Business: the financial and legal team

By Lynne Franks

Your first order of business should be to find your team of financial and legal advisers.

Personal recommendation is always the best way to find accountants and lawyers, so start asking your friends, family and business associates who they use and if they'd be appropriate for a start-up business.

Start collecting phone numbers and make appointments with those advisers who sound the most suitable, checking that they don't charge for the first appointment. Remember that legal and financial advisers specialise, so make sure that whoever you select is appropriate for your particular enterprise. And don't ignore personal chemistry. You want whoever you work with to be sympathetic to your vision as well as patient and accessible.

Most lawyers, accountants, and financial advisers work on an hourly basis, and the rates can vary immensely. Go through their costs carefully, checking on any hidden costs or expenses they may charge. The bigger their company and the more centrally located their office, the higher their fees usually are.

Try to find a small operation, which can give you the good advice you need at a price you can afford. Ask them how much time they estimate they'd have to spend on your business the first year, including setting up the legal structure, registering the name, creating a trade mark if necessary and all the other legal and financial needs you are going to have.

Work out what this will cost overall and add this to your budget, together with the legal registration fees and taxes that they can tell you about. Also, ask your accountant to advise you as to whether or not you'll need to hire a bookkeeper.

Sometimes it makes more sense initially for you to look after your money yourself, with guidance from the professionals, and then look for a part-time bookkeeper once you're more established.

Taking a crash course on basic bookkeeping at a local evening college, or even a more general one on business management, would be a very good idea, if you haven't had some practical financial experience in the past. I studied bookkeeping as part of my secretarial training more than 30 years ago, and I found it essential when setting up my first agency.