Are you a Creative Freelancer or a Creative Agency?
Where are you on your creative journey?
Are you starting off as a freelancer or do you have your own creative agency? Knowing this will help you understand the help you need from an accountant. If you are just starting off, the help you need will be quite simple. You just need your accounts done and to know when you need to pay your taxes.
If you are more advanced and you are now a creative agency your needs will be different. You will need to have a deeper relationship with your accountant, you will need to have forecasting and budgets, you will need to have regular meetings so you can see where your business is heading.
As you progress on your journey you need to make sure that your accounting needs changes with your business, to understand that your business is becoming more complex and that you need to work more closely with your accountant.
How can an accountant help my creative business?
When you know what stage of your business that you are at you can then find out what help you need. We have a process that we work through with all of our clients. At the creative freelancer stage the most important help that we can give you is to start to get the systems in place to help you grow. That is we can help you set up your accountancy software and train you how to use this software.
This software will help you keep your records up to date so you know the tax bill you will have to pay at the end of the year. It will help you prepare and submit your vat return and send invoices to your clients for the work that you have done. Software like Quickbooks, Xero or Freeagent will help you do this day to day and will grow with your business in future
How can I solve the problems in my business?
The problems that you face in your business will change as you grow. As a creative freelancer, time will be a big pressure on you, you will be responsible for doing all the work in your business. Doing work for your customers, managing the accounts and the business. You will need to make sure that you are submitting your tax returns on time at the end of the tax year and that you can pay the tax bill.
As an agency in the creative industries your needs will be different, cash flow will be a big pressure. The work that you do will more than likely be project based. The cash flow coming in to and out of the bank account will be irregular. It will come in a month and then you may wait until the next payment is due a few months later. You need to be able to manage this cash flow in the company bank account.
You need your accountant to help solve these problems in your business if you are going to move on to the next stage.
How can I move my creative business to the next stage?
Moving your business to the next stage of it’s growth will take hard work and a lot of perseverance. If you are a sole trader looking to incorporate your business to a limited company or a graphic designer or freelancer looking to become an agency. You need to be able to understand what the next step of your journey will look like and have a plan to follow.
The plan you will need to break down into a number of actionable steps until you see the growth you want in your business. This will take time and will be something that your accountant should be able to help you with as part of the business advisory services that they give you.
What help do I need in my creative business?
If you are a freelancer working in the creative industries having an online accountancy software to manage the accounts will be essential. You need to be able to automate as much of this process as possible. You need to be able to make sure that the time you have is spent dealing with the clients work and also growing your business.
As you progress into being a creative agency the focus of the help you will need will be making sure that you have a healthy cash flow and that you have the funds to invest in your business to help it grow. If that is taking on staff, investing in equipment or being able to get an office to work from.
Next Steps
f you need more help in growing your business please reach out to us and arrange a call to discuss how we can help you further.