Lets go back to basics....
- Detail a list of your personal and business outgoings to calculate your total monthly outgoings, assess which of these are considered non-essential and can be cancelled or frozen temporarily;
- Mortgage Lenders - If you are self employed and business has been affected, contact your mortgage lender and request the mortgage holiday, which will apply for 3 months.
- Landlords - Although there have been calls for landlords to relax private rental payments at this time, the government have not enforced this as yet, but given there is a mortgage break in place, I would encourage tenants to contact landlords in extreme situations to request a temporary rent break if they require it.
- Tax Liabilities - The HMRC helpline is accepting time to pay arrangements on all current outstanding liabilities currently due, and will be sympathetic to all reasonable proposals to repay. They have asked people not to get in touch about future liabilities at the moment due to the number of calls being received.
- Cost Cutting Exercise - Print out your bank statements, work through these systematically and check that all direct debits and standing orders relate to existing services that you require, and are essential for the continuation of your business at this present time.
- Don't just cancel Direct Debits and Standing Orders without making contact with the companies that will be expecting payment. Most of the systems that these companies run on, will be automated and may send an instruction to Equifax/Credit Referencing which could impact your credit rating if you haven't agreed a repayment plan or payment break first.
- Once you have a total for weekly/monthly outgoings, assess with the cashflow you currently have available, how many weeks/months you will be able to continue trading if there are no sales that are generated.
- Insurances - check what you are insured for. Does your business insurance offer business interruption cover. Does your health insurance cover you for corona virus.
- You may need to alter your business model quickly to cope with the way the world is changing, start exploring options for navigating this new challenge, online and remote working solutions and better technology to cope with the changes.
- Review your business plan, and start looking at the current business threats methodically, and respond to each one individually, writing down possible solutions to help minimise business interruption or loss of trade and remember, you are a business owner, we are built from strong stuff. Being resilient is the reason we have all made it this far!
- Keep your records up to date, or if you have been falling behind use this time, that your business may suffer a quiet spell, to work on this. If the government set any criteria around the funding applications, it will most likely be to prove that your business was healthy and profitable before the crisis, in order to gain some financial assistance to reinstate it to this position. In which case, they may need up to date reporting to confirm the position before and after this incident, there has never been a better time to get your house in order.
Get in touch if you have any questions.
Take care,
Emma