What's in store for SME businesses over the next 12 months?

We are experiencing probably the toughest year most of us will have experienced in our lifetime. The impact of everyone is being seen far and wide from a rise in mental health issues to businesses faced with a multitude of different challenges.

Thankfully, there has been support available to most businesses to help us through the crisis. On 24^th September Rishi announced further measures of support which included:

• a new job support scheme;
• an extension to the self-employment income support scheme;
• an extension to the repayment period for bounce back loans;
• the extension of the 5% VAT rate for the hospitality and tourism sectors; and
• an extension of repayment terms for those that deferred their VAT bills and for self-assessment income taxpayers who need more time to pay.

The Chancellor has shown he is very aware of the issues facing business and ready to ‘think outside the box’ to help as many businesses as he can.

Protect your business

These measures will ease some of the impact on cashflow, but SMEs still need to take certain actions and focus on a number of areas to protect their cash, their people and their customers.

In August and the first half of September (pre-the new measures announced) we asked SMEs across the UK to share their outlook for the next 12 months. The findings make for interesting reading – including:

• 61% of SMEs are expecting their revenue to drop over the next 12 months;
• One third (32%) expect to make redundancies; and
• Looking after existing clients, finding new clients and survival are the 3 biggest priorities for SMEs.

You can see a full copy of the tracker polls results together with our observations and some practical steps and actions SMEs can take now. Read the report here.

Here to Help

The landscape is ever changing. As ever, we are here to support you.

If you would like to chat about how the latest measures affect you and practical steps you can take to protect your business, please do get in touch.