accountants Articles

Happy Halloween from all the team at Umbrella.co.uk.
marketing | 31 October 2019
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Happy Halloween from all the team at Umbrella.co.uk.

We’ve all been embracing Halloween in the office today whilst fundraising for Mind, our charity of the month.

 

Congratulations to Kirsty Bisset who is our August Employee of the Month

Kirsty’s consistently high quality and quantity of the accountancy work she churns out for Umbrella Accountants is much appreciated by clients and colleagues alike. 

Kirsty is a regular winner of our ‘Accounts Smasher of the Month’ award and has always been ready to offer advice and support to her accountancy team mates. 

Well done Kirsty for this long overdue recognition, and keep up the good work!

Six tax changes contractors need to know about in 2018

For many contractors, the Christmas break finished as quickly as it started. A whirlwind few days of stressed-out travelling and mince pie gorging is all that your average contractor can expect before its back to work.

But the New Year period does offer some space for quiet reflection.

Many contractors will have set New Year’s Resolutions and many of these will have centred on money. 

Incurring the same expense each week?

You can save time by setting up recurring expenses each month/week

You can add the expense, category, date, description etc. If the expense is recurring, you will then chose from the drop down menu how often you wish for it to be logged (every week, two weeks etc).

We have a very tasty latest entry for our Umbrella Bake Off. 

Daniel Bird from Accounting kept the competition strong and the office fed with his Carrot and Walnut Cake with cream cheese filling. 

We have 20 staff taking part so expect more than a bakers dozen of delicious cakes over the coming months! To make sure everyone in the department takes part they have the motto “No Bakey, No Cakey!” 

East Cheshire Hospice’s Winter Dreams Ball
marketing | 5 December 2018
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By way of reward for their Employee of the Month awards in 2018, 10 members of staff enjoyed the East Cheshire Hospice’s Winter Dreams Ball on 30th November.  Everyone had a fantastic time and enjoyed the top quality food and entertainment.

We were delighted to be able to acknowledge and reward the contributions of all of our Employees of the Month over the last year, as well as offer further support to the East Cheshire Hospice who we have fundraised for as our nominated charity in 2018.

 

Early Bird Self Assessment Discount Umbrella Accountants

Early bird offer - Discounted price of £150 + VAT – Ends 31st August

Tired of finishing that self-assessment with just a few late January days to spare? This could be the year when you finally make a change.

It’s a feeling that many contractors will be all too familiar with. One minute you’re toasting the end of another successful year, the next you’re staring down at a mountain of work you didn’t get done before the Christmas break and, all the while, precious seconds are ticking down on the self-assessment deadline.

Sure, you don’t really want to think about it while the World Cup is on and the sun is out, but completing your tax return paperwork early does have a lot of benefits.

Here are four that we think are most important.

FreeAgent Partner Meeting,Umbrella,Accountants,Contractor Accountants,Contractor

On the 5th July our Operations Director, Neil Armitage, will be attending the Strategic FreeAgent Partnership Meeting up at FreeAgent Headquarters up in Edinburgh.  

We’ve attended every partner summit so far and taken part in the self-employed tax summit.

Our partnership with FreeAgent is important to us as a practice as it’s the leading cloud platform for contractor accountancy which means we can be part of steering the direction FreeAgent travels so that we can provide even greater levels of service and portal usability to clients. We will report back after the meeting on developments that will affect our clients.

We're recruiting across the board here at Umbrella Accountants and consequently I'm getting to read a lot of CV's. Some of them are clearly refined by efficient recruiters and then there are others telling me about how they spent 2 weeks on a paper round in 1983 as part of their 20 year career in accounting.

One thing that does appear on both direct CV's and those from a recruiter are those boilerplate phrases that are repeated so often they mean absolutely nothing. You know, just like the most standard one that appears in almost every CV and is in the title of this post. Others you may see far too often are "I am conscientious, hardworking and trustworthy", the amazing revelation that someone "Works well under pressure" or posesses that most rarest of skills - "can communicate at all levels".

All at Umbrella offer their heartiest congratulations to Sarah Maurice-Jones for being chosen as Employee of the Month for May.

Sarah is an inspirational and motivating leader of the Customer Services team who has ensured that our standards of customer care have not dropped while the industry has coped with the effects of recent legislative changes.

Well done Sarah!

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