Hi Carl,

welcome to the forum.

You've certainly come to the right place for a lot of discussions covering every conceivable bookkeeping and for that matter accountancy related subject.

The one issue with the site when you are looking for information is that discussions can quickly go off subject where a minor point of the main thread is picked up and run with. Some of the best advice is hence actually hidden in unrelated threads.

When you are looking for things often you will find it best to search using Google and just make sure that it says something like (using VAT flat rate as an example search)

site:bookkeepers.org.uk vat flat scheme

As you are currently retraining into this one thing to bear in mind is that training companies will lie to you. I still get the leaflets popping through my door telling me that as a trained bookkeeper I can expect to earn £35,000 and never be short of work!

The reality is that you should try to hold onto the day job not only until you finish your training (which never really finishes!) but also until you have a good stable of clients. This is likely to mean turning over your evenings and weekends to building the business whilst holding down your main job during the day.

First year in business take the lowest amount that you think could possibly be your turnover and halve it. And fingers crossed that will be somewhere close.

After the first year things will slowly get better but it would be a good idea to be working to a five year plan.

Everyone on here is generally helpful and (exams from home excepted) happy to give technical advice where the books are just not making any sense.

We've had quite a bit of spam recently so some threads get some strange replies. If you don't understand the reply likelihood is that the person writing it didn't either (although check the other posts of the poster before jumping to a conclusion).

Hope that you enjoy being on the site and good luck with those exams,

kind regards,

Shaun.

Welcome to the forum Carl.

Out of curiosity, who are you using as your training provider?

I didn't want to mention my training provider as I don't want to appear as if I'm advertising or spamming the site. I am using Ideal Schools as my provider.

My signature is a motto that's on the back of one of my rugby training t-shirts. I think it is quite widely used in the military too - the point is the same as the "7 p's"... Perfect Planning and Preparation Prevents P*** Poor Performance.

Thank you.

I've got a couple of questions (regarding my first assignment on the Ideal Schools ICB Level 1).

What is a 'good' amount of detail to answer the questions with? I feel that I've covered the points, but I'm not sure if I'm being too concise with my answers. It all seems a little open-ended.

Maybe I'm panicing a little as it's my first assignment.

Thank you Peasie. My work seems to tally with what you'd said. I re-did the balance sheet and pointed out what I'd changed. I might have to write a little more for the 3rd question though.

I'll get my assignment sent off over the weekend and see what comes back. Fingers crossed what I've read will have clicked in my head and I've made some sense of it.

One other piece of advice regarding assignments. I've seen a few people on here basically asking for people to do the assignments for them. There will come a point (probably) when you just haven't a clue what to do. Fair enough asking for a hint - but I've found stuff is more likely to stick in my brain when I've sent in the assignment as best as I can do and then it comes back asking me to re-do the assignment and hint given pointing out where I've gone wrong. Rather than getting the hint first then sending in a correct assignment. Looking at what I've just wrote doesn't make sense as it implies it is better to post everything off wrong. As I said above "I know what I mean".

While I have do idea about your assignment, in general it is a good idea to look at the number of mark as a clue to how much to write.  If the question has 3 mark then you need to write 3 things the marker can give you a mark for.

Good luck, Sylvia