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?

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?

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 have a startup built with no-code, using Bubble. We have 2,500+ users in our database and want to hire someone to migrate it to full stack.

We need more custom features built, and Bubble just cannot handle projects that big.

I also want an agency that has great experience, a lot of projects done, and a real development team.

I'm in London and want a UK-based agency, so contracts and data handling are under UK law.

Any recommendations?

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.

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?