Whether you are an employer running an accountancy practice or an individual sole trader, the current coronavirus crisis is a worrying time.

As well as having to run your practice from home and unable to meet clients face to face, you may be facing a drop or loss of income. At the same time, you could be faced with having to pay your employees and your overhead costs while having a very little turnover. We look at the support available, and where to access it.

What support is available for SMEs and employers?

Chancellor Rishi Sunak has unveiled a package of measures to help employers through the current crisis.

These include:

• a Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme
• deferring VAT and Income Tax payments
• a Statutory Sick Pay relief package for small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs)
• small business grant funding of £10,000 for all business in receipt of small business rate relief or rural rate relief
• the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme offering loans of up to £5 million for SMEs through the British Business Bank
• the HMRC Time To Pay Scheme

The Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme

All UK employers will be able to access support to continue paying part of their employees’ salaries for those employees that would otherwise have been laid off during this crisis. All businesses are eligible, and in practice, it means that the government will cover up to 80 percent of your wage bill.

If you are an employer or business owner, you will need to designate affected employees as ‘furloughed workers’. You notify your employees of this change and tell HMRC through a new online portal.

HMRC will reimburse 80 percent of furloughed workers wage costs, up to a cap of £2,500 per month for each employee. HMRC is working urgently to set up a system for reimbursement. It is up to you whether you make up the additional 20 percent of wages. You can find out more information here.

Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan

If your business has a turnover of less than £45 million a year and needs short term cash flow support, you may be eligible for a coronavirus business interruption loan.

The temporary scheme provides small businesses with access to loans, overdrafts, invoice finance and asset finance of up to £5 million and for up to 6 years.

You can also apply for a Business Interruption Payment to cover the first 12 months of interest payments. The scheme is available from commercial banks and backed by the government-owned British Business Bank.

There are 40 eligible providers and you can find out about them here: Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS) – Accredited Lenders and Partners

Deferring VAT and Income Tax payments

The government is deferring Valued Added Tax (VAT) payments for 3 months from 20 March 2020 until 30 June 2020. Your business will not need to make a VAT payment during this period and you won’t need to make an application – it is automatically applied.

If you’re self-employed, Income Tax payments due in July 2020 under the Self-Assessment system are being deferred until 31 January 2021. You will have until the end of the 2020 to 2021 tax year to pay any liabilities that have accumulated.

This is an automatic offer with no applications required. No penalties or interest for late payment will be charged if you defer payment until January 2021.

Time to Pay

HMRC have also scaled up their Time to Pay offer to all firms and individuals who are in temporary financial distress as a result of COVID-19 and have outstanding tax liabilities.

All businesses and self-employed people in financial distress, and with outstanding tax liabilities, may be eligible to receive support with their tax affairs through HMRC’s Time To Pay service. It is being dealt with on a case by case basis.

What if I am paying sick pay to my employees?

The government is working on legislation to allow SMEs and employers to reclaim Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) paid for sickness absence due to COVID-19. 

It will cover two weeks of sick leave and is available for employers with fewer than 250 employees.

Am I eligible for a business rate holiday?

There is a Small Business Grant Scheme available from your local authority to support your business if you already pay little or no business rates because of small business rate relief (SBBR), rural rate relief (RRR) and tapered relief. 

The support will be in the form of a one-off grant of £10,000 to eligible businesses to help meet their ongoing business costs. Your local authority will write to you if you are eligible for this grant and you do not need to apply. You can find out more here.

Commercial insurance

Most commercial insurance policies are unlikely to cover business interruption due to Covid-19. You might be able to claim if the wording in your insurance policy covers government ordered closure and pandemics.

Hardship relief

The hardship fund will reduce the 2020 to 2021 council tax bills of working-age people receiving Local Council Tax Support. The level of support is decided by the council, taking account of local circumstances, but will provide a reduction on council tax bills to lower-income households, taking account of income and savings.

Reduced business rates

In England, councils can reduce your business rates bill under the Expanded Retail Discount scheme. To be eligible, you must satisfy your council that you would be in financial difficulties without it and that help for your business would be in the interests of local people. 

Unfortunately, accountancy practices do not qualify for this relief under the Expanded Retail Discount 2020/21: Coronavirus Response relief. You can find out who is eligible here.

What help is there for employees?

