MyCake’s morning with AWAD (Association of Women Art Dealers)

Today Marion has been hosting a session in London with AWAD, the Association of Women Art Dealers, AWAD is an international network for women art dealers providing masterclasses, networking opportunities and online resources to members and others in the arts community. Current AWAD members include founder Susan Johnson Mumford and Board Directors Francesca Fiumano and Isobel Beauchamp.

For our session this morning art dealers, gallerists, consultants and independent curators were invited along to hear about the different ways we at MyCake put creative entrepreneurs in control of their finances.

The workshop includes details of how MyCake works for small commercial galleries.

We cover the basics of the system and demonstrate how MyCake can help from bookkeeping tasks, tax and VAT returns, through to business planning. Our workshops are ideal for anyone who is tired of spreadsheets and for those who want to get on top of their finance.

Email us at support@mycake.org to find out more about the sessions that we can deliver for your networking organisation.

For further details on AWAD membership visit their website: http://womenartdealers.org/contact-us/

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One to ones with MyCake are free for new customers, just help yourself!

To help you avoid burying your head in the sand about your finances and book keeping Sarah and Marion of MyCake have put together this quick video about how we can help you…

BOOK YOUR ONE TO ONE FOR FEBRUARY OR MARCH WITH MARION ON EVENTBRITE NOW : )

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Afternoon, New to MyCake? One to One support is here

Getting to grips with a new book keeping system is always better as a problem shared. That’s why here at MyCake we offer all free trial users a free one to one support session over the phone on an afternoon of their choosing.

MyCake One to Ones eventbrite booking page

MyCake One to Ones are here for you – If you are on a 60 day free trial with us you can register for your free one to one session on eventbrite now.

Dates and times are available throughout February – March 2013

Back in January we offered all clients a free place on an exclusive advice session covering How to get the best out of your MyCake account and general tax advice. The session was with Sarah Thelwall of MyCake and Peter Czapp of accountancy firm The Wow Company.

We had some really great feedback from those who attended the sessions and we wanted to share some of the benefits from the advice attendees received with the rest of our community so here goes:

“The session was really informative…Peter showed me how to use the Profit & Loss report and helped me to correct a few things… my personal drawings were in the wrong place. He also suggested that I consider looking into becoming a ltd company and advised on how to organise the business differently. He said becoming ltd would save me money on my future tax bill! It would never have occurred to me to become a limited company.”

“I can get muddled up quickly when it comes to finance and my business is changing so it’s good to see how the way I use MyCake needs to change too.”

“It’s really good to take the time to stand back and have someone else look at your business and take stock of your business and make you aware that you can do something differently.”

“I was in a tax-return panic and almost did not come. Peter suggested how to calculate my travel expenses (using the 45p/mile log), he suggested as my profits go over £20,000/year to become ltd to pay less tax. By the end of the session he said that I had most things in the right order and that I was doing it right – it was reassuring to hear it from a professional.”

We also received some high praise from another of our happy customers on what she loves about using MyCake:

“I would definitely recommend MyCake. It is really good for analysing sales and expenditure easily.” Liz Emtage – www.lizemtageceramics.com

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Alternative financing models: re.volution Hack Day 22 February

We are taking our Culture Benchmark data up to Edinburgh this month for Mission Models Money’s re.volution Hack Day event on Friday 22 February. Registration is open and it is free for MMM re.volution members to attend.

In attendance will be a whole host of arts and culture organisations with a desire to change their approach to financial models and revenue. We’re very much looking forward to helping them interrogate tough questions that all arts organisations should be asking this year. Strong data and strong leadership will be the order of the day. We’ll report back on our thoughts of the day soon.

“Here they talked of revolution, here it was they lit the flame.” Gotta love Les Mis! : )

Other articles about our work with Mission Models Money:

Building Collective Intelligence with the MMM re.volution programme

Fuelling collaborative working with creative organisations

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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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Collective sighs of relief at UK tax return completion

On checking my social media feeds last night it was very enlightening to see so many of my peers who are self-employed and freelancing posting updates about having ’7 minutes to go’ to complete their tax return before the whistle for the deadline was blown at midnight.

There is some great material online at the moment about the dreaded subject of Self-Assessment. I’m sure a lot of people will just be happy to move on from the experience and not think any more of it for another year but if you want to get super organised now is the time to do it.

Sign up for a free two month free trial of MyCake and see how easy it can be to have everything you need already in one place!

Some people can whip up a tax return in no time but most need a helping hand. In this article from PCG, Do you feel confident enough to go through self assessment alone they look at a recent poll of freelancers on which they prefer.

The Guardian Culture Professionals blog ran a live chat on Personal Finance for culture pros they unearthed some good tips on where you should be looking in your accounts to save more money.

