When business is good, your accounts are often just there to tell you how you have done, how much tax you have to pay and how much you might be able to get as a mortgage. But when your trading situation turns, accurate, reliable and up to date figures give you crucial information to make decisions on. They also act as a fantastic early warning system for areas of the business that have started to underperform.

There has never been a time in my career when such information has been as important as now. 

In the past getting such information might have been expensive but tweaking your bookkeeping systems can make a massive difference to the quality of the information produced with little in the way of extra monthly costs.

All the Principal Adviser’s and Client Managers at A4G are committed to helping our clients in this area. Ways that we can help include:

• Providing training and support to you or your bookkeeper on various stages of the bookkeeping and management accounts process
• Further articles on our website

If you have a Self Invested Pension Plan, a SIPP, and you own one or more commercial properties, now could be a good time to transfer that property into your SIPP.

A transfer at the current low market value could result in some tax free growth within the SIPP as the property market recovers and picks up again.

The contribution will attract tax relief in the normal way, with the market value of the property being treated as the net contribution, which is grossed up for tax.

It is not possible to make a direct ‘in specie’ contribution to a registered pension scheme.  You would need to agree to make a monetary contribution and then settle the debt via transfer of the property.  This does carry its own risks of course, because valuations and timing issues could leave you with a shortfall or cause payment problems.

A less risky option would be to sell the property and make a cash contribution to the SIPP, which then invests the cash received.

Stamp Duty Land Tax is likely to be due whatever option is preferred so any transaction needs to be carefully planned and executed so that the full benefits are achieved. For more details contact Janice at Janice@a4gsolutions.co.uk

We have a few spaces left for the above seminar by our sister company A4G Wealth Management. The seminar will focus on investing in corporate and capital protected bonds, an area anticipated by many to perform well over the next few years as well as property opportunities abroad plus a brief look at a few alternative investments such as climate friendly timber investments.

Are you a bookkeeper with a couple of days available? Are you after some more work? If interested we would like to hear from you. Contact Jenny@a4gsolutions.co.uk for more details