Gentong4D

How to Fund a Start-Up: Top Tips From Sam Jones

gentong4d — Sat, 23 May 2026 16:09:40 +0000

Sam Jones’s Dragons’ Den start-up pitch is immortalised as the TV show’s “best ever”, and Harry Redknapp describes him as having the work rate of a top footballer.

In this episode of Sound Advice, Jones revealed his first-hand experience with how to fund a start-up, including how he convinced stars such as Tinie Tempah to invest in his tech start-up, Gener8, a web browser that lets users earn from their online data, and how he took his idea from paper to pitch to product.

Here’s what he discussed with host Bex Burn-Callander:

Why would someone leave a job they love to start a business?

Some founders leave stable careers because they see a market shift or opportunity they believe is too important to ignore.

For Sam Jones, working in global marketing at Red Bull exposed him to how valuable user data had become, and this convinced him there was an opportunity to build a business that gave consumers more control over it.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I’m going to go straight in and ask you about Gener8, the web browser.

What made you decide to take an enormous leap into the unknown and do this, given that I know you were happy at your previous job and having a great time there.

So why take the risk? Tell me everything.

Sam Jones:

I used to work at Red Bull, the energy drink, as part of their global marketing team, most recently as global brand manager.

I was working on and responsible for about one-third of their worldwide advertising, and it was incredible fun working with some of the best athletes in the world to tell their stories.

I realised that when the likes of Facebook, Google or Snapchat pitched to us to tell us why we should advertise with them, they all threw up the same slide.

It was a data slide that said, “Look at everything that we know about our users.”

I would sit there as a user thinking about all of the data tracked I was unaware of. I believed that soon, more people would realise that something tracked them for everything they do online.

With every question they search for, every website they go to, and every item they buy online, tens and sometimes hundreds of different companies collect this information, aggregating it and selling it.

I believed that once a person realises this and recognises that their data’s valuable, they’ll want to do one of two things: either stop this from happening so they can have more control, or share in the rewards and earn from their data.

Simply based on that basic idea, I left Red Bull and started Gener8 to build technology that would empower people to control or earn from their data.

Bex Burn-Callander:

But was it a wrench?

I’m trying to imagine you having this great life, enjoying your job, and then thinking, you know what, I’m going to leave my stable career. I’ll go to plough every waking hour into a new tech business.

Sam Jones:

Making the jump is the hardest thing, or at least it was for me because I was coming from a position like you’re saying where I loved what I did.

It wasn’t that I was at a dead-end or was fed up and wanted to try something new. It was that I was coming from a position of strength where I loved my day-to-day.

So it took a lot of thinking, pondering and conversations before I got the guts to leap.

Eventually, my girlfriend at the time (my fiancée now) said to me, “Sam, you either need to stop talking about this and just put it to bed, or you need to do something and crack on with it.”

So eventually, I started to have conversations with angel investors.

Once I found the first couple of people who wanted to come on board, that gave me the confidence to say, let’s go for this, and I handed in my resignation.

Driven by the realisation of how aggressively tech companies exploit user data, Sam Jones left a dream marketing career at Red Bull to found Gener8 after gaining the confidence and backing of early angel investors.

Can you raise start-up funding without a working product?

Founders can raise early funding without a product by combining a clear idea with credibility, a strong narrative, and convincing signals that the market opportunity is real.

In Sam Jones’s case, Gener8 was still just an idea on paper when he began speaking to investors, but he focused on why he was the right person to build it and why the timing made sense.

Bex Burn-Callander:

How on earth did you convince these angels when you didn’t even have a product to show them?

Sam Jones:

It’s a good question. I was indeed fortunate.

It’s not the usual thing for a solo founder who can’t code to raise money with an idea on a piece of paper.

The odds are against you.

But then again, the odds are against you with everything that you do when trying to build a business. The way I approached it is that ultimately you need to kiss a lot of frogs, have a lot of conversations, and speak to a lot of people.

But if you can find people that believe in your idea, and you can tell them a compelling narrative, giving them proof points that allow them to get the confidence to take a leap of faith in you, it becomes a no brainer.

So from my side with Gener8, even though it was an idea on a piece of paper, I was able to say, “Hey, this is who I am, and this is what I’ve done. These are the reasons that I’m credible and I believe I can pull this off.”

And then I could say if we look at the market and the legislative change that’s coming, consumer sentiment and all of these data points, then we can believe and you can have faith that this vision that I have for the future may well come into fruition.

Then the final piece of the puzzle is them having the belief that you can commercialise that.

Ultimately, at any fundraising stage, it’s those three things that you’re trying to display and show.

The only way or reason that funding gets slightly more straightforward as you go along is that you have more and more proof points to deliver on your narrative and story.

Jones secured funding for his idea by convincing angel investors that his idea was worth pursuing, that he was the right person to pursue it, and that the idea could become profitable.

Why is the first £150,000 of start-up funding both easier and harder to raise?

The earliest stage of fundraising creates a contradiction: it can attract investors because of tax incentives and low entry thresholds, but it’s also the hardest stage because there is no existing investor validation. Sam Jones raised £200,000 for Gener8 at this stage, highlighting how tax incentives can help bring in early believers, even when no one else has committed yet.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Can you tell me how much you managed to raise with just that paper idea?

Sam Jones:

Yeah, that was the first £200,000. The first £150,000 in the UK that you raise is both the easiest and the hardest.

It’s the easiest because there are many tax incentives for high-net-worth individuals called SEIS (Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme). That means that if the venture fails, they get a reasonably good safety net in tax relief.

So at the first £150,000, I think if you’ve got an excellent business and a good idea, lots of people want to come in at that stage so that they can benefit from that kind of protection.

However, it’s also the hardest to raise that first £150,000 because you’ve got no one else by definition who believes in you at that stage and has put money in.

It’s a tricky spot to be in, but that’s how everyone has to start.

How can early start-ups build a product without a full in-house tech team?

Early start-ups can accelerate product development by using external agencies to build an initial version before hiring a full technical team.

Sam Jones used an agency to build the first version of Gener8, which helped him move from idea to working product, learn technical constraints early, and eventually hire a CTO with something real to evaluate rather than just a concept.

Bex Burn-Callander:

So, where on earth do you start? How do you find the tech skills to create something that can be a worthwhile competitor?

Sam Jones:

Well, we didn’t start with the vision of building a browser.

We started with the idea of building technology that empowers people to control and earn from that data. So initially, a browser extension.

In scope, we were a little bit smaller. But the same challenge was there: how do we get from this idea on a piece of paper to a product in the real world?

And there are lots of ways you can go about that.

The textbook way is to hire a great team, sit in a garage, and start coding and building.

