Category: Business

Is bacs worth it?

Bacs has now been around for nearly 45 years and offers a quick and relatively painless way to transfer money from one account to another. bacs software can be integrated with your regular accounting systems, taking a lot of the time and worry out of moving money around. But if you’re thinking of making the update from more traditional payment systems to bacs payments, you’ll no doubt have a few questions to ask. Is it worth the trouble that inevitably comes with change? In an age of cyber-theft, is it really secure? In general, do the advantages outweigh the problems and potential pitfalls?

1) Speed. The first advantage of bacs is the speed with which transfers are fulfilled. Although three working days is generally the stated time frame – still faster than a cheque – most payments today are made with the Faster Payment System (FPS) which is all but instant. This means almost all of your payments will turn up in the target account on the same day, if not sooner.

2) Security. Although many people have anxieties about the safety of transferring funds electronically, bacs has many kinds of security and is an extremely safe way to move money. In the highly unlikely event that you do run into problems, there are measures in place to recover your money, anyway. In times past employers and firms would have dealt more in cash, meaning that they would have to keep large sums of money on the premises – itself a security risk. Cheques, too, can get mislaid – meaning you’re never sure if or when they’re going to be cashed.

3) Cost. Transfers are free within the UK, so there’s no cost to your business aside from that of getting the new systems.

There are arguably one or two downsides to using bacs, but these are negligible. Bacs payments are free within the UK but there are fees for transferring money to other countries. bacs software is extremely convenient and powerful, but you may not be sent notifications of money reaching your account – hardly a problem in most cases, and not something you’d enjoy with a cheque either. Also, if there is a error with an account number, it can be hard to reclaim your funds – assuming it’s a valid, if mistaken account number. In almost every case, though, the advantages far outweigh any downsides and so moving to bacs will hardly be a bad move for a business.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.bottomline.co.uk/

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Community broadband for better social interaction

Next generation access is what many of us already have these days. Many of us have the kinds of busy lives that make instant access to the internet nigh on essential and we panic when the connection speed fails to meet our expectations. This is not necessarily the sign of an overly demanding, technology-dependent generation, but rather a development we should welcome, provided that it leads us to new pathways of learning, better social interaction and even ways of resisting the status quo. The latter is a tricky point: while using the internet has in recent years involved the increasing exposure of the user to insidious methods of advertising, and social media has blurred the once staunchly-defended line between our public/professional and personal, private lives, the online realm has also been where we can freely access tools for learning and entertainment. Perhaps even more importantly, ICT infrastructure has linked us up with an international community with whom we can share experiences, formulate opinions and grow. A number of people remain isolated from the above, however, because community broadband has not yet extended to all geographical locations.

Many initiatives are underway to extend the reach of broadband. This is important if we want to avoid an uneven rate of development both internally and internationally. Just take the example of the UK – it is such a small nation but one still blighted by the government’s tendency to privilege the capital and the South before attention turns to the needs of the North and the regions. Luckily, a number of initiatives involving the latest in fibre optic technology and data transmission are aiming to close the gap between the best and worst connected communities. This good work needs to be continued: while in London even the underground transport system is beginning to offer free internet access, there are a considerable number of rural communities who are at least five years behind.

The word ‘community’ in ‘community broadband’ gives a good indication of why we need to encourage the growth of next generation access: communities currently need to be thriving in terms of business and social interaction and better ICT infrastructure can help this happen. Even cottage industries and farms that we have a tendency to think of as stuck in the past and technology-resistant could benefit hugely from better access to the internet. They could tap into new audiences interested in their products. They could create online forums for discussion of the ups and downs problems in their sector.

Please visit http://www.broadbandvantage.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Shops to rent in north London areas

The time has come to think about shops to rent in north london. As yet, Camden, Holloway Road and especially the borough of Harringey, all of which are situated in North London, have yet to develop their retail potential. This is not to say that they don’t possess their fair share of shops, but rather that the shops existing in these areas are somewhat tarred with a bad reputation. Camden, people tend to think, consists of a few a run-down streets that are heaven for tourists, teenagers and those fond of piercings and goth or emo-style clothes. Holloway road, meanwhile, possesses rather too many tired chain stores and could do with an injection of independent outlets. Harringey finds itself in the same boat, though to its credit it does possess a few good finds in terms of vintage clothes and bookshops. As you can tell, the time is right for entrepreneurial types to bring their fresh visions into commercial property London. Many predicted that our shopping habits would shift into the online realm. But this has not happened: apart from when we are buying products with which we are already familiar, we delight in the physical experience of shopping because we can touch, try and talk about the things we want to buy. And because this preference for real life experience looks set to stay, a long-term option of a shop for sale in London might also appeal to more knowledgeable retailers.

