Sell alpine plants. Which columns do I enter...? - The Book-keepers Forum (UK)

Alpine man · Veteran Member

Sell alpine plants. Which columns do I enter...?

RobH · Expert

Hi,

I would post electricity and water to premises costs if the package you have restricts you to those categories. Your difficulty may be calculating how much you spend additionally to your normal usage, unless you have a big operation it will probably be negligible, if it is significant and you can prove by comparing average bills prior to setting up the business (usage not cost) with usage post commencement of trading then claim that cost, otherwise I would stick with £2 per week to cover use of room.

As for the cost of sales point, I am assuming you buy the potted plants and then split them? The whole cost of this would go in as purchases and any of the green plant mass would therefore be included in that cost (unless I am misunderstanding you?. Hope that is of some use.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Ooh, techie question. Excellent.

The list that you've got from business link doesn't relate 100% to the SA103s return that you will be filling in. Rather than premises costs it actually states : Rent, rates, Power & Insurance costs so it's pretty conclusive where the water and power are to go for your business.

So basically I concur with Robs appraisal of this being a premises cost. But, as this is likely to be quite a utility hungry business I'm not in agreement over the £2 per week for use of home as I don't think that would scratch the surface of a properly run nursery type business.

Best place to look as always is at HMRC examples which generally one comes away from thinking. Oh, that's the category I fit in.

The BIM that you need for the electricity / water etc. is BIM47825 - Specific deductions: use of home.

here's a link to the HMRC page :

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/manuals/bimmanual/BIM47825.htm

For supplementary return S103s have a look at this page :

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/forms/sa103s.pdf

Don't forget that preparation is done on an accruals basis so ensure that items relate to correct periods. For example, a phone bill will detail calls for the previous quarter for line rental for the coming quarter. Same with things like insurance.

I assume that this business is completely legal? Wouldn't like to be giving advice where the supply of plants is anything other than alpines (as your name suggests) or boxes of petunia's etc. Sorry, sure that you're completely legitimate but we have to be so careful when giving advice that we are not facilitating the legitimising of money from illegal sources.

Please don't take the last statement as an insult. We just need to cover ourselves for MLR so a bit more detail on your business would be quite useful.

kind regards,

Shaun.

RobH · Expert

Hi Shaun,

I was rather envisaging a small business with a few propgating bits of equipment in a room but maybe it is a full scale nursery. The original poster has said he is selling on-line so again I assume evrything is legit otherwise there would be a risk nof getting caught quite easily!

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Rob,

It was going through my mind that maybe it's a ganja plantation in the loft with sky high electricity bills to pay for running GroLux fluresent tubes.... (I'm an expert, I've seen lock stock & two smoking barrels).

That's always the problem with giving advice direct to punters rather than other bookkeepers online in that we don't know the businesses that we're giving assistance with.

By definition who that is doing something illegally would ever ask the question in relation to an illegal business!

Sure that this one is completely legitimate but I've just got my get out of jail free card prepared on the off chance it's not.

My revisions at the "How the hell can I have forgotten that when I only sat the exam three months ago" stage.

Hows life with you matey.

Shaun.

RobH · Expert

And I thought you only had to go to the pet shop and ask for hemp ground bait and put it under your mum's sunbed and within a week or two you walked with a swagger and spoke Patois! Need to watch Lock Stock again!

I'm well thanks Shaun but everytime I read one of your threads it makes me less determined to do any studying! I get emails from the likes of Reed accountancy offering me fully qualified and experienced accountants for around £24k and I ask myself why would I want to qualify! I am looking at joining Mercia Training though, they have lots of good courses to keep cpd upto date and refresher type courses too.

I'm off to my BNI late late christmas dinner tonight and since I am currently in charge of the finances we will be eating and drinking for free!

How are you? Apart from weighed down by revision?

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

So I'm guessing that we're all going to be getting messages telling us that we're your best mates at two tomorrow morning then!

I don't mind the studying and actually love doing the exams. Just wished that my memory didn't keep leaking!

For your business I don't think that there's any point going for ACCA as it would just be a drain on your time and resources for little return.

Besides that you've already got your ATT... What about the one that you advised me about, CTA? I checked with CIOT and I can go directly to CTA without ATT but just got to pass this darn paper P2 first.

Oops, getting close to school run time.

Talk in a bit but if not, hope you have fun tonight.

Shaun.

RobH · Expert

Just in case I cannot manage to switch my computer on tonight...Shaun, you're my best friend, I love you all!