But in reality, especially in the UK, although there’s lots of tech talent around, it’s not the easiest thing to find the first hires and the first people to come in and go on that journey with you.

So what I did was use an agency to get version one or version 0.5 of Gener8 out in the world. That was an interesting process because we held an agency pitch where I spoke with four or five different agencies.

And from that, I was able to learn the challenges they foresaw from a technical side, and ultimately any challenges result in increased budget and time.

So in this initial process of holding a pitch, I was able to learn what the difficulties were going to be and how we could overcome them.

Specifically to Gener8, there was a complex problem about what happens within the 600 milliseconds a webpage loads. A lot of different things are going on. And most of these agencies said we don’t know what happens in that timeframe.

That gave me the information to go out and start speaking with industry experts so that I could bring someone on board who could solve that challenge for the agency to execute.

Bringing in these kinds of different people and players worked well.

We then built version one with an agency, and the natural progression was to say, let’s bring this in house.

When it came to hiring and finding our CTO, we were able not just to show them an idea—it’s daunting, saying, “Hey, we want you to be the first hire to build this massive thing.”

Instead, we were able to share the product that worked, and we could say, “Look, this is where we are today. We’ve got X thousand users. Here’s the vision for the future, and we want you to come to manage and grow this.”

It becomes a much easier job of hiring great talent if you’ve got something that you, in the world, you can show.

Hiring an agency to build the first version of his product helped Jones to learn more about the challenges involved and end up with a starting point that he could build on.

How do start-ups handle major unexpected setbacks?

Start-ups handle major setbacks by rapidly shifting from planned growth to survival mode, making immediate cost decisions, and restructuring priorities around runway and viability.

In Sam Jones’s case, when a £1.5 million funding round collapsed during COVID, Gener8 responded by securing extra support from existing investors, cutting costs, reducing salaries, using furlough where necessary, and rebuilding the business around a revised operating model.

Bex Burn-Callander:

It’s incredible how enormous and daunting these big and bold ideas are. When you break them down into these smaller steps, suddenly, anything is achievable.

When you explain each step you took down this path, each one on its own is possible. But the whole thing seems way too big.

Were there any difficulties along this path?

Sam Jones:

Of course. It’s a roller coaster ride as a startup.

The biggest challenge that we faced in the last 24 months was in February and March last year. We had a round of about £1.5m lined up in investment ready to go.

Then in early March, coronavirus started to spread around the world, and consequently, affected our entire round.

We went from this position of feeling confident, having loads of momentum and an excellent hiring plan in place, to all of a sudden, out of nowhere, money had just totally disappeared.

We needed to figure out how we were going to respond and survive.

I went back to existing investors and ultimately convinced them to put a little more money in to extend the runway and continue.

I sat down with the virtual team because we were all broken up at this point and said we’re going to need to do three things.

We needed to respond, rebuild, and recover. We’re had to cut costs. That meant we all had to take pay cuts. We had to use the furlough scheme for a few people, and unfortunately, let people go.

It was a harsh cost-cutting exercise.

And then step two, we needed to rebuild and had to do that by revisiting our fundamentals, understanding what’s changed in the world, and adapting our business as necessary.

Step three was how we wanted to recover by implementing new revenue streams and different approaches, ultimately thinking, “How can we maintain growth through this period?”

So that was a challenging phase, as it was for most of the world.

I think, especially as a startup, you fall into one of two camps at that point.

Either you had good capital in the bank, which meant you could make hay while the sun was shining because everyone was at home and using technology more.

Or you fell into that second camp where we were, which was not a great position to be in, where funds were low, and we had to think creatively about how we get through this.

Gener8 survived the early pandemic through cost-cutting and creative adaptation.

How should founders handle letting people go during a crisis?

When layoffs are unavoidable, founders should be direct about the situation while still actively supporting people’s next steps.

Sam Jones explains that during COVID-related cost cuts at Gener8, the focus was on transparency, honesty, and doing everything possible to help affected employees transition into new roles through references, recruiter introductions, and personal network support.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Is that the first time you’d had to fire somebody, and how on earth do you prepare yourself to have that conversation?

Sam Jones:

I wouldn’t use the word fire.

Letting someone go is never very nice, and ultimately it can happen for various reasons, but I think it’s usually a reflection of the hiring manager or the company at fault.

You should ideally have a process that can give you enough confidence that you’re going to hire the right person, and then you should put them in a position to succeed within the first one or two months.

Coming into coronavirus, of course, was a transparent reason we had to let people go—which was cost-cutting.

They’re just not very nice conversations, but how you approach it is transparently and honestly.

You’re saying, “This is the position we’re in and the reason we have to make this decision. Here are the things we’re going to do to make the transition as easy as possible for you, starting with having the most glowing reference that you could ever receive.

“Secondly, we’re going to put you in touch with these recruiters, and there are these job roles where I think you could be a good fit.

“And thirdly, if there’s anyone in my network that you see hiring, let me know, and I’ll put you straight in contact.”

Ultimately, I think that’s all you can do. Try to support people and recognise that everyone’s human, and it’s not a very nice position for anyone to be in.

Bex Burn-Callander:

What a lovely approach, though, to think about how you help them into their next role.

Rather than focusing on, “Sorry, the world has changed,” it’s more on, “All right, how can we get you on to something else that will make you just as happy and fulfilled?”

When Jones had to cut staff, he focused on being honest with his employees and helping them to land on their feet.

How should founders approach investors when raising funding?

The strongest fundraising outcomes tend to come from targeting investors who bring relevant experience and strategic value, not just capital.

In Sam Jones’s case, early funding for Gener8 came from a mix of inbound interest and deliberately chosen investors with deep industry knowledge, credibility, and the ability to actively help the business grow.

Bex Burn-Callander:

So how did you get these big-name investors on board? Was this after the round disappeared and you went back on the funding trail? Because you’ve got some big celebs invested in the business.

Sam Jones:

We came through coronavirus and had this incredible opportunity to invite me to Dragons’ Den to pitch, which was filmed last September and only aired at the end of April this year.

I was confident. I knew that it had gone quite well as an experience, and I knew the outcome.

What happens in real life is that you’re pitching for two hours to the Dragons, and then they cut this down to 10 to 15 minutes for TV. You don’t know what’s going to air.

By the time it came round, I’d convinced myself that it might not even be that good. We had no idea what was going to happen.

But ultimately, off the back of airing on BBC1 in April, things went crazy.

We went viral on Facebook, with over 20 million views of that pitch.
We went viral on LinkedIn, with another five million views.
We were averaging a new download every 10 seconds for about seven or eight weeks.

Off the back of this momentum, which was incredible, ultimately, we had an enormous amount of inbound interest from all sorts of investors and names.