If you are an employee it may be that your employer will continue paying your normal pay for the next few weeks, especially if you are continuing to work from home. Some employers are now not able to meet their financial obligations to staff. If this is the case, you will be covered by the government’s scheme to cover 80% of wages.

If this is the situation at your place of work, then your employer will contact you and let you know that you are being ‘furloughed’. This means you are taking a temporary leave of absence during which you will not be working but you will not be made redundant.

You will be paid by your employer and do not need to apply for it yourself. You may receive the further 20 percent from your employer if they decide to top it up. You can find out if you are eligible here.

What about redundancy?

If your employer decides to make you redundant, they will still have to provide a statutory minimum payment. Each company will have its own terms for payment which may be better than the minimum set out by the state, but you can find out the minimum you are entitled to here.

If you are off sick you should be paid for the two weeks you are ill or required to self-isolate. The sick pay provided by your employer will be more generous than the government’s statutory sick pay. You can now claim from day one of your illness instead of day four. Find out more about SSP here.

Mortgages

You can use the mortgage payment holiday scheme announced by the chancellor to stop your payments for three months. You will need to get in touch with your own bank, who will fast track your application to have your mortgage payments suspended. You can find out more about it from the Money Advice Service here.

What help is there for self-employed people?

Universal credit is a benefit available to many who are employed, self-employed, unemployed or on low incomes, provided you’ve less than £16,000 savings in your household. You can check if you are eligible here.

You might also be eligible for Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) if you have a health condition that affects the amount of time you can work. There is more information here.

If you are self-employed you cannot claim statutory sick pay but you can claim universal credit.

The new package for self-employed people

This week the Chancellor announced a new self-employed income support scheme. The government will pay self-employed people a taxable grant based on their previous earnings over the last three years, worth up to 80 percent of earnings, and capped at £2,500 a month. It will run for a minimum of three months and is available to anyone with average profits of £50,000 or less.

In order to qualify you need to earn the majority of your income from self-employment. You need to have submitted a tax return for the 2018 to 2019 tax year and will be available by June to cover the months of March to May.

You don’t need to apply – HMRC will contact you if you are eligible. The money will be paid straight into your bank account.

So far there has been no specific mention of what support might be available for contractors and freelancers working through Personal Service Companies (PSCs) in the UK. 

The Treasury has said that those who pay themselves a salary and dividends through their own company are not covered by the scheme but will be covered for their salary by the coronavirus job retention scheme if they are operating PAYE schemes. In order to qualify you need to earn the majority of your income from self-employment. You need to have submitted a tax return for the 2018 to 2019 tax year and will be available by June to cover the months of March to May.

You don’t need to apply – HMRC will contact you if you are eligible. The money will be paid straight into your bank account. So far there has been no specific mention of what support might be available for contractors and freelancers working through Personal Service Companies (PSCs) in the UK.

Further reading:

• Coronavirus help and information
• AAT President: 8 takeaways from the coronavirus crisis
• Can HMRC cope with the pressure of Covid-19?

The coronavirus crisis is rapidly accelerating digital adoption and will change the world of work.

AAT President John Thornton has been talking to members up and down the country and monitoring developments.

Here are 7 takeaways based on his observations on the coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis.

1. Calm analysis needed – fast

Struggling businesses need answers from accountants, and they need them quickly. Members in businesses, as well as in practice, are responding to those needs.

“Never before have accountants been in a situation where it is quite so important that they give calm objective advice and move at high pace.

“Employers and clients are looking for people who can calmly and objectively respond at speed with analysis and understanding of what is going on.

“The people that can respond to those pressures are now coming to the fore.”

Coronavirus – feedback and questions

AAT here is here to help. Use this form to give AAT feedback and ask questions about the coronavirus crisis.
Feedback form

2. Technology is a life-saver

Technology is now an essential survival tool – both for individuals and businesses – as we come to terms with the national lockdown.

Clients who only a short while ago barely had email are now wide-open to digital collaboration.

“Suddenly people want very quick responses looking at cash flow, risk, detailed analysis of where they could make cost savings.

“People tend to adapt through necessity. We are seeing a rapid acceleration in people discovering new technologies are useful to them.

3. Work could change forever

Businesses of all types and sizes are quickly becoming hooked on the ability to do things rapidly and remotely using digital tools. Thornton believes this could lead to permanent changes in the employment market.

“What is happening now has forced everyone to realise the benefits of information-sharing technology. Imagine how much worse the economy would be around the world without them.

