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Checklist: buying insurance for your business
Key stages when choosing and buying insurance.
Buy a franchise
What franchising is, how to find and assess franchise opportunities and how to buy a franchise.
Avoid the problems of overtrading: debts
Debt factoring, prompt payment discounts and regulating cashflow help reduce the risk of overtrading.
What is overtrading?
How insufficient finance and resources to sustain a business’s level of trading can lead to overtrading.
Avoid the problems of overtrading: assets
How to solve cashflow shortfalls and bring new money into the business in a variety of ways.
Assessing your cash needs: creditors and debtors
Debtor days ratios and creditor days ratios estimate how long you take to pay debts and customers take to pay you.
Example of overtrading
A case study of a situation of overtrading and the potential disaster it causes.
Avoid the problems of overtrading
How expanding businesses can match production and order cycles using gearing, working capital or quick ratio tests.
Compare balance sheets to assess business performance
Use simple balance sheet comparisons to assess business performance internally and against competitors.
Interpreting balance sheet figures
Liabilities, assets, debtors and intangibles can all give you a picture of a business' financial health.
Business accounting periods
The balance sheet portrays a business' performance over the financial year or accounting period.
What is in a balance sheet?
Fixed and current assets and liabilities are important contents of a balance sheet.
Use accounting ratios to assess business performance
Liquidity, solvency, efficiency and profitability ratio analysis can be used to assess business performance.
The relationship between balance sheets and profit and loss accounts
How transactions in the profit and loss account can affect balance sheet entries and vice versa.
Advantages and disadvantages of buying an existing business
An overview of the advantages and disadvantages of buying an existing business.
Buy an existing business
Advantages and disadvantages of buying an existing business including how to assess and value it.
Existing employees when buying a business
Your legal obligations towards staff already working for the new company.
How to calculate the value of a business
How to find out whether the business you want to buy will be profitable and value for money.
Make sure a business is worth buying: due diligence
Research the new business to ensure it is right for you, use solicitors and accountants to help you.
Where to find a business to buy
Newspapers, trade journals, adverts, magazines, websites and word of mouth will help you find businesses for sale.