That put us in a position where I could close a modest fundraiser of about £2.1m within five days and ultimately choose the characters we felt could best accelerate us in our journey.

So that included people like Tinie Tempah, the rapper, who’s fantastic to have on board; Harry Redknapp, the former football manager, who’s onboard; Tej Lalvani, one of the Dragons, who missed out in the Den, he then came on board; and of course we then still had Peter Jones and Touker Suleyman from Dragons’ Den.

In addition to that, we also had, or still have, other fantastic angel investors who came on at an earlier stage.

So it felt like we’re in a fantastic position and surrounded ourselves with brilliant people who can give sage advice that can accelerate us and move us forward quickly.

Bex Burn-Callander:

They all found you. So how can we tell listeners how to make themselves, I suppose, a plum target?

Did the Dragons’ Den people find you on Google? Had you raised your profile enough to have them approach you?

Sam Jones:

I got a DM on LinkedIn from a researcher at the BBC.

But I would think outside of that. Replicating a Dragons’ Den experience isn’t the best method of trying to raise funds. Before that, I’d raised about £1m to £1.3m-ish of funding.

I tended to approach funding by looking for people you believe can add genuine value to your business.

Take the vertical you’re in, and then see which big businesses are in that vertical or know that space.

Start to look at board level and ask, “OK, who are the characters that have board experience here?”

And then you go a step further and say, “Has anyone recently left that role? Perhaps there was a chairman who stepped down 18 months ago.”

Someone like that is the perfect person to approach to ask for advice and, potentially, funding.

The reason for that is because these characters are intelligent individuals. They have a perfect knowledge of your industry. And more so, they used to be in a very fast-paced and busy job.

They stepped down 12 or 18 months ago. They’ve probably been lying on the beach for about a year, and now they want another intellectual challenge.

I think with finding and identifying people like that and reaching out in a way where you’re not directly asking for money, don’t go straight in asking for marriage.

Instead, ask for advice.

Send something concise that can pique someone’s interest, and then go from there.

Have a conversation, understand if they’re the right fit, and understand if they can add value.

Then what you need to tell yourself and believe internally is that you’re offering them an opportunity to come on an incredible ride with you.

It’s not that you’re standing there with your hat in hand saying, “Please, give me money. Please invest.”

It’s the opposite way.

You need to train yourself into a mindset that there are loads of people with leads and money.

You’re looking for the right people to come on board, and they should feel that it’s a privilege to join you on this ride.

If you believe that, it’s much easier to sell your vision and entice people to come along with you.

Rather than trying to find fame and fortune with the Dragons, Jones recommends seeking out people with deep knowledge of your industry and asking them for advice. Once you find someone who can help your business succeed, you can offer them the opportunity to invest.

How can founders improve their chances in fundraising conversations?

Fundraising success often comes down to playing to personal strengths while deliberately compensating for weaker areas. That means knowing what you’re naturally good at, building around it (including co-founders if needed), and doing deep preparation on investors so every conversation is targeted, informed, and intentional.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I love that idea about training yourself.

I’m looking at you now. You’re so self-assured and charismatic. Have you always been this way, or have you had to train yourself?

Were you the quiet kid who has to train themselves out of shyness? Talk to me about how you’ve become so assured.

Sam Jones:

Wow. What a compliment. I think the more you do something, as with everything in life, the easier it becomes. Even so, I get scared before any interview, always.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Would you recommend that anyone who is going to go through a pitch process to do some public speaking?

Sam Jones:

You’ve ultimately got to play to your strengths and neutralise any apparent weaknesses.

If you don’t feel comfortable talking to a stranger, you’d probably not the right person to try and raise money for your business.

Either take yourself out of that situation and find a co-founder who is better at that than you, or lean on what you are good at.

Perhaps you’re super confident when you’re giving a demo of your technology. Because that’s what you’ve built, you need to get in a room with someone and show the tech as quickly as possible, which hopefully blows them away.

Ultimately, I think you need to understand what you’re good at and lean into that.

If we’re talking specifically about funding, one of the most rookie mistakes people make is not doing the homework and researching the investor.

When you go in to speak with someone, be it an angel or a VC, you should make it your job to know everything about them before you step into that room.

You need to know what verticals they invest in, what their average tech size is, and how much money they’ve got left in their fund.

Do your homework, because otherwise, it’s a total waste of your time.

You need a person to feel like you’re switched on and with a knowledge of your business inside out.

Approach the conversation with conviction and the ability to execute.

When making your pitch, Jones advises playing to your strengths and making sure to do your homework about the person you’re pitching to.

How do founders balance effort, leverage, and long-term ambition when building a start-up?

While founders must apply intense, focused effort during critical windows like product launches, they cannot rely on constant overwork alone; they must also create leverage by mastering investor dynamics and fundraising when the market is in their favour.

Ultimately, managing this balance between daily execution and strategic positioning is only possible if the founder remains fiercely anchored to a clear, long-term ambition for the market they intend to change.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Does that mean you’re working extreme days? Are you doing 18 hours a day, or are you able to have any downtime?

Sam Jones:

I do work hard, and our team works hard too.

The reason for that is if you want to build something meaningful and want to have a chance of succeeding, there’s no shortcut for putting in time, energy and effort.

That doesn’t mean you have to work every weekend or not sleep or anything crazy like that, but it does mean that there are times when you do need to go well above and beyond.

Particularly when you look at critical moments like fundraising, product releases or client meetings, all of these things call for a lot more time, effort and energy.

The reason for that is because usually, as a start-up, you’re a small team with very few people, so the only way to compete against the big guys is to work longer, harder and smarter than them.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I have one more question about investment, and then I’d like to move on.

With Tinie and Harry, your pals, tell me how one gets not just the interest from the big names but gets them to sign on the dotted line.

Sam Jones:

Tinie is probably the best story—I think it was two or three days after airing on Dragons’ Den, so the next day after we aired. I was then on BBC Breakfast and did a few other bits and pieces to try and pump up our awareness and coverage.

I looked down on my phone, opened up Instagram, and went into my DMs.

You know you have that second inbox called a requests inbox, which is for people that you haven’t yet connected with, or you don’t follow. I clicked on that for some reason, which I don’t think I ever had done it before.

I saw this blue tick, and it said Tinie or Tinie Tempah. I can’t remember his handle. And I thought, what’s going on here?

I clicked it, and it left me a voice memo. I remember playing that and then instantly going to Spotify and blasting out one of his tunes. And I was thinking, what a crazy world we live in.

His voice memo said something along the lines of, “Hey Sam, I saw you on TV, would love to meet, love to chat, love to see if I can help you.”

I followed up on that conversation.

