OK, let’s start by clarifying that an ‘A’ level in economics does not make me an economist and I hardly consider myself an expert in globalisation but if there is one thing that the recent crisis has solidified in my mind it is the importance of maintaining an independent currency.

I’m not a Euro Sceptic, although I’m sure like most people I would like to see Europe become less bureaucratic and expensive and more democratic, but, seeing as few of us bother to vote or take an interest in Europe then we’ve only ourselves to blame on that front”.More...

HMRC have issued detailed guidelines on penalties for late payment of PAYE deductions due for a period starting on or after 6 April 2010 for:

• monthly or quarterly PAYE (Pay As You Earn)
• student loan deductions
• Construction Industry Scheme (CIS) payments
• Class 1 National Insurance contributions (NICs)
• annual payments of employers' Class 1A NICs
• annual PAYE Settlement Agreements (PSA) payments
• PAYE determinations or charges raised

These penalties will be up to 4% of the total amount that is late for a given tax year.

Full details can be found on HMRC’s web site.

Just had a call from a marketing agency who specialise in mailing lists who I used several years ago.  They had sent us a special offer in the post which had been returned to sender. 

Could they confirm our new address?

Rain on a wedding day is just bad luck.

I am continuously reading about how I should be using Twitter and other social networking to as part of my marketing activities.  Whilst agreeing with this in principle it is quite difficult to put into practice and I’m never really too sure of the value.

I have a personal twitter account @stuartm9999 and we also have a twitter account for Fusion Accounts - @FusionAccounts.  Although I find it easy to tweet verbosely on my personal account the product account is a bit more sparse than perhaps it should be.

Then this morning I got a great tweet from an unexpected source – Belfast City Council.

On Saturday I tweeted that I had received my new food recycling basket from Belfast City Council.  This morning I received a direct message from them with a link to further instructions on how to use it.

This has really lifted my perception of them as an organisation and consequently my belief in twitter and other “social networking” as a marketing tool.

Although many business owners do not wish to understand the intricacies of double entry bookkeeping, they are interested in invoices.  By understanding how an  invoice is processed through the books you will gain understanding of the bookkeeping process but also how your accounts can be used to assess how your business is doing.

A businesses books are made up of a set of accounts or (nominal accounts) with transactions debiting and crediting these accounts such that the sum of the balances of these accounts is always zero.  There are also accounts for customers and suppliers – although these do not form part of the businesses financial position.

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Two more bank reports are now available.  The Debit Transactions report shows all the transactions that debited an account and the Credit Transactions shows all the reports that credited the account.

These reports are available on the Bank Reports page of the Bank menu.

Many businesses financial year coincides with the calendar year so during January is accountants and bookkeepers are often busy preparing year end accounts for both the business owners and statutory bodies – companies house, HMRC etc.

To lessen the burden here are some simple periodic checks that can be carried out to ensure your books are in good order.

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Many businesses are just beginning their new financial year.  Fusion accounts has a very simple year end routine which we believe allows the business to continue transacting whilst allowing the accountant and bookkeeper to prepare the reports and carry out adjustments for depreciation etc..

In order to support this Fusion accounts marks each account transaction with a year identifier.  Transactions that do not have a year identifier are deemed to be in the current year.

All new transactions have no year identifier and so are deemed to be in the current year with the exception of nominal adjustments which may be made in previous year.

A year end session marks all transactions up to the entered date as being in that year end.  When the year end is committed the adjustments are made to clear down the sales accounts etc.

The upshot of this model is that the year end can be run at any time and that once it has been run the transactions, and so the financials, for that year are fixed.  So even if a transaction is dated in the previous year it will not alter its figures.  Similarly, previous years transactions can be edited as the reversal and new transaction both appear in the current year and the original transaction remains in the original year.

We recommend the following process for year ends.

• Carry out all bank reconciliation up to the year end date.
• Create a year end session for the year end date.
• Carry out any adjustments on the year end as Journal Entries in that year.
• Commit the year end session

This process can be carried out any time subsequent to the end of the year.

We’ve been busy implementing some great improvements whilst everyone else was off celebrating Christmas and New Year!

VAT changes

Standard rate UK VAT changed from 15% to 17.5% on 01/01/2010.

To facilitate this change:

1) The default VAT rate was set to 17.5%.

2) Products with a VAT rate of 15% have been changed to 17.5%

The 15% rate is still available in the dropdown for recording historic transactions.

Improved Searching

We’ve made searching even better.  Instead of searching each time you click or tab to another field we’ve added a search button.  You can still press “enter” to initiate the search.

Some people loved the way the search remembered what had been searched on, some didn’t!  So, we’ve also added a checkbox “Remember Filter” which indicates if you want the current search criteria to be remembered the next time you go to or go back to the page.

More details in the transaction audit trail.

The transaction audit trail now shows the split of the transaction across all the affected accounts without having to drill down and shows more data against the transaction such as the VAT code, date of reconciliation.  The searching has also been improved with the ability to search for transactions in a particular year.

Bank Reconciliation

We’ve added a new Bank Reconciliation Report available from the Bank Reconciliation page or from a Bank Reconciliation.  This report displays all the details of a Bank Reconciliation.  Note, reconciled and reconciled transaction reports are available from the Bank Reports page on the Bank menu.

We’ve also increased the actions available during bank reconciliation to make the process quicker.

Edit transaction

The following transactions can now be edited from the transaction audit trail:

• Bank Payment,
• Bank Receipt,
• Customer Invoice,
• Supplier Invoice

This does not “edit” the real transactions as these may already be part of a VAT return, bank reconciliation session or year end.  Instead, reversals are created for the original transactions and new transactions created.

This is also available during bank reconciliation.

The edit facility will be extended to other transaction types over the coming months.

We have upgraded fusion accounts with many new features to improve the usability of the software.  These include:

• Action buttons across the top of the page which are also available from the right mouse button.
• A more consistent navigation approach
• An “outlook” style menu down the left allowing quick navigation
• Search on multiple column in the table views
• Search remembered when you return to a page
• Renaming of the “Receipts” and “Payments” menu to “Money In” and “Money Out” to avoid confusion

More details on these improvements can be found in Kathryn’s blog entry.

As well as this we have added the ability to set credit limits against a customer or supplier and made many minor enhancements that we’re sure you’ll appreciate.

As ever, we welcome comments and feedback.