The back office,
in detail
Everything covered, what makes a butcher's books different, how we compare to doing it yourself, and who's actually doing the work. ← Back to the overview
Your best month means nothing
until the money lands
Credit control is the job every small business knows it should do and almost none of them actually do. It's not difficult. It's just uncomfortable, and it has to happen on a schedule whether you feel like it or not.
That's exactly the sort of job to hand to someone outside the relationship. We can be firm with a slow payer on a Tuesday and you can still shake their hand on a Wednesday.
- Invoices raised and sent the same day the order goes out
- Statements to every account on a fixed day, every month
- A written chase sequence: reminder, statement, phone call, letter before action
- An aged debt list you actually see, so you know who owes what and for how long
- A stop-list conversation before a small debt turns into a big one
- Statutory late-payment interest and compensation applied where it's worth applying
- New trade accounts credit-checked and terms agreed in writing before the first delivery
The uncomfortable arithmetic
If you turn over £8,000 a week and your customers take 45 days to pay instead of the 7 you agreed, roughly £43,000 of your money is sat in other people's accounts at any moment.
Getting that back to 14 days doesn't win you a new customer. It just hands you back most of your overdraft, and it costs a fraction of what the overdraft does.
Talk To Us →Will you upset my customers?
No. Chasing on a schedule, in writing, politely, is what every well-run business does, and trade customers expect it. What upsets people is silence for eight weeks followed by a row.
Do I have to change accountant?
Not at all. We do the day-to-day books and hand your accountant a clean year-end pack. They usually welcome it, because it makes their job quicker.
What if I've let it slide for a year?
Then you're normal, and it's not the first time we've seen it. We start with a catch-up: get the backlog entered, find out what's really owed, and go from there.
A butcher's books
aren't like other books
A good general bookkeeper will keep your records tidy. But there are four things about this trade that catch people out every single time, and they're the four that cost real money.
VAT: zero-rated, mostly
Raw meat is zero-rated. Hot food, catering, pet food and some prepared lines are not. The split has to be right on the till, on the invoice and on the return: three places, one answer.
Catch weights: ordered in pieces, sold by the kilo
Twelve chickens is not twelve of anything on the invoice. It's 21.4kg. If the books are posted off the order rather than the weighed invoice, your sales figure is wrong all year.
Wages: weekly, and rarely simple
Weekly-paid staff, Saturday lads on youth rates, overtime at Christmas, holiday pay on variable hours. It's a payroll run fifty-two times a year, each one filed on or before payday.
Two businesses: counter and trade, side by side
Cash over the counter and 7-day terms to a pub are two different businesses in one set of books. Kept apart, you can see which one's carrying the other. Mixed together, you can't.
We're in this trade every day. We know what a kill sheet is, why the invoice total doesn't match the order, and what a bank holiday week does to your wage bill, so nothing has to be explained twice.
Set it up right on day one,
and it never becomes a mess
Almost every problem on this page started as a shortcut in the first three months. Get the foundations in before you open and the admin stays a twenty-minute job for the life of the business.
Company & registrations
Limited company or sole trader, registered at Companies House, PAYE scheme opened, VAT registration when you need it, and the business bank account set up properly from the start.
Books from the first invoice
Cloud bookkeeping set up and connected to your bank, with a chart of accounts that suits a butcher's rather than a generic template. Nothing to catch up on later.
Terms, prices & paperwork
Trade terms in writing, a credit application form, invoice and statement templates, and a price list that holds up when a customer asks why it's gone up.
First staff, done properly
Contracts, right-to-work checks, the pension scheme, and the first payroll run, so your first employee doesn't become your first HMRC letter.
And if you're taking over an existing shop, the same applies in reverse. We go through what you've inherited, find out what's genuinely owed to you and by you, and get it onto a clean set of books before the first quarter's out.