Alpine man · Veteran Member

Hi. Thank you both for you enthusiastic answers. I am in fact as I say a start up business. I sell on Ebay on line I should say. There is a good starters market there for the time being. Any way what I actually do is take the cuttings from scratch and pot them up when ready and grow them on until ready for sale. This is a small operation but very involved for one person. Electricity is mainly for computing as buyers are on line. I base it on 15p per hour electricity usage and then take off any personal use.

The compost, occasional feeding, spraying are the cost of sales I assume. Can what actually grows be part of the cost of sales? I am actually assuming not as it does not cost to 'buy' the growth itself. It does push its value up obviously though. What do you think? . Also as water is a large part of it would this now be a 'cost of sales' also- again not the direct cost of stock I must admit.

I grow alpine mountain plants which is what nurserymen sell. Nothing ilegal but I understand why you mentioned this so no worries. I appreciate your different styles of answering it gives me a good balance.

Thanks again, David.

Alpine man · Veteran Member

Also a separate question I have read about is the subject of 'Drawings' as a bookkeeping column to be included with all others above.

The definition shortened is payments(expenses) that are for private purposes rather than business costs. This includes owners tax and national insurance bills.

Confusingly(to me anyway) is later in the book it says a lady with a shop business buys a freezer for business use is part of the drawings column. I thought this was a business cost(see definition)? I thought it was money taken from this business account described and used for buying a pair of jeans for example or anything personal. Sorry to be not to with it on this one.

Can you give some examples may be and tell me why?

Thanks David

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi David,

one problem with the books and people new to this is that when something is wrong one assumes that the book is correct and we don't understand something.

Drawings are any monies that are taken out of the company by the owners.

If the freezer is used wholly and exclusively for the business then it is a business asset. In this instance even though the price of the freezer is unlikely to be that great it should be treated as fixtures and fittings rather than expenses and depreciated over the estimated useful economic life of the asset.

For electrical good I tend to use 3 to 5 years even though the freezer may have an actual life of 10+ years.

I don't know how old the book is that you're reading but there's also something called the Annual Investment allowance that allows up to £50,000 of business expenditure to be written off in the year of purchase rather than depreciated over the life of the asset.

I would imagine that for your business David everything that you purchase for the business would be covered by AIA.

AIA is pro ratered over the year so starting your business today with only 37 days of the year remaining you could write off this year up to £5068 (£50k/365*37).

Hope that this helps but if you need further details please don't hesitate to ask (I'm not always logged in but I always answer within 24 hours).

cheers,

Shaun.

Wella · Expert

Hi David

You are basically correct with your assumption on Drawings, they are payments made that do not relate to business activities. Some are obvious, like you said a pair of jeans (but not workwear, such as overalls or safety boots). Some items can be split also (like electricity bills, telephone, internet connection). Don't understand what the example you mentioned was getting at?

In your business the water rates wouldn't be a cost of sale but they are a direct cost of bringing the produce to market (Without water the plants wouldn't survive), much like a business that makes things from scratch, the component parts are a direct cost of manufacture.

The difference between what it costs to grow the plant (buying stock, water, fertiliser, compost etc is the cost value of your plants for resale) and what you sell it for is your gross profit, then take of other expenses such as electricty for computers, heat light delivery costs etc that gives you your net profit.

I would also look a bit closer at you electricy, which seems a bit undertstated to me.

Hope this makes sense, I tried to keep it simple

Bill

Damn you Shaun, beat me to it again

-- Edited by Wella on Saturday 27th of February 2010 01:36:34 PM

-- Edited by Wella on Saturday 27th of February 2010 01:40:11 PM

semsley · Guru

Where you have to be careful if drawings is if, for example, you have say a sandwich shop and you take one of the sandwiches for your lunch every day. The cost of this sandwich should be taken as drawings. You'd be amazed at how much this could cost if the revenue went back 5 years!!!!!!

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Bill,

sitting here doing the dark side of group accounts so jump on any light relief as it appears on the site at the moment.

It is worrying that there are so many books out there that have blatant mistakes in them.

At our stage it's not so important as you know when somethings just not right. But when you're just starting out it can be a complete nightmare.

David,

What book is it that you're getting this from?

Also how difficult are you finding the whole area of bookkeeping as dependent upon your comfort zone I've got some other suggestions that have had the glitches ironed out that may well be better starting points for you.

cheers,

Shaun.

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Sheila,

good example and I can see where you're coming from but I don't think that the revenue would ever push that one.

Also, the maximum that they could take into account would be the cost of the materials rather than the shops resale value.

Plus any sensible person would state that they were only consuming end of day wastage with zero resale value... Or better still state that they had not consumed anything at all as the onus is on the revenue to prove consumption rather than the shop owner to prove that they did not.

