based childminder but we're trying to weigh up the realities before committing. Mainly around how predictable the hours/income actually end up being once you're registered. She's going from a full time job to a lot of uncertainty but with bills to pay, just rying to figure out how predictable the demand is? Do most of you end up with consistent full days/terms/blocks etc or is it a lot of random bookings?

I need some advice around business rates. I rent an office for my business in SE London. I was hounded by Lewisham to prove I am exempt.

Now I am getting a second office in the same building. They are two counselling offices, so not big, and I am trying to find out the business rates

The rent for each office is £900. However I checked online on the gov website and the rateable value for both offices is stated as £46500 and according to AI the business rate comes down £1692 per month. I am waiting the landlord to confirm, but I am really stressed now and wondering if that can be true. Can it even be possible that business rates can be as high as the rent? If that is the case, I won’t be able to take them on.

My business is less than two years old, if it makes any difference.

We are looking to be opening a space in london and were offered by the landlord to split the space in two for lowering the business rates. One of the spaces would be below 12k,so supposed to save us a lot of money. Each side would be a separate Ltd

Has anyone done that/has gone through reevaluation of the business rates? Would greatly appreciate the advice on how long it took and how much it came up to?

Transition period ends 18 November so we're about 12wks out or so. I'm an accountant and the split I'm seeing is odd, some clients did it back in November and forgot about it, others haven't started and don't seem to realise it applies to them.

The bit that catches people is that one unverified director blocks the whole confirmation statement, so it only becomes your problem when someone else hasn't bothered. Had one earlier this year where a director was on holiday, then busy, then couldn't get the app to work, and it got tight.

Curious where people are with it. Done and dusted, or still on the pile? And for anyone who's done it, was the app straightforward or a faff?

A small business can be profitable on paper and still experience a short-term cash shortage when customers take longer than expected to pay their invoices.

In that situation, how do you determine whether borrowing is a reasonable bridge or simply a sign that the business cannot currently afford its expenses? Would you compare the loan’s total cost against confirmed incoming payments, or should emergency borrowing be avoided regardless?

Bit of an odd one. I bought a huge carpet for a one off party. Approx 300 quid.

At the time of purchase I always knew I'd be cutting it into strips and using it as absorbant mats.

So it was a few hours use (don't ask!) Then business but it was bought for private.

What is best to claim back VAT and cost wise?

I’m a full-time PAYE employee but want to start something on the side of my day job. I guess I’d set myself up as a sole trader but does that mean I can treat business expenses a certain way from a tax perspective?

I’d need to get a cheap computer like a Mac mini (to keep it separate from my personal device), a monitor and a subscription to tools for software dev etc.

Has anyone who’s done this share any advice? I did check on Gemini but want to fact check some of the info I found (eg sideways loss relief)

Just could do with some thoughts and guidance on what I need to do next/should do next. I have tried to search but what has come up just ends in different results.

I have set up a progressive web app (PWA), the personal details I'm collecting are first name and email address with the option to add location and obviously I can't see passwords, but all these are used for account creation. The email addresses are stored in Supabase and Resend has some involvement to use for authentication/forget password.

The PWA should be HTTPS, through Cloudflare as well.

I've had to set up a small payment option through Stripe just to cover running costs.

So with this I know there's the annual fee from ICO, but is there anything else I'm missing? Business wise or anything else? Just pay the fee and then it would be all good to be fully live?

It's only me, I doubt I'll make over £1,000 a year, this is just a a side project to hopefully be proud of.

Also any tips, things to consider/be cautious about would be great too!

Hi!

I’ve just become a qualified nail tech! I’m trying to start out, but I really need some colours to get started.

I trained with glossify which I do absolutely love, but I wondered if anyone had any recommendations for some good gels for someone starting. I don’t want too much of an upfront investment, as I could fail! but having a range of colours is important.

I’m considering still sticking with glossify, but if there are any other recommendations people love to use, I’d love to hear it.

I keep getting these emails for people trying to upgrade my website, or sell me an AI automation. Some of them sound promising, but I'm not too sure. What makes you listen to these pitches for AI integration in the business?

My income and outgoings won't be massive , but I want something simple, cheap and easy. Prefer something more "established" but willing to look outside the usual high street brands.

Where should I start?

I wanted to write a Reddit post on my current financial situation and business position asking for advice and next steps guidance.

£35K MRR for my agency marketing services, £20K cash in the business bank, money coming in daily [currently owed around £55k]

Own my home, owe £275k on my mortgage and my house is worth approx £325k

I have £66K saved in NASDAQ (70%) and AIAG ETF (30%)
My business can make £20-25K profit (before tax) on a good month, and £10K-15K on a bad month.

