Utmost to not do any of the urgent stuff – procrastination as an art form – because, let’s face it, most of the items there are NOT exciting… It’s a gift. To be honest, I’ve seriously looked at a lot of it to see if I can outsource it to someone else. In vain.

And earlier today I raised my largest fee note for many years.

Mind you – I have spent three years getting the task to fruition and normally I’d have made interim bills on the way but, for circumstances too complicated to explain easily, I’ve had to keep and fund the work in progress since 2015. Okay, most of it was my time and therefore no physical monies were expended but it was time I could have spent doing something I could have billed so I am out of pocket in the balance sheet of life. And I have that little critic in my head expecting the fee to be queried so a lot of time was spent justifying it from time spent. As a rule I don’t altogether like billing for actual time spent as that just encourages you to take as long as you like (or even as long as you can). But there are certain types of assignment where it is realistically the only way. And conversely – if you bill by time taken and you’ve already billed for thirty five hours that week, how can you increase your income? Without working longer hours?

So only bill by time taken if there is no other way…

The best option is to get all your clients on a retainer basis, outsource your entire operation to others who are willing to do it for substantially less than you’ve charged the end user and sit around drinking cups of tea (other beverages are available). I’ve got the tea bit down to a fine art so it’s a start, I am part way there! And, of course I AM procrastinating by writing the blog rather than one of the unexciting tasks.

Also it was a networking morning

so by my lunchtime walk I’d done over six hours out of today, albeit over four of them were at the event. Can’t remember whether I’ve bigged up Business Builders in the past – Ha! Yes I have! Well, looking back at the that post, I mentioned Malcolm Archibald – its founding father and a legend in his own lunchtime (well, breakfast anyway) – and his departure but today we welcomed him back on a visit to the UK. And he’s still as droll nearly a year later. And he admitted to reading my diatribes so he gets a mention for sure. It’s his fault I’ve become the inveterate networker I’ve become (he has a large degree of blame anyway).

So what have I got on the list?

• Set of accounts to be tweaked – nothing exciting but I will have to rummage through some paperwork to find some invoice (this I may be able to ask Lorraine to help with?)
• Set of accounts to be tweaked – I’ve done the hard work but there is an agreed alteration that needs to be progressed that I need to research the accounting treatment for. Complicated and vaguely related to counting angels dancing on pinheads… it will NOT extend the total knowledge of the world but that’s the way it has to be done and I can’t change that.
• VAT return to be finalised but a lot of ancillary entries to be checked through to agree accounting treatment for future annual accounts. Probably what I need to do next but is a little open ended in terms of timescale so I could lose the rest of the week sorting it out in a worst case scenario.
• Synchronising figurework between one accounting package and another. This is not the first year so I wasn’t expecting issues but it looks like the mapping file is incomplete. Have checked with support and it should carry from one year to the next. But having (i) retained earnings, (ii) VAT and (iii) share capital missing is not giving me too much confidence in the response from support.
• Rude debt collecting email. Needs to be done but really depressing to have to do.
• Etc., etc., etc.

Boy do I lead an interesting life.