No pain no gain for Arts Council National Portfolio Organisations

The DCMS cuts to the arts budget over the next two years will be passed on to all Arts Council England’s National Portfolio Organisations.

A reduction in funding of 1% in the year 2013/14 and 2% in the year 2014/15 will be issued across the board to enable Arts Council England to achieve the £11.6m reduction in spending required by the Government during the current 3-year spending budget. And worryingly further cuts may be announced during 2013 making the situation for the arts very challenging.

Read more at Arts Professional NPOs to share budget cut pain and The Stage coverage of further cuts

We are acutely aware that tools such as MyCake’s Culture Benchmark have the potential to change how arts and culture organisations approach their mission for overall sustainability. The benchmarking tools: Culture Benchmark and our free benchmark for regularly funded organisations allow culture professionals to look in detail at their organisation’s data across the board.

We also have a FREE Charity Benchmark tool for organisations to research current UK charity data held.

We know change can be difficult at the best of times but really it is now more vital than ever for organisation’s to call on their staff to lead the way. We are very happy to talk to organisations about how they can get started with benchmarking and make the most of their extensive data.

With support arts and culture organisations can very clearly demonstrate relevance to a variety of stakeholders and articulate the value of what they do.

We’re also working with the voluntary sector’s BIG Assist programme and hope to share learnings from our work on the blog soon…

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MyCake Inspires – Order from Chaos

In this MyCake Inspires video, Sarah shows off how she keeps her receipts in order despite of a messy desk. How do you do yours?

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Tags: book keeping, filing, receipts, tax-return

Chequebooks: don’t bank on it

Paying by cheque, a favoured method of payment by charities, small businesses and the elderly, recent findings uncover cheques are no longer issued by every bank as standard with an account.

Consumer rights watchdog Which? recently called 18 UK banks and found cheques are hard to come by for bank customers.

Nationwide and The Co-operative Bank issue chequebooks automatically to account customers but with most other banks, except for Coventry Building Society, chequebooks are only available on request. Coventry Building Society don’t offer a chequebook with their accounts but say customers can request a cheque by phone or in branch whenever they need one.

It would be interesting to find out how much or how little your business relies on cheques for issuing or receiving payments. Of course the other side to small businesses receiving cheque payments from clients is that some business bank accounts charge for the processing of cheque payments as well as applying charges to the issuing of cheques.

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Time out for you but not for your money

Four things to do to give you peace of mind about your finances when you go on holiday

Ok, so you’re heading off on holiday for a few weeks and you want to make sure your finances are in order before you go and will be in reasonable order when you return … what do you need to do?

The key thing is to work out what will come in and what will go out of your bank account whilst you’re away so that your bills get paid, products get delivered but you don’t rack up emergency overdraft fees unexpectedly (and expensively).

Question 1: what do you need to deliver to clients before you leave and do any of those things trigger invoices from you?

If you deliver services then there’s great value in anything you can deliver to the client before you leave so that either a job is finished or a key stage is reached so you can invoice before you leave. If a project is ongoing then at least being able to put the ball in their court whilst you’re away so that they’re not waiting on your return is also useful.

For those who sell products then make sure you’ve made your deliveries to wholesale clients in particular so that there is no interruption in their stocks or sales levels is essential. If you sell retail then consider to what extent products can be sold and delivered in your absence. If this is not possible then you need to respond to clients if a sale is confirmed in your absence if the delivery period will be slightly longer due to your holiday. Again if you’re making deliveries to B2B clients then invoicing before you leave will be much better for your cashflow than if you wait until your return.

Why does this matter? Well whilst you’re on holiday you’re probably not making sales, confirming new pieces of work etc so this short hiatus in work flow can cause gaps in your incoming cashflow and yet you still need to keep paying yourself, your staff and your suppliers.

Question 2: What bills will need be paid whilst you’re away

Do you have regular standing orders or direct debits for your ongoing suppliers? Are there any deliveries that will need to be paid for whilst you’re away? Can you schedule payments by BACS so that they go through whilst you’re away.