With the way this round came together, and in general, when you’re raising funds, you’re in a position where you have the leverage, or the investor has the leverage.

That’s ultimately the dynamic.

You’re selling or sold to. And if you’re selling, that means you’re trying to find people to come into the round. You’re trying to give this sense of urgency to try and force people to say they will put their money in or if they are waning.

If you’re sold to, it’s the exact opposite. You have loads of people saying that they’re desperate to get in, and you’re saying we don’t have enough room.

A majority of the time, you’re doing the selling to convince people to come in, and you’re trying to pretend that you’re being sold to and you have this leverage.

But you often don’t, and that’s the game and dynamic.

But in this instance, within 48 hours, we’d had so much inbound attention—millions and millions on the table from people willing to put money down.

We’re in this position where I could say look, we’re going to close a fundraising round imminently, and we’re looking for the right people to bring on board. Is that exciting to you? And then we would have that conversation.

Very quickly, we brought that into fruition, closing legal with the right investors on board.

Bex Burn-Callander:

What are your ambitions for Gener8? How big could this business get?

Are you one of those people that thinks I’m going to be with this company and IPO?

Or are you thinking I’m just going to make a difference in this industry, I’m going to sell, and then move on to something else?

What are you planning?

Sam Jones:

I think what’s staggering is that if you take a step back and look at the industry right now, everything we do online is tracked to the point that if you want to stop the world’s biggest search engine from tracking you, it will take you 17 clicks.

But it’s only one click to allow them. It’s insane.

I believe that there will be a multi-billion dollar company built by empowering people to control and learn from their data.

In other words, by giving people a clear and transparent choice to say, stop this from happening, or I’m OK with it, and I’ll get something in return.

In my mind, the solution will operate everywhere and is passively doing this for the user.

I see no reason why Gener8 can’t be that company.

We have a real fighting chance of being a household name soon and building a multi-billion dollar business.

However, if we don’t succeed, I guarantee that soon someone else will.

Less than 10 years from now, people will be passively earning from that data, and they’ll wonder why it wasn’t always this way. They’ll question that it’s always been like this.

It is coming, and our ambition is for Gener8 to be that business.

Thirty years ago, Sir Tim Berners-Lee put the first website up ever in the history of the world. And I think when you reflect, and realise the bloody internet is only 30 years old,

It makes you realise the opportunity for changing things in the future.

Jones’s ambition and firm belief in the potential of Gener8 have been at the heart of his success, helping him to attract potential investors and be able to take his pick of who he wants to bring on board.

How should start-ups think about competition in fast-moving markets?

The most effective approach is to treat competition as context rather than a target. Instead of reacting to rivals, successful start-ups stay focused on execution, speed, and differentiation of their own product.

In Sam Jones’s case, Gener8 tracks the broader landscape but prioritises building a clearer value proposition around user data rather than copying competitors or getting distracted by their momentum.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I suppose that brings me to competition because you aren’t the only business in this space trying to solve this problem.

What do you do about the fact that there are rivals, with some around a little while?

How do you try and keep in front? How closely do you watch them?

Sam Jones:

The key is to focus on what’s in your control. We run fast and aim to fulfil all of the challenges that we set ourselves.

When you look to competition, it’s not always a bad thing.

If we look to the US and see our competitor over there, another browser that rewards people with cryptocurrency, it’s fantastic to see what they’ve been able to achieve and how they’ve done it.

They’ve raised over a hundred million in funding with a massive tech team and have done an excellent job of growing.

It’s about understanding what’s your point of difference because that’s the reason that you might succeed, and they may not.

I believe that the business that will win in this space is a company that can give people real value in return for their data instead of cryptocurrency, which not everyone understands. I think there’s a limitation on that hitting real mass scale soon.

What we do is concentrate on ourselves. We look and keep an eye on what’s going on in the industry, whether competitors, legislation or whatever. But we focus on our own house and ensure we execute quickly and efficiently.

Rather than worry about what the competition is doing, Jones believes in focusing on producing the best product he can and finding ways to stand out from the pack.

How should founders manage pressure and team performance in a start-up?

Start-up performance depends less on rigid systems and more on judgment: knowing when to push for output and when to reduce pressure so pfeople can execute well. As teams scale, founders also need to actively adjust resourcing and energy, adding capacity when demand increases while maintaining a balance between urgency and support.

Bex Burn-Callander:

In keeping that agility and pace of innovation, do you have a big development team? Do you have a percentage of your profit or turnover that you always keep reinvesting into, like R&D?

How do you stay fast? How do you keep coming out with significant new developments and features?

Sam Jones:

We are tiny.

At the start of this year, there were only four of us, and three months ago, there were four of us.

Now there’s 10 of us, and there’ll be 15 of us by mid-September.

We’re scaling up the team to increase engineering resources so we can meet demand and execute quicker.

I think what’s probably interesting to note is that when it comes to building great things in the world, whether that is technology, products, or marketing, is that it boils down to the people that you’re working with and your ability to motivate, inspire, and challenge them.

I think something you have to learn early as a founder of a small start-up is that you’re trying to put pressure on or you’re trying to take pressure off.

You can read the situation and understand what’s needed that is critically important.

As a founder, if you can get that balance right, that’s where the real magic happens.

Bex Burn-Callander:

You have to swing from one to another. So depending on the individual and the circumstance, you’re either pushing or trying to make life easier for them and take things off their plate.

Sam Jones:

Exactly. It’s a human game because not everyone’s life revolves around work.

It’s about what’s going on outside of work and having that empathy to realise that sometimes it’s not the best time to push. Instead, you need to find ways to relieve that stress and ensure that individuals execute to their best ability.

When things are critical, you need to apply pressure so people know that you need to hit something. It’s all a balancing act.

The startups that operate well have great leaders aware of this dichotomy and can balance things effectively.

Running a start-up requires a delicate balance between pushing your employees to do more and giving them the space to do their best work.

How do solo founders cope with pressure and isolation?

Solo founders typically manage pressure by combining delegation with acceptance that some responsibilities can’t be shared. In practice, many rely on peer networks of other founders to sanity-check decisions and stay grounded through common challenges like funding gaps, hiring stress, and scaling uncertainty.

Bex Burn-Callander:

As a solo founder, you don’t have anyone that can take things off your plate. You can delegate, and you’ve got great people working with you, but it’s not the same as having a co-founder, chairman or board.

What do you do to sort of lighten your load? What do you do when you are overwhelmed?

Who do you turn to?

Sam Jones:

There’s a lot that goes on your plate as a solo founder, and there’s a lot of things you can offload, whether that’s to the team or upwards to board members.

Then there are also many things that you can’t, and that’s the burden you must carry.