“This will also change approaches to recruitment and staff retention. If you are in central London and resources are really expensive, you will be more willing to recruit good people that live in rural Wales, Cornwall or some other area.”

4. Digital skills even more critical

Many employers will want to continue using technology to streamline their operations after the coronavirus crisis is over. They will be looking for accountants who have digital and advisory skills to help them do that.

Thornton believes finance professionals need to take CPD seriously to sharpen these abilities and maximise their employability in the future.

“The job situation may be very different after this crisis. People who have developed better technology skills and have invested in themselves will be more marketable.

“Use any window of opportunity to invest in yourself.”

5. DIY cloud users need accountants

Thousands of small businesses have taken a DIY approach to accounting using cloud software. Thornton believes many will now seek help from accountants.

 “What this will make them do is realise the value add of an accountant is not just doing the books. It’s understanding the business and being able to project forward and react rapidly to changing circumstances.”

6. Need for good communication

Thornton urges Licensed Accountants and members in practice to deal sensitively with new business inquiries from companies and individuals in distressed.

“Accounting is about numbers, but the bottom line now is about people, jobs and families.”

He strongly urges members to get on the front foot with communication.

• Calm the situation down.
• Analyse the information available
• Tell them about the help that is available – or that might be coming.
• Communicate again when full details are available.

“Be proactive. Even if you don’t have the answers right away, say: here are your immediate options. When we know more, we will work out what that means for you. Then quickly get that information out to them.”

7. Be realistic about who you can help

Accountants need to use good judgment in dealing with inquiries.

“If you have capacity, be upfront about what you can do and what the cost implications would be. If you can’t help them get out of the way and let them go to somebody else who can.

“Part of being a good professional is to know when to stand back. People in difficulty need to be quickly connected with people who can help them. If you can’t do it, stand out of the way and let them go to someone who can.”

8. Focus on the future

Overall, everyone in the accounting profession needs to remember that there will be a future after the crisis. We should prepare for it.

“At this time, it’s very easy to dwell on the negatives. Even in the hardest times, there are opportunities. If you have your eye on the future and are preparing for it, it will give you more focus and a purpose to work towards.”

Unprecedented events bring unprecedented scenarios. HMRC is at the sharp end as they attempt to deal with the needs of business owners and employees affected by coronavirus (Covid-19) – all of whom need help quickly.

So what’s the current state of play – and is HMRC in a position to respond swiftly and effectively?

There’s no question that HMRC is going to be under pressure. Look at other Government departments and you will see that over 500,000 people have applied to the DWP for benefits in the ten days up to 25 March, with numbers rising all the time.   

What is being planned, and what is HMRC’s role?

The newly announced Job Retention Scheme “allows employers to access financial support to continue paying their employee’s salary for those who would have otherwise been laid off (i.e.made redundant) during this crisis,” according to Selena Baker, Associate Director of business law firm Greenaway Scott.

In practice, employees will receive 80% of their net earnings up to a cap of £2,500 a month, to protect workers from being made redundant. The scheme will be administered by HMRC and will work via a new online portal. To confirm eligibility, employers must:

• Designate their employees as furloughed. This means they must not work for the company during the period claimed for. 
• Notify employees of the change. Changing employees’ status remains subject to employment law. It may be subject to negotiation depending on the details of the employment contract.
• Submit information to HMRC via the portal. Further information to be announced. 

Is HMRC sufficiently well-placed to handle this?

Brian Palmer is Tax Policy Adviser at AAT. “This is a huge challenge for HMRC, but behind the scenes, it is re-engineering itself to deliver.”

Consider the large numbers of staff who were deployed to deal with Brexit, Palmer says; “some of those will be freed up to transfer immediately to the situation we have now.” There is “no doubt” about this, Palmer says, “and some of the ‘business-as-usual’ elements of HMRC’s work will be allowed to slip a little in order to deliver. It is a Government priority and they will do their best.”

Will businesses be allowed time to defer payment of taxes? “Yes. The VAT side should be automatic and immediate; anything between 20 March and the end of June will be automatically deferred.” However, you must apply for this deferral, and the application must be before your filing deadline.

VAT registered businesses do not have to apply to defer the VAT payment but that they are still required to submit VAT returns. The details can be found in HMRC guidance here https://www.gov.uk/guidance/deferral-of-vat-payments-due-to-coronavirus-covid-19

Palmer believes that HMRC will act sympathetically. “If you look at the experiences a few years ago during the Somerset Levels floods, they were sympathetic then. There is a track record for this kind of thing, although of course nothing of this scale and magnitude.” 