If you have suppliers whose payments will be delayed because of your absence then it’s worth letting them know how much their payment will be delayed so that they know to expect it and don’t come chasing you! You might choose to pay some of them in part or in full before you go if your cashflow will stand it and it would maintain a good relationship with the suppliers.

Question 3: Will anyone in your team need to make a money related decision in your absence?

If there is a deadline looming that requires a decision to be made either about costs to a client or budgets with a supplier then can you make your contribution to these decisions before you leave so that your team can carry on without you? If the decision can’t be made in advance then what provision can you make for the team to make it without you whilst you’re away or as a last resort for  you  to call in to a teleconference? Here at MyCake we’re very much of the opinion that holidays matter and that you need them to rest, relax and recharge so that you can return to your creative best

Question 4: What will these changes in the incoming and outgoing monies put you in the red?

In addition to avoiding delays for clients and your team you need to have a think about whether these changes in financial patterns will put you into the red. As most banks make substantial charges (up to £30 a day) for emergency overdrafts you really want to avoid this as it’s not unlikely that you wouldn’t realise that it had happened until you were back in the country so you could rack up charges of a couple of hundred pounds and payments due to be made by direct debit might not go through. If this then affected whether your website was functioning fully and taking payments or your cloud computing systems accessible then this could have a substantial knock on effect on your business.

If in addition to planning out what your cashflow should look like whilst you’re away you also speak to your bank so that they know how to contact you or a member of your team so that if they need to call you before refusing to make a payment they can do so (not that that’s a guarantee that they will call!).

In summary you’re aiming to automate as many of your financial matters as possible whilst keeping track of any key decisions that need to be made whilst you’re away. Get it right and you should return to see a few of those invoices you sent out before you left appear as credits to your bank account giving you a nice little boost whilst you get your feet back under your desk!

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MyCake public appearances

There are quite a few inspiring and informative events happening this month for creative professionals where you can come and find MyCake’s founder Sarah Thelwall to hear her talk and have a chat.

Tuesday 26 June – 1pm – 5pm at School of Art, Margaret Street

Birmingham: Culture Benchmark workshop for West Midlands arts organisations. Free to attend.

To book visit the link below:

http://birminghamculturebenchmark.eventbrite.co.uk/

Thursday 28 June – The Design Trust business development day at New Designers

1.40pm – 2pm in the Business Design Centre Atrium

Getting started with money and finance – Talk by Sarah Thelwall of My Cake, the creative online accounting system

Tickets for the New Designers event are available here

Friday 29 June – Artsmart event at University of the Arts London

2 – 4pm

Sarah will be doing one-to-ones in the Ask the Experts section of the event with attendees who are looking to get ahead in the creative industries whilst being financially savvy.

To book to attend this event visit the UAL website here

Monday 2 July – 1pm – 5pm at O2 workshop Tottenham Court Road

London: Culture Benchmark workshop for South East based arts organisations. Free to attend.

To book visit the link below:

http://londonculturebenchmark.eventbrite.co.uk/

Saturday 7 July – Make It Pay at The Hub King’s Cross

10am – 4pm

Sarah will be delivering a workshop during this creative, inspiring and fun event hosted and developed by The Design Trust. Time TBC.

Money Management: How not to get stitched up with your finances where she will cover the basics of managing money in your business, how to get your finances organised and an introduction to the My Cake software and how its benchmarking tools can help you to set targets.

Sarah will also be available throughout the day for 1-2-1 advice around financial management and MyCake has a stand at the event so anyone is welcome to come along and say Hi!

To attend this event you can book your ticket on eventbrite or for further ticket information check the Make It Pay website.

It’s a busy next few weeks and whilst preparing to attend and deliver sessions at these events Sarah has also found time to write an article for the Guardian Culture Professionals Network blog – to be linked to here soon for your enjoyment!