You can’t share some things, be it upwards, downwards or sideways. That’s part of the game. You figure out your coping mechanism to ensure you can survive.

Having a network of other founders is probably the most valuable resource in that instance because no matter how cold or lonely a particular situation may feel, it’s very likely that other people have been through that or something similar, particularly when it comes to the common problems of running out of money, hiring and all of the well-trodden paths.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Is this your first business, or did you start anything before? Were you an entrepreneurial kid? Did you do anything when you were at uni, or is this literally your first ever venture?

Sam Jones:

This is the first real business that I’ve founded and run. I had a few entrepreneurial games and flings whilst I was a student, but nothing serious to this extent before.

Being a solo founder can be an isolating position, but Jones says that other founders can be a great source of support.

What mindset helps founders stay focused and motivated during uncertainty?

Founders tend to stay grounded by keeping their focus tight, maintaining discipline through setbacks, and building urgency internally rather than waiting for external pressure.

In Sam Jones’s case, motivation comes from recognising the scale of opportunity in emerging technology markets and using that to drive execution, particularly around Gener8’s goal of giving users value and control over their data.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Is there anything that you wish you’d known before you started the business, or in that tough first year, when it’s always a bit touch and go?

Sam Jones:

It’s a good question. Some generic advice I often give to people I meet is three things:

Be focused. Concentrate on your goal with laser precision.
Be determined. It’s not just passion—it’s popular for people to say that you need to be passionate. The problem is that passion fades once you get punched in the face a few times. It’s about being determined and having that grit to continue because you will get punched in the face multiple times when you’re trying to start something.
Have a sense of urgency. That has come from within because it won’t come from any externality or anywhere else.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And what would you say drives you? What is the fundamental driving force that helps create that sense of urgency and that focus for you?

Sam Jones:

One thing that certainly motivates me is the knowledge that there is so much opportunity. Whether it’s within Gener8 or a different business, there is opportunity everywhere.

We mentioned earlier that the internet is only 30 years old today, Facebook’s less than 15 years old, and Google around 20 years old,

I think it’s this knowledge that people, not unlike ourselves, can build incredible technology and businesses that can make a dent in the world and change the direction it spins in. That is such a humbling thought to reflect on.

I’m motivated by these significant challenges and opportunities, where there could be realistically a chance to change how people think or act or behave.

And for me, Gener8 is one of those concepts or ideas where we can educate people about the fact that their data is valuable and enable them to earn from it themselves.

I think that can be as far-reaching to everyone with a computer or a phone.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And how much could someone earn through Gener8? Give us your pitch, so anyone who’s listening who is thinking to download this thing.

Sam Jones:

So, first off, Gener8 is a browser. It’s free, and anyone can use it or download it. When you download Gener8, we give you a simple choice between Privacy Mode or Rewards Mode.

If you choose Privacy Mode, we stop all companies from tracking you online so you have a private browsing experience.

If you choose Rewards Mode, you opt to share your data with us, and we try to monetise that on your behalf.

We do that by tailoring the advertising you see online so that it’s based on your interests.

And then, we share the money from the advertisers back with the user. And the way we do that is via points.

So, in return for selecting Rewards Mode, a user earns points, and they can redeem these points for products, vouchers, or donations to charity in our marketplace.

So, right now, the average user is redeeming between £5 and £25 in rewards and value per month, which isn’t bad considering it’s passive.

And the alternative is just you giving this data away for free anyway, by default.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Is there a way to increase your earning potential?

Is it about how active you are online, or are there some users that naturally carry a higher price tag for whatever reason?

How does that side work?

Sam Jones:

Many levers and variables impact how fast or slowly a person can earn, but generally, it’s to do with what they share with us.

For example, if you complete your profile with your preferences, you can tell us if you like sport, dance, music, or cooking, for example.

Once a person completes their profile, we’ve then got that base information to start tailoring the advertising they see, so they’ll, as a result, earn quicker.

Whereas if a person doesn’t give us any of that information, they will earn slower because there’s less information to target relevant advertisers.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Are you earning? Are you getting top dollar because you’ve been involved from the beginning?

Sam Jones:

We’re putting so much time, energy, effort, and resources into building good technology for people. In terms of cash flow or revenue, we are spending and over-indexing enormously on how much we put into the platform instead of taking out.

From our side, we’re not looking to make a quick buck or make money.

We’re trying to invest into building great technology for people heavily.

Bex Burn-Callander:

What is the tipping point of users that you are aiming for? What is the volume that you need to think, you’re making an impact?

Sam Jones:

That’s the magic number, isn’t it? The unknown number that every investor wants to know. I think the best way to answer that is to tell you how we’re growing right now.

There are two forks to our growth.

Number one is direct downloads.

This is where users or people hear about Gener8, and consequently, download it. We’ve got some marketing campaigns coming up with Tinie Tempah and Harry Redknapp that will help to tell more people about Gener8 to expand this.

The second fork that we’re focusing on is B2B partnerships.

Right now, some of the largest device manufacturers in the world, alongside very large telcos, are in conversations with us about pre-installing Gener8 as the default browser onto tens of millions of machines.

If we were to close one of these deals, which I believe is very achievable in short to mid-term, we would start to see Gener8 on millions of devices worldwide.

That’s where things start to get very exciting very quickly.

One of Jones’s top pieces of advice is that founders need to be determined to succeed, enough so that they can keep going when challenges crop up, secure in the belief that what they’re doing is important and worthwhile

Why is it useful for founders to get hands-on with admin in the early days?

Getting involved in admin early gives founders a working understanding of how the business actually runs, which later makes it much easier to decide what to delegate and what to prioritise.

Sam Jones spent the early months of Gener8 doing everything himself, from VAT returns to spreadsheets, before the company grew to the point where outsourcing became the more efficient choice.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I’m just interested in some of the nitty-gritty in how you make your life a bit easier as a founder.

Have there been any decisions you’ve made, by either hiring an accountant, being very hot on your business plan, or any practical things you’ve done that have been a game-changer in terms of being organised and efficient?

Sam Jones:

That’s a brilliant question.

Initially, you go through different stages and phases as a startup.

When I was a one-person band for the first six or seven months, you’re doing your VAT returns and getting your receipts in an Excel spreadsheet figuring it out.

I even called up HMRC, and I said, “Hey guys. I need to do a VAT return. What do I do?” The most remarkable thing was that HMRC is so helpful. The person on the other end of the line said, “OK. Here’s how you do it and what you need to do. Here are the documents you need.”

What I learned is that initially, you can do a hell of a lot on your own.

You don’t necessarily need to be an expert or a professional in any given field. It’s pretty empowering and liberating to learn these random skills and then know what’s going on in the future when other professionals are doing this for you.