The service industry might also look seriously at relocating to North London premises. In spite of the financial recession, studies show that one of the last things we stop spending on is the experience of eating and drinking out. This is an understandable fact: though our budgets have been tight, we still need respite from the monotonous daily grind of going from home, to the tube, to work and home again. Positive social experiences are what the majority misses most when the pressures of working life get too much. And because these are often best had while relaxing around a table sharing food, conversation and smiles, commercial property in London is worth restaurateurs and pub landlords’ investment.

Commercial property London is also being turned into art galleries in some areas in London, especially in East and South London. shops to rent in north london could easily be converted into art galleries too: there is no reason why north London would not appreciate an injection of culture on its streets. A shop for sale in London is perhaps less attractive for the art expert who realises that the market can be fickle. Fashion designers can meanwhile resort to their skills for catering to new trends and desires.

Please visit http://www.claridges-commercial.co.uk for further information about this topic.

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Ict infrastructure helping business parks stay up to date

Once upon a time, power cuts, spent light bulbs and fused electrical goods were enough to leave us feeling frustrated and lacking, as though refused an essential resource. Of course, these are things we take for granted; they aid us immeasurably in the running of our day to day lives and have been around for the duration of most of our living memories. More recent, however, is our tendency to lean on a twenty-four hour, infallible and quick connection to the internet. So great a number of us have grown used to turning to computer screens to uncover endless amounts of useful, or indeed useless information – from train times to movie trivia – that when connections fail we really feel at a loss. In spite of all this, it would be a mistake to think that everyone has been integrated in the web-based revolution here described: ICT infrastructure and community broadband projects, for example, have only recently helped rural communities experience the benefits of the age of information. A number of households, research centres and even business parks have been left behind in the wake of rapid technological change. But, thanks to next generation access, those initially excluded now look to be catching up.

It is an imperative now that business parks and other enterprises have access to the best internet connections available. For households it is certainly annoying when family members, friends and acquaintances can’t be contacted through social networks, Skype or email, but for businesses a lack of communication can often entail a loss of clients because those who seek their services deem a disconnected enterprise an anachronistic and unambitious one. Luckily, then, ICT infrastructure improvement services have somewhat come to the rescue of such parks and labs; the likes of Nottingham’s BioCity and the science park belonging to the University of Southampton have been able to deliver enhanced services as a result of the great work done by broadband improvement companies that also offer next generation access and community broadband.

Indeed, the local and international bonds of those residing in rural areas have been fostered and strengthened by community broadband projects and next generation access. Altogether, ICT infrastructure innovations represent highly progressive moves to bridge Britain’s North-South divide as well as the distance between the UK as a whole and the rest of the world.

Please visit http://www.broadbandvantage.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

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Duplicate payments represent an unnecessary expense

An accounts payable audit is a process that tries to uncover any errors that occur within your accounts payable department. These can happen for a variety of reasons, but the nature of them is that they usually go unnoticed. The larger your company and the higher the number of supplier invoices you receive, the worse the problem is likely to be. duplicate payments – just one kind of common overpayment – can typically cost your business 0.1 percent of turnover, for example. That can represent a non-trivial proportion of your profit margin. Recovery audit software will help to identify where you are making unnecessary payments, and will help you to gain back the money wasted – effectively given away – through error or, occasionally, fraud.

Generally speaking, it doesn’t matter how good your accounts systems are. They are good at doing what they are supposed to do: paying suppliers. They may have basic controls in place to flag problems, but usually they are not so good at uncovering human error, or malicious false claims. This is where specialist software can make a real difference. It runs through your accounts department and invoices, identifying discrepancies and suspect invoices. These could have been caused by some kind of accident. Alternatively, they may arise when a supplier purposefully tries to defraud your company by sending invoices for work or goods that have never been provided. These can slip through the net, especially when they resemble other invoices and seem genuine, or are one of a large batch of of invoices.

The scale of duplicate payments and other errors can be significant. One set of research suggests that between 0.1 and 0.5 percent of invoice payments are duplicates. Because there are more than 30 reasons why such duplicates occur, recovery audit software is needed to find all the different variations, and other issues. The typical invoice involves perhaps a dozen different data fields, giving huge room for error. The extent of the problem is such that an accounts payable audit can pay for itself the first time you use it. If you are examining several years of historical accounts records, savings can easily be five or six figures. Acting fast is necessary, since money can be reclaimed – so long as the originator of the invoice is still in business. If they are not, the chance is lost. That could mean thousands of pounds you’ll never get back.

Please visit http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/

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Why should one make audio visual conferencing standard practice?