And finally Freelance Advisor gathered together tweets for their Self Assessment deadline: the Twitter highlights post.

Hopefully your Self Assessment next year won’t be so taxing.

Author: Lauren Davies, MyCake Marketing Manager @MyCakeFinance

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iZettle keeps cupcakes moving with Crumbs and Doilies

No cash on you but you really need a cupcake? We think what iZettle are doing for small businesses like London based cake bakers Crumbs and Doilies is pretty darn brilliant. Instead of a costly card payment machine iZettle offers businesses a portable solution that plugs into a mobile phone or similar device, it takes card payments via a card swipe app that just needs a wi-fi or 3G connection.

Crumbs and Doilies used to disappoint possible customers by saying they didn’t take cards, but using iZettle has meant they never have to miss out on a sale. This type of embracing of technology is so important to keep a small business moving.

”It’s so handy because it is so portable.” says Jemma Wilson, Crumbs and Doilies founder. “I can take it to any of our market stalls and, provided there is wi-fi or 3G, I can take card payments at last! It’s slick and stylish. And people always remark on what a good idea it is.”

Yes we think it’s a great idea too!

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BIG Assist offers £6 million support to UK third sector

Last October the NCVO and the Big Lottery Fund launched the BIG Assist support programme to provide infrastructure organisations in the charity, fundraising and voluntary sector with access to financial assistance via a voucher scheme as well as to peer to peer support from the UK third sector community.

Changes in the voluntary sector environment have meant that more infrastructure organisations than ever are seeking extra support and advice to help become more efficient, effective and sustainable so they can continue to support other organisations.

BIG Assist will offer support in the following categories:

• Strategy, planning and managing change
• Financial sustainability
• Innovation, new products and ways of working
• Marketing and building strategic relationships
• Supporting and developing people & organisational culture

MyCake is very pleased to have been selected as an approved BIG Assist supplier and this week the first vouchers are being awarded to organisations. We can’t wait to begin helping to strengthen the ‘backbone’ of the voluntary sector.

Find out more about the BIG Assist programme and how to get involved

Follow @BIGAssist on twitter

www.bigassist.org.uk

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Creative Industry Survey 2013

Who doesn’t love a good survey to fill in on a Friday lunchtime. So here you go:

The survey will take 5 minutes to complete and, by taking part, people will be able to rank themselves against the competition and see how they compare to the UK’s top-performing creative companies.

The results will be published in February in a consolidated format (all answers will be anonymous) and everyone who completes the survey will get a free copy of the final report, which will contain the inside track on what’s happening in the creative industry. An example of a previous report: WOW BenchPress Report

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Prepare for tax self-assessment in MyCake

Quite a few folks have been using MyCake to prepare their books for a tax return this month so we thought we’d do a post on a couple of the functions you’ll need to have set up in the software in order for it to show the right figures in the right places in the self-assessment report. If you have an accountant you could just give them the login details and they can do this for you … however we’re going to assume that as it’s mid Jan you’re doing your own tax return and will therefore need to do this yourself.

If you have set up a clutch of sales types and outgoing types you will need to map these against the self-assessment types. It’s a two minute job. Here’s how you do it:

• go to the reports section and pick ‘self-assessment’ from the general reports section

• if you’ve not mapped the sales types and outgoing types it will look something like this

• If it’s showing a clutch of zeros like this but you’ve entered your income and expenditure (and they appear in say the profit and loss report) then click on the ‘code mapping’ button to see whether your data is being included or excluded from this report
• here’s what it looks like if it’s excluded (often the default if you’re adding new codes)

• clicking on each drop down on the right allows you to allocate your headings (left) to the self-assessment types (right)
• once you’ve allocated them it will look something like this

You should now find that the contents of a Profit and Loss report are pretty darn similar to those in the self-assessment report.

If you’ve been using MyCake for more than one year of accounts you might have run a ‘year end process’. Note that if you’ve run this for say 2008-2009 your self-assessment report may appear empty of data. The reason you run a year end is to tidy up the system once you’re done and dusted with a year. So a) don’t run it ’til you’re finished and b) if you need to go back to an older year delete the year end process for that year if you want to run e.g. a P&L or self-assessment report. To access the year end journal entry you will need to:

• go into settings and find ‘advanced setttings’ at the bottom of the page
• enable ‘journal’ and update
• this will give you a new heading called ‘journal’ in the tabs at the top, click on this
• you will then see a list of journal entries, highlight the year end journal entry that you want to delete, then select the delete option!
• You can always redo the year end … you’ll see that it doesn’t actually change the transaction data that you’ve entered elsewhere.

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