I have a sole-trader client who is looking to incoporate. Does anyone know of an online incorporation calculator that will compare trading as a sole-trader to a limited company?
Cheers Tim I'd not seen that before and it looks quite useful as does the car benefit workbook.
Downside is that the site doesn't feel like the sort of place that I would like to put my credit card information. It may be completely secure but it just doesn't feel it from their front end which is a shame as I might have been tempted to buy those two spreadsheets on the grounds that it would take more than four hours out of my life to build my own versions so they have to be cost effective at £49 a pop.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
If you're unsure about a site, it's always worth following the process through to get to the point where you would put in your credit card details before making that final decision. In this case, once you've selected what you wish to buy and proceed to the checkout, you are taken to a secure Worldpay page.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
my paranoia in this area is from working in open plan offices and realising exactly how many people are the subjects of identity theft and cyber crime.
On my set of desks of eight people three had had their identities stolen within the last twelve months and one was on his second batch of having had all of his accounts frozen.
The police really didn't seem that interested in any of the cases probably because the whole idea of this sort of crime often being way to complex and spanning geographic boundaries.
I don't know if the police are any more on the ball in England as this was the Police in Scotland. I imagine though it's all the same. If the perpetrator is sitting at a computer in Nigeria then they might as well be sitting on a different planet.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Yes, I know what you mean - but things aren't always as simple as people think when it comes to identify theft and (the more common, but generally part of the same problem) credit card fraud.
I've been subject to and/or almost subject to the latter a number of times - and I'm about as paranoid and careful as it's possible to be, without having a wardrobe full of tinfoil suits and hats, as well as that being the theme for the decor of my home. :)
The thing is that credit card fraud can happen by a number of means - and being careless with your credit card is only one of them: It's even possible to be subject to card fraud with a new, completely unused card. (Look up "BIN attack" for example - this happened to me on one occasion: My [new] card was safe and secure, and totally unused, but the issuer contacted me to tell me they'd had to cancel it and issue a replacement.)
As a general rule, provided payment is being made through a secure payment gateway (ie where you can see the card details are going to someone like WorlPay), paying over the internet is likely to be far safer than using the card in any other way. That said, the financial institutions do themselves no favours when they impliment things like 3-D Secure; embedding that final authentication step in the merchant's webpage is Just Plain Stupid[tm].
Anyway, here's a nice documented example of a bit of card fraud and attempted account takeover (I believe successful account takeover until the supicious card transactions triggered alarms):
Sorry to hear that your another one whose fallen foul of this Vince.
Looking on the bright side though Barclaycard were very professional about it rather than some credit suppliers that immediately jump to the conclusion that the client is the guilty party (although that will have been investigated thougherly inbetween your call and the their call to you).
Might be worth me mentioning here that the team that I was talking about as being subject to identity theft and card fraud was the Payments, Security & Fraud team for a major bank (not Barclays although I have worked with them as well... Actually, I also worked for them for a year until they sold their IT department to a management consultancy and I had a hissy fit over the consultancy that they had chosen (I really wanted to be a permie with either KPMG or PWC who I have worked with a lot in the past but they went with my most despised of the others)).
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
Why be sorry? I'm not - I see it as an unfortunate part of modern life.
I wouldn't necessarily say Barclaycard were professional about it, given the nature of the problem, which was at least in part down to weak security on their part (the other aspect being how the fraudster got hold of my card details in the first place, but that's one that I'll never know in this case). Barclaycard have demonstrated questionable behaviour before that - there's another post on that site, for example, detailing how they rang me and asked for my debit card details in order to make a payment (late, because I'd forgotten). Unsurprisingly, I point blank refused to provide those details because it was them that called me, and expected me to prove who I was with one very weak security question - the kind where they provide one half of the information, and the punter provides the other, ignoring that it's information that is hardly covered by the official secrets act. I find it beggars belief that a well known, and widely used financial organisation can be so incredibly stupid - or to expect their customers to be that stupid.
I suppose, though, that it's fair to say they were professional in how quickly the problem was dealt with - if we ignore the fact that they apparently didn't flag up a problem with my account access as a result of the first call I received from them (the second person I spoke to, when I rang them back a day or two later, was as surprised as the first to discover that I hadn't rang them previously, and that it was someone else claiming to be me), and not to mention the fact that the claims of the last person I spoke to were inconsistent with what had been said up to that point.
And these days, they're so professional that they'll tell you they won't ask for log-in details in an email. And, true to their word, they don't do that. Instead, they present you with a button to click on that will take you to a log-in screen on their website. Which is exactly what phishing emails tend to do, directing the victim to a fake site designed to fool them into thinking it's a real one.
Which begs the question: Why on Earth am I still with them? The answer is because I'm not the average punter - I'm not going to click that link (or hand over those debit card details) to Barclaycard, so I'm certainly not going to hand them over to a phisher, and I'm always incredibly careful (as I've already said), so it would be difficult to lay any blame for any fraud with me.
In short, I feel safe with Barclaycard not because of how professional Barclaycard is, but because of how security conscious I am.
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Vince M Hudd - Soft Rock Software
(I only came here looking for fellow apiarists...)