For insignificant amounts it's not worth the revenue making a song and dance about a case that they may lose unless it's one where they could take an entire industry to task over it should the judgment go their way (thinks IR35 and the revenues / governments destruction of the UK IT industry).

cheers,

Shuan.

Wella · Expert

Just out of interest David, how are you keeping your accounts (eg manual book/ excel spreadsheet/ accounting software)?

Picking up on Sheila's point, you might for example keep fertiliser stock in 25kg bags, if you use one on your own garden (not your cultivated stock) you should record the use by entering the purchase value including VAT to your drawings account and reduce the value from your fertiliser stock.

Digressing slightly, a technical question for our resident Guru (I know he likes them). Is this classed as an agricultural business? Are the IAS(41?)/ IFRS(3?) standards regarding biological assets used in the UK?

Bill

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi Bill,

there is currently no direct equivalent under UK GAAP to IAS41 which accounts for agricultural produce at point of harvest. I suppose that the closest guidance would be in SSAP9 in accounting for stock but it doesn't differentiate between agricultural and non agricultural stock.

In the UK your best bet on this one is going to be the DEFRA website rather than accounting standards.

Happy for anyone to disagree with me as this one really isn't one of the area's that I know a great deal about.

cheers,

Shaun.

Alpine man · Veteran Member

Okay thanks! , yes I am confused on bookkeeping Shaun you are right. It is difficult when you first start out definitely.

The book has a 5 star rating from Amazon and about 10 reviews of it all with 5 stars from each person.
The book is most likely right but how I phrase it is wrong. I also have not read it in order yet so am getting ahead of my self as its in chapter 10 that it talks of this example-it has very small chapters. There are indeed columns for all of the things I think you mentioned. Total ,equipment , drawings are in payments out columns (I called it expenses) and in Payment in its separately written as total and capital introductions columns. Depreciation is not include at this point may be later or earlier it is mentioned.

What seems to be said is as Bill showed that it is personal drawings but sometimes it is both personal and business. The freezer in this example ,while not mentioned in the book, is most likely used for personal purposes as well as business so it made it confusing for me.

For tax purposes it seems the Annual investment allowance would just require the £3000 pounds full price of freezer as 100% is the allowance you receive for the first 50,000 worth of capital at present.

I understand these points need to be taken with understanding bookkeeping more as a whole first most probably.

-- Edited by Alpine man on Saturday 27th of February 2010 05:22:57 PM

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

I'm intrigued.

Which book is it?

Alpine man · Veteran Member

I got the rating confused with another book which got a full rating. The best one for accounting was in fact 'The best small business account book'. It is just a cash book with a good layout for the new person in bookkeeping.

I bought the following one because it can be bought in conjunction with another book see below-

I have the 'Teach yourself small business accounting' by Mike Truman and David Lloyd. It got a 4 out of 5 review in fact. The teach yourself series also has a 2009 tax book. Designed equally for the small business too. They are meant to be bought in conjunction with each other so you can see how tax runs hand in hand with accounting. The tax one is called Teach yourself understanding tax for small businesses. It cuts through all the tax and accounting jargon and gives you what is necessary to know with out leaving you confused but telling you what's important. It balances this well I feel but I have not read it all yet.

Can I ask a question while am here. Regarding electricity ,water costs. When entering the figure for business use do you also include the full rates charge that came on the bill for tax purposes for bookkeeping . Eg. April £30 per month bill charge water(one column) £15 pound Business usage in separate column. Incidentally my business is sufficiently small not to bother with a balance sheet at the end of the year and I hope to do easy bookkeeping records. I am hoping that as long as you keep your personal bank statement with your rates then you just record your business usage as one figure and if tax man ever came he would look at your bank statement to confirm anything he suspected. This being an example of one of the many things a tax man could check. If I have got this completely wrong, sorry.

-- Edited by Alpine man on Sunday 28th of February 2010 05:09:11 PM

-- Edited by Alpine man on Sunday 28th of February 2010 05:13:00 PM

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

Hi David,

I've got a really large library of books (8 billy bookcases full) but I'm afraid that I don't know this book so cannot comment on it.

Bookkeeping unlike tax and payroll does not change over time so the basics remain true no matter which version of a book you have. However, the question related to the fridge seems to be a mix between bookkeeping and tax treatment of an asset.

Even so, nothing has changed in the last four years to invalidate the statement that the fridge is a business asset and as such, providing it is used wholly and exclusively for the business then it does not go anywhere near drawings.