As you start to pick up speed and get a little bigger, you need to ask what is a worthy task for my time right now versus something else?

In those early stages, do as much as you possibly can. Learn as much as you can. Do all of the menial, administrative or annoying jobs.

And then as you get a little bit bigger, you realise that OK, the opportunity cost of me doing a VAT return, which I’m not very good at and took me hours, versus spending those same hours speaking with a major manufacturer that could put us onto tens of millions of machines. My time should be over there.

That’s the right moment to ensure that you have accountants and people who can take care of those other tasks for you.

To answer your question, it’s about recognising the moments when you should bring in another party for this, leaning into your strengths.

If something’s going to take you three times as long as someone else, maybe you should get someone else to do that task.

Jones recommends getting hands-on with all of the work required to run your start-up at first, then delegating tasks that aren’t a good use for your time as the business grows.

Key lessons from building Gener8 from idea to scale

Sam Jones’s journey shows that early conviction matters more than perfect timing, that fundraising is about building belief through narrative and proof points, and that execution comes down to relentless focus on what you can control.

Progress rarely follows a straight line—it’s shaped by adapting under pressure, making pragmatic decisions on people and resources, and staying close enough to the detail to understand when to scale up or step back.

Feel inspired by Sam’s story?

Follow Sam Jones on Twitter

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Let us know on Twitter @SageUK using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial at or in the comments below, and we will get back to you.

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Frequently asked questions about how to fund a start-up

What makes a start-up investor actually commit early on?

Early investors tend to commit when they feel three things are in place: a credible founder, a compelling market opportunity, and a believable path to execution. At the earliest stage, it’s less about traction and more about whether the story holds together under scrutiny.

How do founders know when to stop doing everything themselves?

Once the potential value of spending time on activities like partnerships, fundraising, or product direction outweighs the cost savings of doing everything yourself, it becomes necessary to delegate lower-value operational work, even if you’re capable of doing it.

Is competition in a start-up market a bad sign?

Not necessarily. Competition can validate that a market exists and is worth pursuing. The key is not reacting to competitors but identifying a clear point of difference and focusing on execution within your own strategy.

What role do networks play in surviving the early start-up journey?

Networks of other founders are often some of the most valuable support systems. They provide perspective on problems that can feel isolating, especially around fundraising pressure, hiring challenges, and financial uncertainty, all of which are common early-stage hurdles.

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PakarPBN

A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.

In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.

The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.

Jasa Backlink

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I Built an Innovative UK Startup With a Spice Girl

gentong4d — Thu, 21 May 2026 16:04:34 +0000

Kit & Kin founder Christopher Money turned an eco-friendly baby product idea into an award-winning startup by partnering with Emma Bunton to build a purpose-driven brand.

Money was on the hunt to find baby products that were both kind to sensitive skin and kind to the planet, but he couldn’t find what he was looking for—so he decided to create a solution himself.

With his idea well and truly in motion, Money thought some star power would help to really bring his vision to life, and he found the perfect partner to help him create baby products in Baby Spice herself, Emma Bunton.

This dynamic duo merged their passion for creativity, entrepreneurship, and sustainability to launch a groundbreaking business that has since rocked the industry.

For nearly a decade, Kit & Kin has been providing eco-essentials that are kinder to your family and our planet and always give back. Together, Money and Bunton have created a future-focused brand that parents can truly trust.

Let Sound Advice host Bex Burn-Callander inspire you with the unforgettable story of an unexpected partnership that changed the game and broke investment records.

Here’s what this discussion covered:

Where did this innovative startup idea come from?

Kit & Kin began when Christopher Money used deep category experience and years of retail rejection to identify a clear market gap for sustainable baby products.

Bex Burn-Callander:

So Kit & Kin, it’s an amazing idea, a catch-all, non-toxic, sustainable lifestyle brand.

What gave you the idea?

Christopher Money:

So if I start right at the beginning, I’ve been in the world of consumer products for about 20 years now. So I first got into this niche world of maternity and fem hygiene products as a very young man.

I was about 22 years old at the time, and it was thanks to my father, actually.

His day-to-day was trading jumbo reels of tissue, so he was very much sort of the middleman representing these big South African paper mills and representing them for European market.

And he’d also invested in a factory in South Wales about 45 years ago and their claim to fame was that they manufactured the first panty liner ever in the UK.

But the factory did really well for the first sort of 10, 15 years. They picked up a lot of the major retail contracts in the UK, so predominantly Boots, Sainsbury’s, supplying private label-owned brand, and they did really well for a number of years.

But they just got somewhat complacent. There was a lack of innovation, a lack of investment in the factory, and it started losing quite a bit of money.

And my father and his colleagues sent various guys there to try and turn it around, they paid them lots of money, but it was going nowhere fast, and it was on the verge of closing.

And at the time I think he thought, “Wait a minute, I’ve got a 22-year-old that’s just graduated from university. I could probably pay him a fraction of what I’m paying these guys.”

And I think the way he sold it to me one day was, “Listen, sport, it’s probably a dead duck, but if you fancy a challenge, maybe you want to go down there and see if you can create something from it.”

And somewhat naively at the time I thought, “Okay, well, yeah, I can do that. I can turn around a factory.”

And so I found myself driving down the M3 a couple of times a week to this old factory that was just falling apart, old machinery, a disillusioned workforce and here I am, 22 years old, no experience whatsoever, rocking up.

And I’m sure they thought, “Well, great, this guy’s here to save the day,” and yeah, I had to well and truly, thrown in the deep end, think on my feet and, like I said, there was going to be absolutely no investment in the factory.

So what I did, I identified that obviously the portfolio was really strong over time. They had fem hygiene products, but over the years, they diversified to more maternity products.

And the main reason they did that was you had the rise of the Far East. They were producing hundreds and thousands of panty liners, which given the nature of the product, it’s very thin, they could ship over to the UK at a very competitive price.

And there was absolutely no loyalty from the retailers whatsoever.

So they diversified to maternity products and predominantly breast pads and maternity towels, which, as you can imagine as a 22-year-old guy, I think my first question when I got to the factory was, “What is a breast pad?”

Bex Burn-Callander:

What is a breast pad?

Christopher Money:

What is a breast pad?

Bex Burn-Callander:

What does it do?

Christopher Money:

And then I found myself in front of the Mothercare buyer within a couple of days, and she’s saying to me, “So what’s the future for breast pad development in the UK?”

So well and truly thrown in the deep end. And I knew obviously that our margin was so small on breast pads and maternity towels that we had to diversify the product portfolio.

So the way I did that was by visiting every trade show I could in Europe and trying to represent every overseas brand manufacturer I could.

