Author: Helen Barklam

Creating a personal financial budget is the first step you absolutely must take in your journey to financial freedom and control. It is vitally important that you have a strong understanding of both your incomings and outgoings. This allows an analysis of which areas of income and cost can be optimised (increased or decreased) to achieve your goals. In this article, we aim to set out easy to follow steps for creating your own personal financial budget, but also encourage you to think about how you can set yourself up for success in sticking to the budget you create. If…

To buy, send or receive cryptocurrency, you must setup a ‘wallet’. Once setup, only you can access your wallet. If you want to someone to send you cryptocurrency, you must send them an ‘address’ (also known as a ‘public key’). The below code is an example of a public key to receive Ethereum, which has an associated QR code. Whoever is sending you cryptocurrency will require your public key. However, each public key has a corresponding ‘private key’ which only you have access to. This is confidential and should not be shared with other parties. Similar to the public key…

If you want to add up the same cell across multiple tabs in Excel, without manually linking to the individual tabs, you can use this useful technique. First, you must include the tabs you wish to add up within two separating tabs. For example, in the above screenshot, you can see that we have added two blank tabs, named >> and <<, before and after the UK P&L and USA P&L tabs. There is nothing within these tabs – they are included purely for reference. Once the separating tabs are made, you start with the SUM function by typing =SUM(…

The trade creditor days measure essentially allows you to calculate how long it is taking a business to pay its suppliers. Comparing the average trade creditor days in the current period to the prior period average allows you to consider whether the business is paying its debts faster/slower. Of course, a change in days could also be driven by a range of other factors – see ‘what can impact trade creditor days’ section below. There are a number of ways to calculate trade creditor days, with many accountancy books often advocating the most simplistic, but not necessarily the best methodology.…

A prepayment is commonly defined as an expense which has been paid in advance of its due date. As cash has been paid up front, this represents an asset on the balance sheet. It is an asset because a benefit is expected to be received in respect of this in a later period. This concept only exists under the accruals basis of accounting (i.e. where revenue and expenses are aligned to the period to which they relate). Under cash accounting, expenses are fully recorded in the period where the cash payment is made and thus prepayments are never recorded. In…

The FTSE 100, FTSE 250, FTSE 350 and FTSE Small Cap stock market indices are wholly owned by the London Stock Exchange (‘LSE’). The acronym ‘FTSE’ actually stands for ‘Financial Times Stock Exchange’ as the indices were a joint venture between the Financial Times news publication and the London Stock Exchange when they launched in 1984. The LSE operates two markets in the UK, the main market and the AIM market. Companies listed on the main market can have a ‘premium’ or ‘standard’ listing, with different rules applicable to each. The FTSE indices only list companies which have a ‘premium’…

Fractional share investment is simply where you acquire a fraction of a security (e.g. a share, or index tracker fund). Whilst fractional share ownership is possible for UK shares, it is most popular when acquiring US shares where certain shares can cost thousands of dollars per share. For example, Berkshire Hathaway, Alphabet (Google parent company) or Amazon shares. Without fractional share ownership, many smaller investors would be priced out of these opportunities. How does fractional share ownership work? Fractional shares do not trade on the open market. Therefore in order to acquire fractional shares, you must sign up with select…

Revenue is simply the amount that a company makes from selling its products and/or services to its customers. Within the profit and loss, revenue is the ‘top line’. Revenue is also known as ‘sales’ or ‘income’, so don’t get confused by the different terms used. Revenue recognition Revenue should not be confused with cash receipts from sales. Under the ‘accruals basis of accounting’, revenue represents the amount earned or delivered in a specific period and is recognised in accordance with the applicable accounting standard. As a simple example of this, if a retailer sells you a television in December, but…

The opening and closing times for the worlds stock exchanges vary, though they generally close in the evening (in local time). Stock exchanges are simply marketplaces where shares and other financial instruments are traded during opening hours. In order to trade a share or financial instrument on a particular stock exchange, that security must be listed there. Each stock market is subject to its own government regulations and rules. Whilst historically the majority of trading at the stock exchange was done in person (picture scenes of traders screaming buy or sell), the vast majority of trading is now done digitally…