Will you be exporting in Export Week?

Export - Red Hanging Cargo Container.

Its the UK Trade and Investment’s 6th annual Export Week (10 to 14 November).

Previous Export Weeks have seen over 17,000 companies in the UK attend exporting focussed events. This week we will again have over 70 events across the UK; there will be at least one event per day in every part of the UK.

According to a recent survey by Barclays Corporate Banking, in new emerging markets 64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product which displays the Union Jack.

A survey by Exact back in June 2014 showed…

The survey of 453 SME leaders found that 54% of SMEs now sell products or services abroad. It found that exporting is the biggest growth area for 19% of the UK’s SMEs, and 68% of those who currently export saw export sales increase in 2013 over the previous year. For 18%, exports now account for over half their sales.

HMRC have a helpsheet TH/FS15 which has some helpful advice on importing and exporting.

So will your business be exporting this week?

steve@bicknells.net

Ever thought about working in Georgia?

The CBI have been telling us we need to export more and work with the BRIC’s (Brazil, Russia, India, and China), Georgia have been working hard to make friends inthe UK.

Economics minister Vera Kobalia was featured in the press this weekend (Sunday Express – Tracey Boles)

She would like Easy Jet and Ryanair to join BMI in direct flights from the UK. Georgia wants Free Trade agreements with the UK and many of its citizens speak English. Tourism has increased 40% this year and for hotels willing to set up in Georgia they could get free plots of land and no tax for 15 years.

BP has already invested and Georgia is particularly keen to tap into the UK’s martime expertise to benefits it ports.

steve@bicknells.net

Installing Sage 2012 using Templates

Whether you are changing systems or just want a fresh start with the latest version its worth trying the Sage Templates to upload data.

Once you have loaded Sage, click on Help, then About then Program Directory and you will find a folder called Import Templates, in that folder are Templates for:

Audit Trail Transactions

Customer Record

Fixed Assets Record

Nominal Record

Product Record

Project Record

Project Transaction

Stock Transaction

Supplier Record

The templates are excel files and on the top row are comments on the content required. If you are already using Sage you can export the data, clean it and then re import it.

Basically as a minimum you will want to import outstanding customer and supplier transactions (using the audit trail), static data for customers, suppliers and nominal and unreconciled bank transactions. The opening trial balance can be entered using the Audit Trial import.

Use the Practice Company on Sage until you are confident you know your imports will work.

It takes a bit of time to get the imports correct but once its done it works really well.

Steve@bicknells.net