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Starting your business
Know the difference between a sole trader, limited company and a partnership? This guide explains it all, advises who you’ll need to tell about it to ensure your business is fully legit and gives tips on how to name your business.

Your business plan
The most important document you’ll need. It’s what you use to convince financial backers and your initial customers that your business is worth investing in.

Forming your business
Take a look at our start-up checklist in this guide to assess your abilities, and see how you can begin to develop your business skills, finance your idea and transform it into a success.

Finding premises
Finding the right space to house your business is really important – get it wrong and you could face unnecessary cost and upheaval when you have to move.

Sales and marketing
Once you’ve got the basics you’ll soon be able to start promoting your business, mastering your sales techniques and pitching for new business successfully.

Managing your finances
It’s no secret that businesses need cash to survive, but how you achieve this is another matter. Get to grips with the fundamentals of managing finance, cashflow, accounts, wages and bookkeeping.

Legal lowdown
Licences, business insurance, health and safety, data protection, intellectual property, employment law – there’s a whole host of things you’ll need to address to keep your business within the law.

Understanding tax
There’s no need to be daunted by the thought of tax or the tax man. From income tax, corporation tax, national insurance and VAT to limited companies, employee liability and record keeping, this guide has got it covered.

Setting up your office
Office costs can quickly mount up so it’s a good idea to sit down and plan exactly what you need before you start ordering: from business cards and filing systems to websites and computers, this guide will help you work it out.

Professional business behaviour
This guide’s packed with really useful tips that’ll help you perfect the art of impressing the bank manager, dealing with suppliers, writing letters, networking and more.

Developing your business
As turnover and business grow, you’ll find yourself presented with a number of new issues like developing contracts, finding new investors and recruiting staff.

Sources of help
This is a guide to the organisations that can help your business get off to the right start, including those that’ll give you advice, finance and research material.