May 2003

The Meeting on Tuesday May 20 was very busy! Our first guest speaker, Julie Kirk, talked and answered questions about keeping accounts for small businesses and in particular sole traders.

Some of the issues covered were whether to include your car as part of the company’s capital or use the Inland Revenue mileage allowance of 40 p per mile. Another was having your home as your office and what you can reasonably claim for. We also discussed what you can and cannot claim for in respect of subsistence and clothing. Julie recommended the Quick Books2003 PC package (originally known as Quicken).

Julie works as a book-keeper, providing accountancy services (saving you expensive Accountant’s fees) and can provide advice to small businesses in setting up your systems Julie lives in Nottingham but visits her sister in Bishops Lydeard on a regular basis and is quite happy to work with our group.

Her contact details are as follows: Julie Kirk : 0115 974 3548 7779 610430 juliekirk @ orange.net

The second part of our meeting was with Hatty Tuck, Rural Regeneration , TDBC and Ian Weston from Somerset Skills Support Project. The SSSP is funded by the Rural Development Agency and provides training grants to small businesses. To date, they have provided 3000 training subsidies reaching 1200 companies within the county.

They are offering training at subsidised rates up to 9 hours plus a free initial training needs analysis. The training is charged at £10 for 3 hours or less, £20 for 6 hours or less, £30 for 9 hours or less. The training providers are the six main colleges in the area.

We agreed in the meeting for Ian to arrange for the training providers to visit us at our next meeting if possible to carry out a series of individual training needs analyses followed by a group session to identify the generic needs of the group. He is also going to find out what sort of “deal” they can do for our group for training sessions.

Anyone wishing to contact Ian personally his details are: Ian Weston, 01278 655203 westoni @ cannington.ac.uk