OH's new business, questions

jaynemaria

Hope this is the right place to post. My husband after struggling to find work after redundency has started a dog walking and pet care business, and so far we have a good few enquiries and bookings. Just a few questions that I hope someone can help with.

He is a sole trader and on reading on here Martins tips it seems that he is ok to use a personal bank account, we looked at business accounts but I have adverse credit from when I had to stop work because of serious illness and the only way for companies to help was to have defaults. None are in his name but we are assuming that as we have linked finances, i.e joint bank account and mortgage, this will go against him trying to open a business account?

SecondlyI have been getting conflicting opinions from friends here, Im doing his books but prefer to use a good old fashioned accounts ledger, but others seem to think that if our accounts were ever checked this would be frowned upon in this computer age? surely as long as they are correct thats all that matters?

Hope omeone can offer opinions and thanks in advance

paddyrg

As long as your records are accurate, no problem how you keep them. Doing them manually *may* be a small tip in favour. Of getting an audit one day, but just because someone uses a computer doesn't mean they are more accurate! Often the opposite as computer software is often very opaque, which is why I use spreadsheets as automatic paper, much easier to keep track of what is what in my opinion!

Bank accounts - ask your bank about getting one for the business. It won't get a credit card/overdraft/line of credit without personal guarantees anyway, so in many senses is little different from a kids "my first bank account" account...

patman99

OP, when you think about it, a manual ledger is just a paper spreadsheet, so if you ever decided to go down the computerisation route, you could just copy all the column headers across and add some formulas to create a self-reporting version.

I have a simple spreadsheet for all of my dealings on ebay. Saves paper and allows me to create charts to give me info on how well I am doing.

Btw, good lick to your oh for the future of his business.

chalkie99

patman99 wrote: »

Btw, good lick to your oh for the future of his business.

For a dog walking business - I like that!