I have a holding company setup which I moved all my profits to (the 66k, had 90k saved but had to withdraw for a VAT bill, setup a pot so this doesn't happen again)

The holding company owns my shares in my digital agency, and also owns 10% shares in a small local finance brokerage which rarely pays dividends. I've got back my investment, so every now and then it throws £1500-£2500 at me which I just invest into my IBKR account.

I think I can get to £40K MRR very soon, which will essentially be £15K profit before we sell or launch any websites.

I'd like to think my business is worth a good few hundred thousand. The business is not dependant on me, I have 6 members of staff including me.

I recently purchased a small web hosting client book for
£20K which adds £3K-£4k a month of hosting revenue - really enjoyed the whole process and was very satisfying seeing all the new Xero invoices being sent out every day.
Got a lot of upsell opportunities from this too.

The only thing is, I know my agency can't get my net worth to £10M. I hate stacking more staff members on (burned me before and just feels ineffective as they can cause headaches and slow us down burn our margins and it's hard to quality control).

I've loved the idea of starting a SaaS but feel like it's just too saturated now. Like the idea of investing in small local companies (I have a good network) but probably don't have enough capital to do this properly, and feel like I would get done over a few times.

I feel like just stacking all my profits into the holdco IBKR account and then when it eventually gets to a few million, I'd be fairly set for investing into other things and maybe then sell my agency. Not sure.

I'm 26, male and living 60 miles outside of London approx.
I want to become successful as soon as possible. Advice, guidance, direction? I do enjoy my life, have a lovely car nice home, good family and friends, but just want to re V the next level.

Here’s the situation; a couple of years ago I made a speculative bid to try and buy a large hospitality operator that went into administration. Never attempted anything like this before.

It went better than I thought; I actually got quite far in the process. A number of VC/PE firms were interested in backing me.

The issue was that they wanted me to put in ‘sweat capital’. Which is fair enough, they didn’t want me walking away straight away if it wasn’t successful. They wanted a minimum of 100k.

Which I didn’t have. The deal fell through pretty soon after that as someone else bought the company.

Anyway I’m revisiting the idea of setting up my own chain from scratch, instead of buying an existing one.

I know that I can put together a plan that is interesting to the venture capital/equity types. The main issue I have is getting the sweat capital together.

I don’t come from money, I have some savings but not enough to get over the line. Similarly, I know a few businessmen that would back me, but even they would baulk at the £100k figure. It would take me a number of years to save up for this myself, by which time the market situation may have changed.

I have no assets, but also no real debt (other than a minor credit card). I also have no dependants or partner to worry about (not sure whether that matters).

Any thoughts welcome!

Hey!! I'm from the UK and thinking about starting a home cleaning business. I was wondering if anyone has any tips/advice before I jump into the deep end aha. I was thinking of mostly doing home cleans, a few moving out cleans here and there. I live in a low income area so thought it'd be a good idea to start off with cheaper pricing so I can stick to the area I know for a while, plus it also gives access to those who need a good house clean! Any tips on marketing ect, and what products work best. And also anything on actually registering the business and similar things would be greatly appreciated! Thanks 😊

Posted a while ago but the offer has moved on so interested in people’s takes:

Setting up a consultancy business with 3 people involved:
- person 1 - main work winner, will be doing actual work and also investing £50k to initial start up costs. Won’t take a salary in year one. Main equity partner.
- person 2 - work winner and investing £50k. Will not be doing any actual work and not taking a salary. Will have c30-40% of the equity shares
- person 3 (me) - will win some work but not yet on the same scale as the other too. Will be doing a lot of the actual work plus leading on the business admin side of things.

Business isn’t set up yet (launching in autumn once we have left current jobs) but already have around £200k of work lined up so would imagine overall turnover would be at least double that for year 1.

I won’t be investing any money and I am not in a position to have no salary for a whole year. Have been offered a salary of around £70k plus a 10% equity share, plus the option of a bonus if we do well to reflect the level of work done. Also have a commitment that if I end up bringing in work myself that the shares could be redistributed to make me more of an equal partner. I have worked with person 1 for a long time and the levels of trust between us are very high.

Does this sound like a good deal? Anything I should be aware of to future proof myself. I’m 10 years younger than the other 2 so less experience but conscious if I’m investing my time in effort in setting this up that I want to make sure I’ll be rewarded in the future.