Are there any differences in the regions that people should be aware of? “HMRC has been reconfiguring itself to be more consistent over the last few years; it no longer has the regional network that it once had, so there shouldn’t be differences.”

When will businesses receive their grants?

“The first grants should be paid within weeks,” Selena Baker says, “and will apply in respect of all employees on PAYE, including those on casual or zero hours contracts.” According to Business Support, “the Job Retention Scheme will cover the cost of wages backdated to March 1st and is initially open for 3 months, but will be extended if necessary.”

As of 17 April, the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme has now been extended to run until the end of June, and may be extended again if necessary.

What if companies have urgent cash flow problems?

There is a Business Interruption Loan Scheme for interim cash flow. This will support SMEs (UK-based, turnover within £45 million per year). It will help access loans, overdrafts and finance of up to £5 million, for up to six years. Eligible organisations should also benefit from a Business Interruption Payment for the first year of interest payments. This scheme is offered via banks. 

Q&A around the job retention scheme

Q: Are all employers eligible?
A: All UK employers with a PAYE scheme will be able to access support to continue paying part of their employees’ salary for those that would otherwise have been laid off. This includes public sector, local authorities, and charities.

Q: Will companies have to pay back the Job Retention Scheme monies?
A: No. It is a grant, not a loan. If you apply for the Business Interruption Loan Scheme, this will incur interest, but at a favourable rate.

Q: Whose decision is it about whether or not an employee is furloughed?
A: The employers.

Q: What about NI and pension contributions?
A: The 80% or £2,500 (whichever is the lower) is intended to include NI and pension contributions. 

Self-employed now included

Self-employed people have been added to the scheme after some criticism of the Government’s initial decision to exclude the UK’s five million self-employed workers. Whilst the same package is on offer – a grant of 80% of earnings up to £2,500 net – there is a delay until June for those eligible to receive the money. 

The long-term result of this for HMRC is likely to be an increase in NICs for the self-employed to bring parity with employees, from 9% to 12%.

“The issue is in how to make this work,” comments Brian Palmer. “If HMRC is to handle this effectively, it cannot be too complex. The focus should be on hearts and minds and ensuring the spirit of this in the right place. It’s about getting the gestures right now – rather than penny-pinching.”

Exclusions for self-employed

• The grant will only apply if workers’ annual earnings are under £50,000 and if they make the majority of their income from self-employed work. It will be back-dated to March and 3.8 million people are expected to receive the grant. HMRC will contact those affected directly.
• It excludes self-employed people who operate as limited companies, a significant number of people. Also excluded are those recently self-employed who did not file a tax return by January 2019.
• It will be based on average monthly profits over three years. Workers will need to prove they have been affected by Covid-19, but it is a flat-rate grant so the amount is the same regardless of whether the worker has lost 10% or 80% of their business.

Note: All information is correct and up-to-date as of 27 March 2020. As the situation is ongoing and changing daily, some information may change.

Further reading:

• How to apply for automatic extension to file accounts
• Details on eligibility for Job Retention Scheme
• Business Interruption Loan Scheme
• Coronavirus help and information

Here we talk to Cipfa, the accountancy body for public services on what they believe the key priorities are for local governments in regards to coronavirus.

Andrew Burns is associate director at Cipfa and worked for 13 years as the finance director at Staffordshire County Council. He has worked in local government for over 30 years, having started as a trainee accountant at Birmingham City council.

He was Cipfa president in 2017/18 and has been at the cutting edge of local government finance for three decades. Here he discusses the challenges facing local government teams over the Covid-19 crisis.

What were the priorities early on?

There was lots of early talk about what could be done to support businesses. In the last few weeks, we have had good discussions between central and local government finance directors and these are set to continue through the coranavirus crisis.

What are the key roles and priorities now? 

1. Supporting vulnerable members of the community – homeless people, adult social care and children’s social care
2. Councils managing their own council cash flow
3. Helping local businesses with grants and rate reliefs

Councils are doing all this while delivering remotely for the first time and with scarce resources because many members of staff are off sick or self-isolating. Some councils are experiencing up to 20 percent absence rates – so we have a situation where there is more work to do and fewer people available to do it.

What about support from Central Government – has that arrived fast enough?