The uses of video conferencing in the business sector are well documented, as the need for many people to communicate frequently with colleagues around the world grows increasingly in our modern day ‘global village’.  Telepresence video conferencing is so well developed that we can fairly accurately create the experience of a face to face conference with participants from Texas, Adelaide and Dublin all able to take part from the comfort of their own offices.  It seems odd, though, that audio visual conferencing seems to be struggling to take hold of the mobile communications market.  Although Skype is very popular for those who wish to communicate with friends and relatives abroad, there seems to be very little demand for mobile telephones which allow us to see the person we are talking to.

In its early days, video phone technology was extremely expensive, costing users about 90 dollars a month.  Currently, however, modern technology has reduced the costs to almost zero.  Webcams and highly advanced smart phones mean that cost is no longer a factor in discouraging us from using video conferencing. In its early days, many people expected that videotelephony would become widespread, but it is still used fairly infrequently.

This may in part be because videophone calling tends to be a poor substitute for real face to face conversation.  The conversation tends to be focussed around a video screen and a small camera, and participants often look at the screen rather than the camera, which prevents them from having direct eye-to-eye contact with each other.  Some have put forward the theory that videotelephony may be less popular than expected because people actually prefer less direct communication. Texting, instant messaging and email are much more popular than video calling, which suggests that written conversations which can be handled at one’s convenience is, for most people, preferable to recreating the experience of face-to-face conversations.  In addition, some people regard video cameras as an intrusion.  ‘Why does my friend need to see what I am doing?’ ‘I don’t want to feel I have to look nice for a phone call,’ and ‘I don’t feel comfortable being watched’ are all common responses when people are asked about this kind of technology.

It does seem interesting that video conferencing has proved so popular and widely used in business, but most of us are reluctant to embrace it on a daily basis. Perhaps telepresence video conferencing exerts too much pressure on us to be fully involved in a conversation, when actually we quite like to be able to do the gardening or cook dinner while chatting to our friends and family.  audio visual conferencing does seem to be here to stay, though.  Perhaps we had better just get used to it.

Please visit http://www.edgevision.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.edgevision.co.uk/

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Recovery audit software is worth its weight in gold

Any accounts manager will know that things don’t always add up as tidily as they should. It ought to be simple in principle: incomings, outgoings, profit, loss – the numbers should balance. When they don’t, you can be almost certain of the reason why: human error. Duplicate payments are easy to make when people are disorganised and don’t keep track of invoices. An accounts payable audit is likely to turn up a number of such mistakes and glitches, highlighting just how expensive this can be for a company. recovery audit software is one way of pinpointing and tracking the discrepancies in your accounts system, gaining back the money you have unnecessarily paid out and preventing the same thing from happening again in the future.

Whilst automated systems are reliable and logical, people often don’t work the same way. Duplicate payments can occur when invoices are submitted twice, perhaps mistakenly due to miscommunication, or perhaps because the client has emailed it to two different people in the illusion that it will get dealt with more quickly. If clients are disorganised, this can be even worse – you could be dealing with a backlog as they try to get up to date, and be expected to sort out the chaos of their own accounting system. Then there are the rarer cases of fraud, where people deliberately try to use loopholes in your accounts department. Naturally, you will want to be aware of these, since this represents a deliberate and malicious attempt to siphon money off from your company – rarer than simple error, but by no means unheard of.

Estimates range wildly about the extent of the problem of duplicate payments and other unnecessary payouts, and naturally it will depend on the scope and size of your company, as well as how organised and qualified your accounts department is. However, an accounts payable audit on the average business might typically reveal a one percent over-payment – a deceptively small figure which can nevertheless add up to a significant amount of money, especially if a company is very large or perhaps close to the edge anyway. For a one-off outlay, recovery audit software can avoid such problems occurring again in the future – and help you to recoup any past losses at the same time: a nice bonus that might pay for the investment at a stroke. Put in those terms, there’s no downside to putting that kind of procedure in place.

Please visit http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.fiscaltechnologies.com/

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Document management makes life simpler

Often in business it can feel like you are swamped with document management paperwork. It can get to the stage where it seems as though paperwork is the main activity of the company, rather than playing a supporting role to the business’s main lines of operation. Of course, many people have got so used to this that they maybe do not even see the need to revolutionise their document processing. This can be the outcome of having fallen into a comfort zone, or, perhaps, having a tendency to want to oversee everything; ultimately a tendency to micro manage, which can end up holding your firm back and result in a reduced level of competiveness. But, invoice processing and similar operations can be revolutionised, making your company more dynamic, efficient and competitive.

With automated document managing, costs are reduced in the first place by the simple matter of reduced stationary costs. And this sort of cost, in companies beyond a certain size, can add up significantly over the course of, say, a year. But this is only the beginning of the implications that revolutionised document processing can have for the success of your company.

