Practical help for SMEs & the self-employed: Polls, Portals & Checklists
We’ve been busy working on a few things behind the scenes to help our clients in recent weeks.
Firstly, we have developed a helpful checklist to help you prepare your business for returning to work, something many have started to do this week.
The checklist is a useful reminder of the key things that businesses need to put in place to get their business functioning efficiently, effectively and in accordance with government requirements and guidance.
The checklist is available HERE
Secondly, we have been helping the HMRC to stress test the Self-Employed Income Support Scheme portal (SEISS) which went live on 13th May and enables self-employed workers to claim a £7,500 taxable grant.
It was important to identify and address as many potential issues as possible to make it easier for the self-employed to use and to get the financial assistance they need.
Another thing we have done is conduct a one question poll to better understand the biggest challenges facing SMEs as they return to work from lockdown. If you participated, thank you.
The poll has highlighted that health and safety ranked as the top concern for businesses emerging from lockdown. Cashflow comes second and client confidence third.
This indicates that it is the uncertainty of reopening a business, with all the related complexities that it entails, that businesses are worried about now. They are confident about how to get their basic operations back up and running, but need clarity about how they should be protecting employees and customers, and getting customers to buy from them.
SMEs have indicated that they also need more guidance about how it will impact them and how they will be measured. This ranges from using PPE to managing social distancing in environments that were not designed for pandemics.
The poll results are helping us to look at the different ways that we can help our clients. We will be developing more content and tools to support you on the issues highlighted in the coming weeks and months.
In the meantime, please do get in touch if we can help in anyway.