The government has been fantastic in its response and I have been impressed by the scale and pace of what is being done.

For example, the financial support in terms of the hardship fund for businesses shows how the government is seeking to understand the key issues that are affecting people and businesses as a result of this crisis.

A week ago, the early issues were around governance, decision-making, and cashflow. Now with the emergency legislation having been passed, councils are freed from having to go through the old procurement procedures and spending money without the traditional authorisation processes.

Do councils have the cashflow to deliver support fast?

In the Budget, there was talk of support for businesses over rates, but councils did not know when they were going to be compensated for the lower business rate receipts that they would receive in the future.

Now we know that they are going to receive:

• £3.4 billion in cash from the government to support the first tranche of aid received by councils on 27 March
• £13 billion from the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform covering grants for businesses
• With this £13 billion coming in the first week of April

In this way, the immediate cash flow problem is being solved by having the money in advance. This is the reverse of the normal situation where councils would expect to be reimbursed later. For finance directors, there is now less of a concern around cashflow that there might otherwise have been.

For councils now the advice from government ministers is “do what is right and we will find the money later”. That can be a difficult switch for some finance professionals to make – ordinarily, they are used to thinking about where the money is going to come from before they spend it.

For them, the priority now is getting the money quickly to vulnerable people and businesses.

How have councils been affected by the closure of leisure centres and car parks?

Councils are facing their own financial pressures. There is the loss of income from business rates and council tax and the drop in income from fees and charges for car parking, leisure facilities, and contributions towards the cost of social care

For some councils, the parking and leisure income has fallen through the floor. A Midlands council finance director told me that they would normally receive around £10,000 in car parking income each week, and last week that figure had dropped to £240.

The challenge for councils is that there is a loss of income, issues around cash flow, and the need to spend more money. For district councils, the responsibility is to support housing and the homeless, while for county councils it is adult and children’s social care. So there are different cost pressures for different types of councils.

County councils face rising costs in adult social care while district councils are facing income losses from lack of parking fees and leisure income. For example, one London borough has seen a 70 percent reduction in income from parking over the past couple of weeks. For district councils between one quarter and one-third of their income might come from these types of fees and charges.

For a larger county council around 10 percent of income might come from fees and charges, for example, people paying towards adult social care.

How are councils involved in providing support for business?

Finance teams that might normally have been administering council tax and business rates bills are now being redirected to help get business support packages out as quickly as possible.

Normally at this time of year councils would be involved in closing their accounts and getting ready for audit. The deadline for accounts has now been extended from the end of June to the end of September instead, but many councils are asking whether that extension is long enough.

They are looking for guidance on this because they are prioritising getting money out to businesses and supporting vulnerable people and children. One issue which has come up is the EU rules around providing state aid via grants to business.

Under EU law, any support for business that is more than euros 800,000 would count as state aid. Councils do not want to be subject to legal issues or challenges around this law. 

To reduce the risk of councils facing legal action from the EU, the state aid risk has been shifted to businesses. So it is the responsibility of the business itself to ensure that it does not breach the amount of aid it has accepted. This is because aid might come from various sources and although each separate payment might be below the threshold, they might breach the amount when aggregated.

How do finance teams ensure that they get the priorities right?

It is always more complicated than just giving money to people. Finance directors want to do things properly as well as quickly.

Within councils there will be daily conversations about what are the priorities, what at the pressures, where is the money coming from and what about our own cashflow?

It is about prioritising the right things to do but made more complex by having to do everything remotely and not being able to meet together to make collective decisions. It is about video conferencing and learning to use new technology.

What about financial forecasting for the new financial year?

The other question that councils are wrestling with is what this means for the budgets that were set in February.

The questions financial teams will be asking is: how long do we think this is going to last? What are our cost pressures? What are our income losses likely to be? Can we still deliver our planned savings programs and how can we project this forward? They will be looking at the first quarter and trying to quantify what this means and then making planning assumptions for six and twelve months.

For example, district councils will be asking, if the lockdown continues for six months, how will we make up lost income from leisure and parking?

Finance teams will be trying to forecast and quantify losses and thinking about how much it will affect the reserves they hold. Some councils will have reserves – some will have more than others. Government support has been targeted around business rate income losses and council tax support.

Will councils be able to borrow money if they have a shortfall?

It may be that some will need to borrow money – they are able to borrow for treasury management purposes. However, they cannot currently borrow to payday to day running costs like salaries.