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Creative tendancies: making creativity pay

Street location of Paper Trail work by Deb Bowness – HOUSE 2012 commissioned artist

Our marketing and comms manager Lauren has been working in Brighton for two months on a contemporary visual arts event called HOUSE as part of Brighton Festival. She’s been throwing herself into the art scene and the city’s creative networking circuit. From several discussions Lauren’s been having with the creatives in the city it’s become apparent that a lot of people based in the area specifically choose to work part time rather than full time, even on a freelance basis. The reason is so that they have time to concentrate on their own creative activities without the bother of all their time being consumed in work and also I guess so that they can head down to the beach once in a while when the sun is out in the middle of a weekday.

This finding and the experience of Brighton being one of the most expensive places to rent, buy and generally warrant a high cost of living has been making us wonder how creatives make it pay to live in such a way.

If they’re only engaging in paid work part time what are the aspects of their lives that they are having to compromise on? what lengths are they going to to make sure they use their free time creatively and then where will this creative output take them next?

In a recent article on the Guardian Culture Professionals Network blog research suggests Artists are struggling to make ends meet more than ever before. An artist’s income-generating portfolio is said to be a mash up of various commissions both private and public realm, teaching work, selling direct and through fairs, festivals and events as well as community arts.

Sarah will be discussing income streams and will be sharing tips on financial management and ways to increase your sales at a very exciting event coming up in July with The Design Trust.

It’s The Design Trust’s first major event Make it pay the most inspiring, creative and fun event for designers and crafts people around selling yourself and your work. On Saturday 7th July, 10am to 4pm, at The Hub, King’s Cross, London.

For booking please visit http://makeitpay.eventbrite.co.uk/. Hurry though as this event is proving extremely popular and noone should miss out!

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Free or charged for: the MyCake take on this

We’ve been mulling over the Creative Boom article which asked the question ‘Is there a turning tide against free online services?’. Here at MyCake we’ve always thought it important to charge for our main products and services whilst providing either a free trial period or a free ‘lite’ product.

Why do we take this position? Well essentially we think that if our customers value what we do they will be willing to pay for it and if they don’t value what we do then we shouldn’t be doing it! So although we face competition from not just paid alternatives but also free ones we plan to continue to charge for the foreseeable future. Of course we’ve had a variety of conversations with mentors, potential investors and others who have argued that if we went ‘freemium’ we could increase our user base dramatically.

Whilst there is of course a truth in that we’re also of the opinion that the subscription fee filters out the temporary users who only make use of such tools very periodically e.g. in the run up to a tax return. Whilst we’re happy for anyone to use the MyCake products for the free trial at this time of year or any other we would prefer to focus our attention on the entrepreneurs who’ve made the decision that managing their finances regularly is a necessary and important part of their administration of their company and will contribute to their company’s growth and sustainability.

So we see ‘free’ as a useful way for a potential new client to try out a system without having to commit to it and indeed to enable them to compare our offer with that of our competitors but a totally free offer isn’t sustainable for us and we don’t want to take the route of balancing a free offer with an advertising revenue … having spoken to a few of our customers about this over the years more importantly they don’t want it either. Of course by not needing to become an expert in advertising revenue development we can of course continue to focus on the main business of providing book-keeping and benchmarking services.

If you’ve read the MyCake terms & conditions carefully you’ll find that we could in theory develop an income stream from selling aggregated benchmark data. You’ll also see that you own your own data and that we have no rights to reveal individual data sets (indeed we have security measures in place to prevent this). The nearest we get to this at the moment is the publishing of aggregated results in our free Benchmark Bulletins and in the aggregated data in the online benchmarking services we offer. Indeed we couldn’t offer a benchmark service if we didn’t have the right to publish aggregated data! So far at least we’ve not found a market to whom we could sell this aggregated data separately though admittedly we’re not looking very hard! But if you want to talk to us about the pros and cons of doing so we’d welcome the conversation.