You would however probably be better off investing in either

Business Accounts by Frank Wood, or
Mastering Accounting Skills by Peter Marshall

as these are at an entry level but cover the basics in depth and to the best of my knowledge do not suffer from any errors in the examples.

Of the two I would recommend the first the most.

Now water is a strange one. If you are on a meter then you could take the difference between your normal usage and the new usage as a justifiable usage for the business.

However. As this is your own home you will not be able to claim any of the standing charge as that would have had to have been paid anyway so it is not an expense incurred wholly and exclusively in the running of your business.

Similarly, if you are not on a metered supply then non of your water is going to be an allowable expense of the business as it is an expense that would have been incurred by yourself with or without the business.

To run a proper business you need to have separate business and private bank accounts and be able to justify every transaction on the business bank statement.

When the tax man calls (it is when, not if) the better you keep your records the easier their life will be... Trust me, you really don't want to give an inspector the task of trawling through personal bank statements as you will definitely be struck off their Christmas card list.

Don't really understand the comment about the balance sheet?

For small limited companies one can file abbreviated accounts but that still has a balance sheet.

In accountancy think of the balance sheet as your companies primary financial statement.

The Profit & Loss account gives you your position for that year and the profit / loss figure feeds into the balance sheet giving current overall position of the company.

Even where there is no requirement to file these documents it is sound practice t have them prepared on an annual basis for your company.

It is also better for these documents to be prepared independently by a professionally qualified accountant or bookkeeper as that will give added credibility to your enterprise.

I appreciate what you are attempting to do. Basically start your business and keep your own books so avoiding deemed unnecessary overheads. However you do need to realise that mistakes that you make could cost you far more than a qualified bookkeeper reviewing your books once a year and preparing your documents for you.

In the first instance I feel that you should set up a separate company bank account for your enterprise even if such is only a second personal account that is used exclusively for your business.

Hope that the above advice helps.

Shaun.

RobH · Expert

Hi David,

As usual Shaun has given excellent advice. The one area where I would be alittle more flexible is if your business is really quite small (under £15 k ayear turnover) and you are a sole trader (not trading as a Limited company) then you could do a basic 'Income & Expenditure' account without a balance sheet. However if the business is small why not take the opportunity of trying to prepare a balance sheet sine there will not be too many transactions to worry about. I would be tempted in your position to get a good bookkeeper who also does tax returns to finalise things for you. This would probably cost around £150 (ish) which would be tax deductible and there is every chance that you will save as much in tax and it will be done properly. That's not saying you won't do it properly but peace of mind counts for a lot!

Alpine man · Veteran Member

Hi, thanks for the advice. I may never have a profit of 15,000 and will be running in loss for 3 years probably although year three I may break even. I am not very confident with bookkeeping at all so for me the best method would be do something basic first and then as I get confidence think about other balancing of accounts later. Around year 3-4 this would be good. I am not a limited company and would look into that later also; it's covered in the book I have. As long as I have a reasonable idea from a relatively well done profit and loss account that would give me a clear enough idea of where I am heading.

Can I just ask again about the rates issue. I am on meters for my rates and it is a home business. I can see that I would need to calculate from my bill the difference between personal and business usage and business usage can be claimed back for tax purposes. I am looking for how this is entered in my columns. Once calculated and estimated is this figure entered in one column only as a business figure. I think this is what most people do. Or should I use my water bill for example to write its total cost for that month in a column and next to this in another column the business usage. Or even use the personal figure rather than use the full bill total figure along with the business figure. I say this because most expenses are just entered as one figure but rates has clear issues of both personal and business use.

So it could be just:

Business usage water

£5.00

OR

Full rates water      Business usage water

£20.00       £5.00

OR

Full rates water       Personal water usage    Business water usage

£20.00 £15.00                               £5.00

I would be happy with the first one. But the tax man may not be??

Thanks for your time.

-- Edited by Alpine man on Monday 1st of March 2010 04:34:54 PM

RobH · Expert

You would be fine with option 1 just putting the business use through. Do however be able to back this claim up by having pre-trading metered bills and post trading metered bills so you can 'prove' there is an increase in usage due to the trade. It may be useful to camouflage the newly built water guzzling swimming pool should the inspector arrive!

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

I concur totally with Rob.

Also, it's not a swimming pool, it's the irrigation storage facility.

RobH · Expert

Ha! My mistake Shaun..and that's not a diving board it's the 'sapling projection launcher'!

Shamus · Forum Moderator & Expert

No nursery business is complete without a sapling projection launcher!

Right that's David sorted. Now how do I get a beach condo in Thailand past them????

Alpine man · Veteran Member

Thanks Guys that great!