It might be that the government takes a more flexible approach in terms of spending restrictions on cash-strapped local authorities. They might need to have more flexibility in access to borrowing in order to fund more services in the short term.

If a council is unable to balance its budgets then it may have its expenditure reduced under Section 114 notice, issued under the Local Government Act 1988. This happened to Northamptonshire County Council in 2017 and now some other councils might be projecting that their budgets won’t be balanced.

There is the question over whether the government should suspend legislation that requires councils to issue Section 114 notices because this would mean that spending controls are brought in at a time when councils were being encouraged to spend freely to support local communities. Then they would be chastised by their auditors for allowing this to happen. Cipfa is working with the government to seek to address this issue.

Further reading:

• Coronavirus (Covid-19) and data protection: what you need to know
• Coronavirus help and information
• How to plan for continuity in the face of the coronavirus

AAT members share their challenges, how they are working through them, and what they are communicating in relation to coronavirus (Covid-19) crisis.

Cash-flow

One of the most important things for many businesses right now is making sure that they have the cash-flow to survive. Whether this is by furloughing some or all workers, gaining grant funds, offering new products and services or taking more drastic measures. Accountants are the ones to work out which are going to be the best options and the most financially viable.

Coronavirus – feedback and questions

AAT here is here to help. Use this form to give AAT feedback and ask questions about the coronavirus crisis.
Feedback form

The government guidelines

Although the government has announced many support schemes, it is still felt that huge gaps have been left in the information that has been released. It’s non-stop trying to keep up to date with the latest news, communicate it to clients or the rest of the business, and answer the questions that come back.

AAT member, Amanda Lang said, “It’s a huge challenge with not a lot of clarified information from the government. I’m problem-solving by watching the daily press conferences and hoping for some new information.”

What this means for each individual

Finance professionals are becoming the go-to people for finding out what the support means, as it stands, for each individual case. Which grants are available and when? What does furloughing mean for different workers, for holiday entitlement and zero-hours contracts? How to prepare in case employees need Essential Worker Authorisation? What are the best options for the self-employed and one director limited companies?

As things stand, many accountants running small businesses are spending time helping clients to claim but will not be entitled to any of the benefits themselves.

AAT member, Karen Chugg said, “There are so many questions and the information is not there yet to answer them. If there is funding available businesses have to somehow survive until it is released.”

Communication

If you can update people regularly by email, on your website, via social media or by running regular group video calls or webinars then you will reduce the number of incoming questions or at least contain them as much as possible to a certain place and time. Create a relevant database and send out an update every time new information is released via the channel(s) that work(s) best for you and your team or clients.

If clients aren’t digital, then educating them on how to digitalise records, use secure file sharing platforms and have video calls instead of face-to-face appointments is yet another task. Some accountants and bookkeepers are getting bags of paperwork dropped off to them where clients don’t have the ability or equipment to scan documents or work online.

A great positive is that the finance community is really going out of their way to help each other even more than normal. Accounting and bookkeeping Facebook Groups are really useful for asking questions, sharing templates and generally supporting each other, especially if you are working alone.

Getting paid

A dilemma many in practice are facing is doing a lot of extra work and even having to take on additional employees without knowing if they will definitely get paid. They don’t want to add to the stress by demanding immediate payment for work or risk losing clients but also don’t want any uncertainty of getting paid themselves.

Some options are:

• Creating monthly installment payment plans if you don’t currently have them in place
• Asking clients to make smaller payments over a longer period.
• Deferring payments until clients receive grants, loans, wages or start re-trading

Winning new business

It might not feel like it but it’s a really good time to make new connections. If you are being proactive to reassure your clients and see what help they need then they are likely to refer you to others who also need support.

People are spending more time online and on social media right now and there are half as many emails landing in inboxes as normal so put yourself out there if you have the capacity.

Key takeaways

• Keep up to date with the government announcements.
• Communicate regularly with clients and stakeholders.
• Be generous with your help and support.
• It’s a good time to make new connections online.

Summary

Finance professionals across industry and practice are being heavily relied on for problem-solving and to decipher the details of the government support, all of which is as brand new to them as it is to anyone. Don’t try and do this alone, there is lots of support and advice available to you.

Further reading

• Managing the impacts of coronavirus: 10 expert tips for business owners
• Coronavirus help and information
• Coronavirus (Covid-19) and data protection: what you need to know