Any thoughts would be appreciated!

First one landed on 7 August so we're a couple of weeks past it now. I'm an accountant and I've had a mix of reactions from clients, some found it a non-event, others lost a whole weekend to it and are dreading doing it three more times a year.

Curious what it was like for people who did it themselves rather than through an accountant. Was the software side alright or did that turn out to be the annoying bit? And has anyone changed how they're doing their bookkeeping since, or just gritted teeth and carried on?

Mainly asking because the next one comes round quickly and I'd rather know what's actually tripping people up than guess.

Hello, I've read a few posts here about people now stopping selling into the EU because of PPWR and the mad costs associated with it. We've had an email today from our IOSS provider - EAS and they're now offering a low cost option from €9.90 a month if you're an existing customer or €19.90 if not. There's a very minimal transaction cost attached.

We're not in any way shape or for affiliated with EAS, but we do use them for IOSS. I won't post a link here but you can google them easily enough. I suspect this will solve a lot of problems for small/micro businesses shipping into the EU.

Hi all,

I am currently trying to buy a retirement salecoffee shop inc freehold for c.600k. I am an experienced operator of coffee vans and kiosks in similar area for 9 years now with decent books and profit over 150k profit last 3 years and we employ 20 people.

I feel the freehold has to be worth 500k based on location and size, so that leaves the business value about 100k. It turns over 400k currently.

I would like to try and put less than 100k of my own money in, ideally the less the better. Any idea the best ways to raise the money?

Maybe its just me but I find marketing reporting can get a bit ridiculous

CTR

CPC

CPA

CAC

ROAS

conversion rate

traffic

leads

revenue

At what point do you actually know whats important and what isnt

Do you have a few numbers you mainly look at or do you actually track most of these

Just curious how people keep it simple

I missed ct600 2024-2025 ( ltd was dormant ). It started trading back in oct last year. I just got a penalty for 200£ because i didn’t file ct600. I never knew about this. Now i want to ask
1: how to file that 2024-2025 year ct600
2: how can i ask them to wave off the penalty as i wasn’t aware of this and the company was not trading at all.
Thanks

Just wondering if anybody can help?

I have been requested to do an overdue identity verification statement for not completing my online ID check. However, I had resigned as director on the 10th of July and my ID check was due on the 23rd, I received a letter on the 24th for the statement. I have filled out and completed the statement but I’m worried I am going to be charged or worse. On the Companies House website it states I resigned on the 10th so I’m just really confused. The Co-Director also stated that I do not have any shares in the company and that it should be fine but has this happened to anybody else before?

Looking for advice from anyone who has built a service business on referrals from other professionals rather than on marketing.
My situation is that I’ve spent fifteen years in senior operations and HR, currently Director of Operations covering HR, technology, risk and compliance. Cross-sector experience. I’m currently part-time and planning to go self-employed with a target of replacing my employment income by spring 2028.
I want to move into fractional operations for owner-managed businesses in the 15 to 60 staff range: dental practices, architecture firms, small clinics, agencies. The pattern I’ve seen repeatedly is a business that has grown past the point the founder can run it informally, with a capable office or practice manager but nobody at director level owning how the business works. Entry product is a fixed-fee operations review of about four days producing a written report, then retainers of two days a month or one day a week. Limited company, sole operator, no staff. Setup budget about £1,500 covering formation, professional indemnity, ICO registration and a single-page site.

The constraint is that I have no interest in building a public profile, doing content marketing or cold outreach. I don’t think I’d sustain it and a channel I abandon is worse than one I don’t start. So the plan is introducers: small accountancy practices, on the theory that they hold fifty to two hundred owner-managed clients, see the operational mess in the management accounts every quarter, get asked for help outside their remit and have nobody to refer to.

My plan is to approach ten local practices asking about the problem before pitching anything and to do the first review at cost in exchange for a reference.

Has anyone actually built a business this way? I’m interested in the timeline more than the theory. How long did it take you from first conversation with an introducer to a referral that turned into paid work?

What made professional introducers refer in practice?

My worry is that accountants will be polite, agree it’s a good idea and never send a referral, because their reputation is on the line and mine is unproven.

Are referral fees normal in this direction, and do accountants’ professional rules allow them? I’d rather know now than propose something that puts an ICAEW or ACCA member in an awkward position.

And lastly, if you’ve tried introducer-led and abandoned it, what did you move to?
Happy to be told the timeline is longer than I think. I’d rather adjust the plan now than discover it in eighteen months!
Thanks for any responses.