Reduced paperwork means not only less paper related costs, but lower costs in terms of the working hours of your staff. At the end of the day, if there is paper to be filled in, somebody naturally has to fill it in, and this takes time. As the famous saying goes, time is money. It is true, as well, in the sense that the time your staff spend on processing this paperwork could be spent on more productive activities, thus increasing the productivity of your company. But, as we all know, the paperwork needs to be done come rain or shine, so until your company adopts an automated system for invoice processing, the time of your employees will always be eaten up by these demands.

Another way in which automated document management can benefit your business is by improving your relations with both clients and suppliers, and ultimately boosting you company’s image as an efficient and dynamic force. It may be difficult to see how automated document processing can achieve this. Human paperwork, let’s be honest, is slow when compared to that of a computer. When computer software is assigned to, say, invoice processing, invoices are then processed in an instant, and this, from the point of view of a client or of a supplier, is impressive.

Please visit http://www.bottomline.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.bottomline.co.uk/

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Make sure your jeep journey hassle free with a rugged transport PC

Generally, computers tend to be fairly robust, but anyone who has ever spilt some water on their machine or left it out in the elements for too long is likely to recognise the need for a rugged PC.  Such machines are designed to be used in harsh natural conditions, so they can withstand wet or dusty conditions, temperature extremes and strong vibrations.  Construction workers, military personnel or emergency services might all find themselves in need of a rugged embedded PC or a rugged transport pc – or, for for that matter, anybody who has the need to protect their computer from the elements.

The ideal type of rugged PC is one that is specifically designed to be used in severe  conditions, rather than adapted for the purpose.  The term ‘ruggedized’ is often used interchangeably with ‘hardened’, as these types of computers are similarly robust in design.  That said, ‘hardened’ is generally used to describe computers that can withstand a bit more shock.

These computers come in various variations, including stand-alone bench or desktop units, laptops, PDAs, wearable systems, and designs specific to the given installation.  What is common to all these models is that their design features are those which provide extra protection against the kind of harsh environmental conditions which, if a typical machine was exposed to them, it would break.  Therefore, users can be fairly sure  that their ruggedized computer will withstand a fairly intensive battering from the elements.

Utility trucks and similar vehicles can pose problems for normal computers, because of the vibration and jolts that are inevitable.  Ruggedized laptops are made of magnesium alloy metals, which make them 20 times stronger than commercial laptops.  Furthermore, the hard drive of such a computer will be shock-mounted with foam or reinforcing material, so that it is as hard wearing as the rest of the machine.  After all, it is pointless to have a super strength computer with a hard drive that cannot withstand being exposed to a stressful situation.

A rugged embedded PC and a rugged transport pc will provide similarly ample  protection from wind, rain,or any other natural aggressor that it may come into contact with.  For those whose career or lifestyle makes tough demands on their technological equipment, a rugged PC really is the only possible option.  The security of knowing that your computer will be protected, irrespective of the environmental conditions, is surely of the utmost importance, especially in a job with a high stress job such as the military or the armed forces.

Please visit http://www.vision4ce.com/ for further information about this topic.

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I need a CIS payroll services that fully conforms with HMRC rules and regulations.

Administering and supervising payroll services can be a difficult job. Outsourcing your payroll services and cis payroll to a contractor umbrella may be the most sensible solution for your company.

Liquid Friday is a contractor umbrella organisation that offers top class professional expertise, experience and competence to all its clients in payroll services and CIS payroll. Their clients come from both the public and private sectors. As a contractor umbrella company, they offer a wide range of payroll services (like CIS payroll) that are carefully selected to fit in just what the client needs.

The company guarantees that their client’s business interests are continually the top priority. All of the cis payroll services they offer meet with HMRC rules and regulations so clients are assured of security.

Liquid Friday is proud to be one of the market leaders; carrying out its first-class service within a growing industry. The company is committed and fervent about remaining competitive in today’s cut-throat environment.

Liquid Friday sees to it that you obtain the best and nothing but the best. Here at Liquid Friday, all employees and sub-contractors continually show the dedication needed to ensure that the highest standard of customer service is consistently maintained.

And just to verify that we’re not lying; we have achieved significant growth, a lot of which has been driven by referrals|recommendations|testimonials} from satisfied clients.

Liquid Friday has three distinct divisions; Liquid CIS, Liquid SOLO, and Liquid PAYE.

Liquid CIS is specifically aimed at sub-contractors working in the construction industry. Once you have registered with Liquid Friday, they will take over the task of paying you and forwarding your tax deductions to HMRC on your behalf.

If you’re hunting for freedom, flexibility and all the other advantages that come with being self-employed, contact Liquid Friday now and discover  how they can aid you.

Please visit http://www.liquidfriday.co.uk/ for further information about this topic.

http://www.liquidfriday.co.uk/

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