Do it yourself, hire someone,
or hand it over
All three work. They just cost you very different things, and the cheapest-looking one is usually the one that costs the most.
| You, on a Sunday night | Part-time office staff | Butchers Block Advisory | |
|---|---|---|---|
| What it costs | Your only day off | Wages, NI, pension, holiday, cover when they're off | A fixed monthly fee, agreed before we start |
| When it gets done | When there's time, so: late | The days they're in | To a schedule, every week, whatever else is going on |
| Trade knowledge | Yours, and it's good | Has to be taught the trade first | Already knows catch weights, zero-rating and weekly wages |
| Credit control | Awkward. They're your customers | Often avoided for the same reason | Done at arm's length, on a fixed sequence |
| If they leave or you're ill | Nothing happens for a fortnight | It all stops | It carries on |
| What your accountant gets | A carrier bag | Depends entirely on who you hired | A reconciled year-end pack, which usually cuts their bill |
| Getting out | Not applicable | Notice, redundancy, an awkward month | Give us a month's notice and take your books with you |
The honest version: if your books genuinely take you an hour a week, keep doing them. If they take a day, or they're not getting done at all, that day is worth more on the block than it is at the desk.
The whole back office,
itemised
Take all of it or take one piece. Plenty of shops start with payroll alone, or just the chasing, and add the rest when they can see it working.
Bookkeeping
- Sales and purchase invoices entered weekly
- Bank, card settlements and cash takings reconciled
- Supplier statements checked against what you've been billed
- Receipts captured by phone photo, no shoebox
- Cloud software set up and kept current
- Counter and trade reported separately
- A simple monthly summary you can actually read
- Year-end pack prepared for your accountant
Credit control & invoicing
- Invoices raised and sent the day of delivery
- Monthly statements to every trade account
- A written chase sequence, followed every time
- Aged debt report so you see who's slipping
- Payment terms agreed and confirmed in writing
- Credit checks on new trade accounts
- Letter before action where it's needed
- Stop-list recommendations before a debt gets away
Payroll
- Weekly, fortnightly or monthly runs
- Payslips out to staff however they prefer
- RTI submitted to HMRC on or before payday
- Starters, leavers, P45s and P60s
- Holiday pay, SSP, SMP and overtime
- Auto-enrolment pension assessed and filed
- Minimum wage bands and April changes applied
- A clear figure for what to pay and when
VAT, admin & set-up
- VAT returns prepared and filed under MTD
- Zero-rated and standard-rated split done correctly
- Companies House filings and confirmation statement
- Company formation and PAYE/VAT registration
- HMRC letters opened, understood and answered
- Supplier and utility admin chased down
- Customer records and price lists kept straight
- Deadline diary, so nothing arrives as a surprise
The same person,
every week
This isn't a call centre or a portal you upload things to. It's one person who does the books, makes the calls and runs the payroll for a handful of butchers and small food businesses, and who has been doing exactly that, for exactly these businesses, for years.
You'll have her mobile number. You'll speak to the same person about a wage query in March as you did about a slow payer in January. And when something arrives from HMRC that you don't understand, you send a photo of it and get a plain answer back.
- One named person, not a rota
- Her direct number: call or message, not a ticket system
- Small, deliberately: we take on what we can genuinely service
- Everything held securely and covered by a written agreement
Already work with us on the meat?
If your orders come through the Butchers Block platform, the books get easier still: invoices, weights and customer records come straight off the system, so there's nothing to retype and nothing to reconcile twice.
You don't have to be a platform customer to use us for the books, and you don't have to use us for the books to be on the platform. They just fit well together.
See The Butcher Offer →Is this only for butchers?
No. Most of our clients are butchers or food businesses, which is why the page is written this way, but we do the same for any small trade or retail business where the office keeps losing to the shop floor.
Where do you cover?
Essex, east London and the surrounding counties for face-to-face work. The bookkeeping, payroll and chasing all work perfectly well at a distance, so further afield is fine too. We'd just come and see you less often.
What do you need from me?
Access to your bank feed in read-only, your sales and purchase paperwork however it arrives, and hours for the payroll. That's genuinely it. The rest is our problem.