Lately, there’s been quite a lot of emphasis on people emigrating from Ireland. It’s hardly surprising of course since a generation of people seem to be fleeing the country in the hope of creating a better life for themselves elsewhere. Documentaries like RTÉ’s Generation Emigration capture the plight of some of these individuals in an […]
Q: We had to let one of our employees go last week – it was a mix of cash-flow and levels of competence, as we’d had a couple of clients complaining. As part of a redundancy settlement, we agreed to pay him his full wages at the end of the month. However, as I’ve been […]
Last month, President Higgins signed the Finance Act 2012, a bill which introduced a number of new measures to improve the business tax regime, into law. One of the key features in the Bill was the corporation tax relief scheme for start-up companies. Under the new rules, and in accordance with an announcement […]
Q) We’ve just signed a contract to do some work on behalf of a well known charity. Our payment terms are 50% of the agreed amount upfront, 25% to be paid on completion of half of the contract, with the outstanding balance due once the project has been delivered in full. However, when we submitted […]
Most solid Irish companies that want to scale up have an eye beyond these shores – for many businesses, the home market alone simply doesn’t have the breadth and depth to sustain growth. But exporting isn’t as easy thing to do, and many business owners have wasted money on ill-thought-out international expansion. If you want […]
In January this year, Minister for Justice and Equality Alan Shatter announced what I believe to be one of the most progressive pieces of legislation that we have seen for some time. The Personal Insolvency Bill 2012 will be welcome news to thousands of Irish people right now in that it deals with the financial […]
I have been running a small photography business in Galway for the last two years. Up until now I’ve managed to keep the company going through savings that I had myself and also by increasing the amount of clients I have. However, lately I’ve found myself in a tight spot when it comes to cash […]
I’ve been in business with four other business partners for roughly six years now. Things had been going well for us – we are suppliers of materials to the construction industry – until last year when our sales took a big drop. We did everything any business would do to get through a difficult […]
Over the past 18 months or so, a number of our clients have asked our advice on how they can cut business costs without harming the day-to-day running of their company, or indeed productivity. Obviously, there is only so far one can go when it comes to making redundancies – a reduced workforce, after all, […]
I’m having real cashflow problems in my business at the moment – we’re still outstanding payment on some invoices going back as far as August last year, while others we’ve had to right off as bad debts and accept that the account won’t be paid for one reason or another. We are a small business […]
