Welcome to my blog!

Hello!

This is the Home Business Accountant's new blog for a new business. I'm Emily Coltman, M for short, I'm a qualified Chartered Accountant, and I'm setting up my own accountancy practice that's just going to look after home-based businesses.

Yes, that's right. Just home-based businesses.

Many other professionals (accountants / solicitors / business consultants and so on) out there in the big wide world seem to think that home businesses are a "poor relation" to office-based businesses. No separate premises? No employees? "Bah humbug - that's a job, not a business" say lots of professionals.

Not this one.

For starters I'm home-based myself. I'm writing this blog post sitting looking out at my back garden and hoping it doesn't rain because I want to put my washing out.

So I know at first hand the pressures of running your own small business. When you're in a job, you don't have to go looking for customers (unless you're in sales). You don't have to chase up money from customers (unless you're in credit control). You don't have to worry about paying the bills (unless you're in purchasing). But when you're running a business, you have to do all three.

And keeping the taxman happy is a great worry for lots of home-based business owners. When do you have to register with HM Revenue? How on earth do you fill in all those complicated forms? Do you have to tell the Council? And do you get any tax relief because you work from home?

That's what I'm here to help you with.

I'll be writing about things like that on my blog.

I'll also keep you posted with lots of links to other sites that can really help you.

And by that I don't mean that I'll do what a local business centre tried to do to me the other day and send you off to Business Link. That's a great resource but there's so much of it to wade through.

No, my references will be to sites like Enterprise Nation where you can meet other home business owners and read about issues that really matter to YOU.

Stick with me and enjoy the ride!