Always with a particular focus on manufacturers using biodegradable or sustainable materials because this was 20 years ago. So it was somewhat ahead of the curve at that time, but it was clear that was the way the market was going.

So yeah, I started representing all sorts of brands and manufacturers. I was representing here a wet wipes factory in France, a fem hygiene manufacturer in Slovenia, a Tunisian paper mill.

I was trading products from the Far East, all complementing the range we were manufacturing in South Wales. I represented obviously my dad’s company, but then built this distribution company on the side.

And I did that for about 10 years and over that 10-year period, I probably got the experience of working for a P&G for 35, 40 years. Because I learned everything from working with my dad in the early days about raw materials, tissue, paper.

And then working at the factory, obviously taking the raw material, turning it into a finished product, selling it into retail, creating their packaging, and then trading products in the Far East and North Africa so learned so much over that period.

And long story short, I just became somewhat disillusioned over time because there was this one factory I was representing in Central America in Mexico that was producing an eco-friendly nappy.

And I was trying to sell that into the main retail accounts in the UK, so Boots, Sainsbury’s, Mothercare, but it was just like banging my head against a brick wall for so many years because every decision was so profit-and-margin-driven.

And I was just thinking, “You know I’ve got a better product here. It is better for the consumer, it’s better for the environment, but you won’t list it because it cost a few pence extra.”

So yeah, having done that for 10 years, I thought to myself, “Do you know what? I’m going to do it myself. I’ll launch my own brand,” but there were certainly some challenges getting to that point.

If you want to launch a nappy brand, there are a massive barrier to entry. There are huge minimum order volumes.

So the first thing I did was I flew out to Mexico, met the directors at the factory I represented and said, “Look, I think I’ve done a pretty good job for you for the last 10 years.

“I think there’s an opportunity here in Europe for me to launch an eco-friendly nappy. I’m going to need a favour. I don’t have any money. I can’t commit to the huge minimum order quantity.”

But thankfully they said, “Chris, no problem. We’re happy to support you with that.”

Strong startup ideas often come from lived industry frustration, not abstract brainstorming.

How to turn rejection into a high-profile startup partnership

Christopher Money turned limited resources into leverage by negotiating supplier flexibility, exchanging equity for premium branding, and positioning Emma Bunton as an authentic co-founder rather than a celebrity figurehead.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Wait, wait, wait, Chris, Chris, I’m lost because you had this amazing eco-nappy and Boots, and the like wouldn’t stock it because that it was a few pennies more expensive.

But then that made you think, “Oh, I’m going to try and do it even though this has failed, and I haven’t been able to make any headway with this product all these years.

“I’m going to try again with a totally new product that’ll probably be even more expensive.”

Christopher Money:

Yeah. So I had the opportunity to create my own sort of bespoke nappy, if you like, and ultimately I believed it. I knew it was the future of the market.

Obviously, I can come on to tell you more about the brand and why we’re different to everyone else on the market.

But I knew there was an opportunity out there, but I knew I was going to have to hustle my way to launching this brand, because I’m up against the Pampers and Huggies of this world with huge advertising budgets. How on earth am I going to compete?

So yeah, the first thing I had to do was go out there, get the directors of the factory to agree to do me a favour on the minimum order quantity and give me the opportunity to create my own product.

So I had their blessing, but then I knew branding was going to be all important. So I Googled top 10 branding agencies in the UK and narrowed it down to a couple.

There was one studio in particular called B&B, and the kind of the vision I had for the brand was very sort of modern Scandi-esque, quite minimal. And that fit perfectly with the kind of brands I’ve seen them create over the years.

And, yeah, just cold called the agency, said, “I’ve got this idea, I’d love to come in and talk to you about it.”

I met Kerry and Shaun, the two founders there, and they just totally bought into it. They loved the idea, they loved the concept. I knew they were going to be really expensive, seeing they’d worked with the likes of Fever-Tree, BrewDog.

Bex Burn-Callander:

The premium brands, basically. They knew about premium.

Christopher Money:

Really premium, leading high street brands. And, yeah, they didn’t disappoint. There was a nice big sort of invoice presented, but I’d always gone in there with the intention of offering them part equity.

And thankfully, they asked me first. “Chris, would you be open to an equity deal here?”

So as you could imagine, I sort of hemmed and hawed and said, “Well, yeah, I think we can come to an agreement here.”

So at that stage, I had the product, I had the brand, but as I said, how on earth am I going to compete with the Pampers, the Huggies-owned brand nappies, supermarket-owned brand, which is half the market?

And I know celebrities work, and I always wanted Kit & Kin to be a global brand, a sort of iconic British brand, if you like, and there were very few people that have that global reach outside of pop stars and movie stars.

So I was obviously thinking through who on earth could I approach with this idea?

And on the pop star front, I obviously thought about the Spice Girls. And at that moment I thought, “Okay, well, baby products, Baby Spice?”

Bex Burn-Callander:

Baby Spice.

Christopher Money:

“Maybe there’s something there.”

And I was, literally, driving one day and I just thought, “Well, maybe I should try getting in contact with Emma Bunton.”

And I, literally, pulled over the car, Googled Emma Bunton’s management team, cold-called the agency, spoke to a junior agent, who thankfully gave me the time of day and thought, “Well, this sounds vaguely interesting.”

And then went in in person, met that junior agent and a senior agent and pitched it in person. They seemed to really buy into it.

And again, luckily from a timing perspective, the co-founder of the agency was on maternity leave at the time. So kind of everything paused at that time, and they said, “Okay, well, you can meet her in a couple of months when she comes back to work.”

But she was obviously living and breathing that space, so she totally bought into it and understood the brand and the concept.

And I knew that Emma knew about it at that stage. And, again, it was just serendipity later to find out that Emma’s children had sensitive skin problems, eczema, and she wanted to create a brand like this as well. So it was just perfect timing.

But, ultimately, who is this random guy off the street that develops nappies that wants to work with Emma Bunton globally?

So understandably, there was a lot of due diligence, it probably took another 6, 7 months of sitting down with her accountants, discussing the plan.

And we finally got to the point where they said, “Okay, Emma really wants to do this. You just need to go have a chat with her lawyer.”

It turns out he was the guy you really had to convince, her confidante from Spice Girl days and, yeah, I got the green light from him, and then it was, “Okay, we’re all agreed we want to do this. Now you can meet Emma and if the two of you get on, away you go.”

And it was sort of 9 months later, then going in to meet Emma and thinking, “God, well, after all that, I hope she likes me.”

Bex Burn-Callander:

“I better be charming.”

Christopher Money:

Yeah, exactly. But within 10 minutes of meeting her, she was nodding to her team around the table, and we just hit it off.

