Category

Running a Business

This section takes you through every important aspect of how to run a successful business. It offers expert guides and advice articles on the key elements of business management such as employing staff, finding customers, marketing and sales, pricing, people management, office and home working, business technology and everything else an entrepreneur must tackle in order to succeed.

Renegotiating signed contracts

As a business owner you'll be required to sign hundreds of contractual agreements with suppliers, customers and shareholders. But what happens if circumstances change and you want to get out of a contract?

Legal advice

Marketing

A guide to pay-per-click advertising

Internet advertising has rapidly come of age and is a method by which small businesses trading online can drive large numbers of customers to their sites at relatively little cost. This guide should prove useful in getting started on the pay-per-click road.

Legal advice

Moving abroad: legal issues

From a legal perspective, the rights and obligations affecting business owners vary greatly from country-to-country, so it is essential to understand the environment you are heading into prior to departure.

Legal advice

Legal entitlement to taking breaks

What is the legal entitlement to breaks relating to hours worked?

Business management

Setting up business in France

For many Britons, France is the obvious choice to start a business, given its proximity, excellent transport links with the UK and the fact that many UK expatriates are located over the Channel, meaning a potential ready-made British market awaits. However, there are several things to bear in mind before you book your Eurostar ticket.

Productivity Zone

Two weeks’ work in three hours?

Business technology has enabled today's small businesses to do as much work in one day as their 1966 counterparts managed in two whole working weeks, according to recent research.

Business management

Managing your time effectively to help organise your workflow

Ask any business owner and they'll tell you time management is absolutely key. It's a fact of business life that there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done, so it's vital to make every second count. Here are some tricks to help organise your workflow and find clever ways to save time and be more productive.

Employing & managing staff

Paying for prescription glasses as an employer

Employees who spend a lot of their day in front of computer screens can experience eyesight problems and it is the employer's responsibility, to a certain extent, to pay for eye tests and, if necessary, the spectacles themselves. This guide will explain in more detail your obligations.

Business management

Managing your time effectively to help organise your workflow

Ask any business owner and they'll tell you time management is absolutely key. It's a fact of business life that there are never enough hours in the day to get everything done, so it's vital to make every second count. Here are some tricks to help organise your workflow and find clever ways to save time and be more productive.

Employing & managing staff

Paying for prescription glasses as an employer

Employees who spend a lot of their day in front of computer screens can experience eyesight problems and it is the employer's responsibility, to a certain extent, to pay for eye tests and, if necessary, the spectacles themselves. This guide will explain in more detail your obligations.

Legal advice

Need to know: Age discrimination laws

Getting to grips with the minefield that is age discrimination is a perennial problem for small sized businesses, but owners ignore these issues at their peril.

Legal advice

Holidays for the self-employed

Holiday entitlement for sole traders and the self-employed can be a tricky business. In the intance of a self-employed decorator who has worked for the same company for nearly two years, Peter Done explains why it's such a complicated issue.

Finding and selling to customers

Top 10 ecommerce tips

Online auction websites such as eBay and Amazon have spawned a generation of online entrepreneurs setting up their own ecommerce sites. These top ten tips may help you follow in their footsteps.

Employing & managing staff

Hiring self-employed sales people

What's involved in hiring self-employed sales people to work for my company?

Investing in a franchise

Should I buy a franchise or go solo?

Starting a new business is an exciting venture. But – especially in well-established industry sectors – a key question is whether it would be better to buy a franchise or go solo.

Partner content

16 ways to improve your business cash flow

Read here for 16 tried and tested tips and tricks to improve potential cash flow problems

Business management

How to create good cashflow habits

HSBC - Advertising feature

Partner content

What are the benefits of business broadband?

Business broadband offers a host of advantages over standard domestic connections, here’s why you should be considering an upgrade