We think the key difference between our approach to data publishing and that of Facebook or Google is that all our data publishing activities to date have been for the benefit of the sector and the entrepreneurs who subscribe to our services. We’re not pulling data from one sector to sell it to another, we’re feeding the benefit straight back to the sector that pays the piper.

This question of free (+ advertising or data sales) or paid for (with neither of those things) is of course a rapidly evolving area and the questions that Creative Boom raises are ones that we all ask ourselves whenever we subscribe to a new service. Like Creative Boom and it’s commentators we too value transparency and clarity so if there’s anything we can do to improve in this area do let us know!

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Making tax a piece of cake

Happy New Year! We hope that you found time to rest and recharge for 2012 and that you are feeling ready for all the challenges and surprises that running your organisation or business presents.

There are just some aspects of business finance that will never be glamorous and dealing with tax issues can seem one of the most odious but if you involve a piece of cake it could be so much sweeter.

We’ve mentioned how to handle some common tax issues elsewhere on the blog, so now its that time of year again we’ve provided some useful links below for you to chew over:

Tax deadline looming

Preparing for your self assessment tax return in MyCake

Things to do with a tax rebate

As well as tax there are often many other financial matters on the new year to do list. We would like to share some advice and resources with you to help in planning your finances in 2012.

from Business Link:

Budgets and business planning

Cashflow management

Managing a business when economic conditions are tough

from MyCake:

Starting the year by putting your business in good shape

How to create a budget (plus a free tool)

Building a budget for the next 12 months of sales

What business risks should you care about? free planning tool

There’s never a dull moment in the creative industries : )

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Better late than never: tired of waiting for clients to pay?

Waiting a long time for clients to pay you for your work could have dire consequences for your cash flow as the days and weeks fly by. I’m sure we’ve all had at least one client through the years who has avoided swift payment of our invoice. The UK government are looking at ways to introduce flexible measures to help improve small business finance, they are also being urged to look at doing more to create a culture of making prompt payment the norm.

A group of industry bodies unite to take on late payment by putting pressure on business minister Mark Prisk to address the issues of late payment culture in the corporate sector. A recent survey by Graydon UK confirms that late payments are a persistent problem and barrier for growth for SMEs in the UK and the government should be doing more to tackle this.

Back in March we gave you some advice on the Things You Need to Know about late payment penalties and interest, we hope that was useful and that having to navigate late payments will soon be a thing of the past if controlled and avoided properly.

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Creativity + Money Skills = Success

Would you like a monthly injection of free ideas about money and finance for your creative business?

As you know Lateral Action and MyCake have teamed up to deliver the Money for Creative People course but if you’re not sure you’re ready to spend your hard earned cash on the course yet then why not dip your toe in the water and make use of the free resources?

If you click on this link you’ll be taken to the Lateral Action page to sign up for the monthly money tips and you’ll also be given free access to two other resources:

1) The eBook on the 5 Mistakes Creatives Make with Money – The story of Jay and Oscar, two creative people with the world at their feet, who discover that a few small decisions and actions can have big consequences — creatively and personally as well as financially — as the years go by. The book concludes with an explanation of the 5 Big Money Mistakes you need to avoid if you want to succeed as a creative business owne

2) The audio seminar on the 5 Essential Money Skills for Creative People – a 75-minute audio recording full of practical advice to help you achieve your creative and commercial ambitions, by showing you how to avoid the typical ‘money mistakes’ made by creatives (as described in the ebook) – and what to do instead.

Topics we cover include:

• How to earn a good living from your creativity without selling out
• What Mozart thought about money
• How keeping regular accounts can change your life (seriously)
• Why your reasons for charging low fees are almost certainly bad ones
• What to do about crap clients
• Why you shouldn’t try to sell to everyone
• How to keep your expenses in check

The 75-minute seminar is in MP3 format so you can download it and listen on your preferred media player.

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