FAQs

• How can a financial model help me?

  Business plans formalise the goal of an organisation and, if they are prepared collaboratively or shared creatively, can engage teams and individuals in achieving those goals. But how realistic is the plan?

  Financial models from WMT help you with:

  Testing your plan on paper – before you commit resources to delivering it.

  Forecasting – by using multiple data sources from across the business to predict financial outcomes such as production capacity and debtor days, to expected incomings and outgoings, plan future investments and predict shareholder returns.

  Testing scenarios – such as how will your business finances be affected by opening or closing a site, acquiring a new business or increasing sales? This will help you choose between options.

  Planning capital expenditure – your financial model will help you decide if the investment will be worthwhile for your business and when to time the investment.

  Calculating the true cost of projects – by gathering data from multiple sources.

  Fundraising or preparing to sell your business– a robust financial model, especially one you have worked with over a number of years, will give confidence to potential investors or buyers.

  Mergers and acquisitions – estimating the performance of the new business.

  Do you still have questions? Get in touch with our business consulting team to find out more about how they can help you.

• Should cash tips be treated the same way as tips paid on a card?

  Unlike tips paid by card or service charges, cash tips belong directly to the employee. It is up to staff – not the employer – to choose whether to pool and share those tips with colleagues or keep them to themselves. Forcing staff to share their cash tips can result in complaints and even lead to an employment tribunal.

  All tips are taxable income. The question for your business is, do you have a responsibility to tax this money at source or is it down to employees to tell HMRC about their cash tips income? The answer depends on exactly what happens to the cash and what systems may or may not be in place, even informally.

  HMRC will always try to collect the tax on cash tips directly from businesses, so it’s important that you understand what can and cannot happen to cash tips without any legal responsibilities falling on you.

  Hospitality specialists at WMT will help you understand the complicated rules surrounding cash tips, so you can deal with them in a way that limits the likelihood of staff complaints and HMRC enquiries.

  Do you still have questions? Get in touch with our hospitality services team to find out more about how they can help you.

• What is the process for moving to WMT payroll services?

  We make the transfer process as simple and straightforward as possible for you by:

  • Discussing your needs, and understanding any areas where your current payroll service is falling down or has been unable provide the support you need.
  • Providing a written payroll proposal confirming the service you will receive along with the costs to set it up and run it each time;
  • Assigning a dedicated payroll adviser to your payroll and setting up your payroll on our system;
  • Liaising with your current payroll provider, or team member, to run a test payroll
  • Running a test payroll to make sure everything goes smoothly before doing your first live payroll run; and
  • Confirming payments made to staff via a monthly report.

  Get in touch with our payroll services team to find out more about how they can help you.

• Do I need accounting software?

  Accounting software will help you to keep your bookkeeping up-to-date so you have a clear picture of your financial position. Cloud accounting software is a step up from that as it lets you view and manage your finances anytime, anywhere.

  More importantly, cloud accounting software helps you to make the most of us, as your accountant. We can view your accounts online to answer queries in real-time as they arise, giving you the peace of mind that anomalies or concerns are dealt with before they become an issue.

  To help you understand how your business is performing, we can analyse your accounts information on a regular basis to highlight parts of the business that are performing well and identify areas for improvement.

  Finally, the introduction of digital tax accounts will make it essential to have accounting software so that accounts can be submitted online.

  Do you still have questions? Get in touch with our accounts services team to find out more about how they can help you.