Hi,

Welcome to our latest newsletter covering all the latest from Farillio.

• New Features: our new business wellness tracker tool is live! Discover how it helps you assess how well your business is doing on essential business sustainability and success areas.

• New content: How well are you managing your staff in these changing times? Our newly launched ‘fitness to manage staff’ workflow tool helps you check all the essentials and stay culturally fit too. Our mini-demo video shows you how it works below.

• User Spotlight: 14 Female founders within our community share their experiences, advice and who they choose as role models.

• Expert corner: Meet lawyer Helen Smart – one of our favourite trading terms experts and someone who’s currently very busy advising businesses how to manage this Autumn’s highly challenging supply, logistics and trading conditions.

• In the News: the Budget. We highlight what’s announced so far, and share some of the key economists’ predictions – it’s a bit of a gloomy outlook.

• #GoFarFastShow: James Keal, from the award-winning design agency, Inktrap, shares advice on how to get optimum online customer engagement and other user experience (UX design) and web-based tips.

We won another award! The UK’s longest running index of disruptive start-ups, the Startups 100, has released its 2021 line-up and Farillio has made the list for the third year in a row, jumping 30 places to #36. Read the press release here.

New Feature:

Neatly included in your Farillio dashboards, you’ll now find your new wellness tracker tool. Now you can assess how sustainable and successful your business is against the essential business health indicators that the best performing small businesses demonstrate: from fitness to manage staff to data-handling compliance; from cyber-security to health and safety obligations. The tracker records your progress and helps you prioritise what’s outstanding.

Expect this tracker to evolve to include more helpful self-audits very soon…

Try it out now by logging into your account and testing how well you’re doing.

New Content:

How well are you managing your staff in these changing times? Are you on top of mental health and wellbeing, diversity and inclusion, hybrid working, setting wage levels and the paperwork, policies, rules and practices relevant to all your HR activities? Our newly launched ‘fitness to manage staff’ workflow tool helps you check all the essentials and stay culturally fit too.

Watch how it works and what’s included here:

Start your self-assessment now.

You’ll find similar new workflow tools focused on self-assessing your data-handling practices (including compliance) and making health and safety incident reporting straightforward and compliant too (from accurately recording the little things to properly handling reportable events) in your Farillio accounts this month too.

Find them in your new business wellness tracker tool on your dashboard or access them from your resources page.

In the news:

It’s really all about the looming budget this month – 27 October is the day.

The Chancellor said at the recent Conservative Party conference that he intends to use tax rises, and not government borrowing, to fund future spending pledges. So unsurprisingly, tax rises are on the agenda for the 27th. Here’s some highlights getting the attention so far – there’s not a lot of good news for business it seems:

• 1.25% increase in National Insurance paid by both employees, employers and the self-employed from April 2022.
• A number of tax breaks end this month, including the freeze on alcohol duty and July’s temporary VAT rate cut (from 20% - 5%) for hospitality and tourism businesses.
• Corporation tax is already set to rise substantially in 2023 and with a lot of pandemic-related reliefs now ended, there is a sense that business can’t take a whole lot more. But that’s not stopped experienced economists from predicting that the currently announced measures won’t be enough, and more tax rises will be needed.
• Lowering of the Capital Gains Tax threshold (covering the amount of profit on a sale of assets that you can make before you have to pay tax) is anticipated.
• The government has already announced a 1.25% increase in the tax on dividends for shareholders from April 2022 – with social care and the NHS being intended beneficiaries. It will not apply to investments held in ISAs; the majority of pensions are also expected to avoid this increase. The bad news is that it will likely hit company directors, including the self-employed and contractors, who opted to pay themselves the majority of their earnings via company dividends in addition to salary. The increase essentially means that anyone taking home more than £2000 per year in dividends will now face a higher tax bill, though it’s still a lower amount of tax payable than the income tax rate applied to salaries.
• Reforms to business rates might be included – following the government’s Business Rates Review, due to report conclusions this Autumn; though the details (including whether they’ll be good news for businesses) remain scant.
• There are rumours of improvements to research and development (R&D) tax relief, potentially allowing for higher rates of relief or for more activities to be included... Investor incentives (SEIS and EIS schemes) may also benefit from a boost in thresholds, to help encourage investment in early stage UK businesses – a possibility that’s been discussed both before and since the March budget.

User Spotlight

14 women changing the world with their impactful businesses, supported by Farillio.

The Alison Rose Review (first published March 2019) reported that if women matched the number of men starting and scaling businesses, it would have the potential to add an additional £250bn to the UK economy, equivalent to a total GVA of roughly £1.9bn per year.

From making the world more socially and environmentally responsible, to supporting the world’s millions of amputees; from unlocking the secrets to better wellbeing, to coaching and empowering entrepreneurs to achieve their ambitions sustainably; from solving costly and risky compliance headaches, to improving financial education to help individuals and families avoid debt and hardship… meet 14 women in this month’s business showcase who are not afraid of big challenges, who haven’t taken an easy path or let motivations of wealth or ‘unicorn-tinted’ glasses influence their choices; and who have overcome the scepticism of many, to create impactful, sustainable businesses that real people care about.

Role models for future founders, get ready to be inspired and impressed here.

Expert corner: Helen Smart from The Wilkes Partnership

Meet lawyer Helen Smart, from the Birmingham branch of expert partner firm, The Wilkes Partnership.

We’re seeing lots of activity on terms, trading complaints and managing challenging customer relationships across Farillio’s community this month.

Putting in place robust trading terms and keeping those terms up-to-date is essential. When did you last check your key supply terms, especially those on risk and liability (no blank cheques with indemnity clauses please!), on delivery and supply logistics, on your pricing and your freedom to change it, and/or what happens if something doesn't run to plan; like not being able to get fuel or enough lorry drivers to deliver your goods, or enough workers to butcher your pigs, pick your fruit, load your vans, deliver your services, etc…?

Helen and her team support businesses across the UK with trading terms and data protection advice. See Helen in action here in a snippet from one of her step-by-step walk-throughs of a terms and conditions legal template.

Watch Helen’s video and grab the accompanying guide.

Those who’ve got Helen’s recommended terms in place, with the comfort of knowing that they’re precisely the right, up-to-date terms for their type of business, are finding it far easier to handle today’s less predictable market conditions.

Reach out to Helen for contract reviews and trading advice via your Farillio account.

Not got trading terms in place yet? Rapidly locate the right template and get drafting here.

This month’s #GoFarFast show asks:

How do you get your web-site visitors to see all the things you want them to see?

The latest episode of our show (which delivers the answers to the questions small business want to know...fast!) features James Keal, from the award-winning design agency, Inktrap. James shares his expert advice on how to get optimum online customer engagement and other user experience (UX design) and web-based tips.

Watch the show or get a glimpse of James in action, answering one of our viewer’s questions: How do you get your web-site visitors to see all the things you want them to see?

Catch James’ answer here:

Hear more of James’ advice including what makes a brilliant online customer buying experience and what to do if your customers aren’t clicking to buy on your site, on the show’s (extended) podcast here or watch the talkshow here.