We both had the same vision of what this brand could be in terms of protecting children, protecting the environment and making a difference.

Bex Burn-Callander:

But usually when you see these kind of celebrity partnerships on a brand, often they’re just a figurehead.

But I get the sense that in this business, Emma is not only really invested in the brand, but she also involved day-to-day. You guys talk a lot.

I suppose you didn’t know that when you entered into this journey that she would actually be a really passionate and involved co-founder.

Christopher Money:

Yeah, exactly. You can only go into it with good faith. But from that moment I met Emma, I knew, I could see the excitement.

You know she’d never put her name to a brand before. She’d never launched a brand. This was something she was really passionate about because it was a problem she had first-hand with her own children.

And it’s been that way since day one.

Obviously, we’re 7 years in now. Like many startups, we all wear several hats. So obviously, I’m the managing director and I handle all sales and product development, and I run the day-to-day with our fantastic team.

But Emma is my co-founder. People often ask, “How involved is she? Is she just an ambassador?”

Well, no, she founded this brand, we founded it together. And we often joke, you know, I’ve got 3 boys, so this is my fourth baby with her, if you like.

And no, she’s very much involved. She’s a sounding board in terms of the bigger picture, our strategy and how we grow the business.

But as you’d expect, she really loves all the creative parts. So she’s heavily involved in all the branding decisions, creation of our packaging, our artwork, and given her experience in photo shoots, video shoots, she’s heavily involved in those.

And then as you’d expect when it comes to actual products and testing them, she loves nothing more to give me feedback and “Can you do this? Can you do that?”

So no, it’s worked great since day one.

Partnerships work best when they solve practical gaps and share the same mission.

How can eco-minded startups avoid greenwashing?

Kit & Kin built credibility by tying every product decision to three clear goals: better for babies, better for the planet, and giving back.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And tell me about the product.

Because especially in nappies, there’s a lot of greenwashing that goes on, and there’s been a lot of wrists being slapped for saying that they are biodegradable, they’ve got eco-credentials, and then actually there’s a lot of plastic in them, et cetera.

So what is different about your product, and how did you design them so that there was never a question of greenwashing, this is the real deal?

Christopher Money:

Yeah. So obviously given my background, nappies was always going to be the go-to product.

And we built the brand on 3 really key pillars, and that dictates every decision, the creation of every product, that everything we do has to be better for baby, better for our world and give back.

So better for baby, obviously we strip out all the unnecessary toxins found in everyday products.

Better for our world. We use as many plant-based sustainable materials as we can, and every item gives back.

So a massive inspiration for me growing up was Tom’s shoes, where if you sell a pair of shoes, someone homeless gets a pair of shoes, too. So I really wanted to create the mother-and-baby version of that brand.

And the strap line of our brand is Protecting Your World Naturally.

So it’s about protecting your little one from the harmful toxins found in everyday products, but also about protecting the world they’ll grow up in.

And there’s that really nice tangible benefit to our subscription business, whereby for every 10 subscriptions we sell, we purchase and protect one acre of rainforest.

So I often say to parents, “Your child is going to be in a nappy for probably 23 hours of the day. They’re going to be changed anytime from 6 times to 10 times in a day. Would you prefer for your child to sat in a nappy that’s made from petrochemicals or plants?”

And I think the answer’s pretty obvious.

So fundamentally, we use sustainable plant-based materials derived from sugar cane, instead of petrochemicals. And obviously, there’s a fantastic giving-back scheme to every product we sell also.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And if it’s from sugarcane, does that mean it’s sort of using a waste product that might already be kind of thrown away?

Christopher Money:

Yeah, exactly. So all our materials come from sustainably harvested forests. So again, that’s another key differentiator with some other sort of mainstream brands.

Sustainability claims need to be specific, product-led, and easy for customers to understand.

Building an omnichannel brand from a subscription model

Kit & Kin used subscriptions to build loyal direct customer relationships before expanding into major retailers and international markets.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And how is business going? Like you’ve been going a little while now, you’re just out of the startup stage pretty much, but has there been the uptake that you were hoping for?

And I’ve seen you’ve launched quite a few new products. So what does your roadmap look like now?

Christopher Money:

So when we first launched, it was obviously a real focus on our subscription model.

Having supplied retailers for so many years, I must say it’s very different when you are supplying a supermarket-owned brand product to being a brand and actually supplying something they really want from you.

But my mindset when we first started was definitely I don’t really want to supply those interesting people, let’s say, any longer, especially given my whole background in South Wales and working at the factory and seeing no loyalty whatsoever.

And obviously in today’s age, you can sell direct via the internet, and the subscription model gave us a perfect model whereby with the nappy, obviously customers are coming back every month to be adding additional products to that, products that have a synergy.

So obviously, we have certified natural skincare for mum and baby, along with our nappies and our wipes. We have baby wear, which is fantastic for gifting, all organic cotton, all multi-award winning, I should add. We’ve won 59 industry awards.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Wow.

Christopher Money:

And that’s across everything from Best Eco Nappy to Best Toiletries Collection to even the Mother and Baby Award for Best Organic Cotton Baby Wear.

Bex Burn-Callander:

Oh, congratulations.

Christopher Money:

Thanks very much.

So we started with a subscription model, but then within 2 to 3 months, we were actually approached by Ocado. They were the first and I think it’s just the reality of the business.

You know, nappies, we are low margin, high volume, and when a Mr. Ocado comes along and says, “We love your brand, we love what you’re doing, we’d love to be the first British retailer to launch you,” it would be silly to say no.

So we started with Ocado. We’re now also stocked by Waitrose and Boots as well, so we’re certainly very much omnichannel.

The bulk of the business is online, but then obviously we supply the key retailers here in the UK, and now we’re in about 35 countries, which just blows my mind a little bit. But everything is moving in the right direction.

And I touched obviously on our giving back scheme. That is growing and growing and growing as well. It’s an evergreen project for us. It will always be there. Our charitable partner is the World Land Trust, who do absolutely fantastic work.

Actually, to go back a step, when I launched the brand, I wanted to support people ultimately, and I tried to set up a partnership with Bliss for premature babies, but it turned out they actually had an exclusive with another very well-known nappy brand, so I couldn’t do anything with them.

But that’s obviously switched my attention to, “Okay, well, we’re a sustainable brand, so what can we do to support the environment?”

And again, thank God for Google. I Googled for some sort of plant a tree programme, and I saw this amazing quote by Sir David Attenborough that said, “In my estimation, the money that is given to the World Land Trust has more effect on the world than anything else I can think of.”

So with David Attenborough saying that, then I certainly paid attention. And so I reached out to the World Land Trust, and decided to start supporting their buy an acre fund.

So we’ve bought land all around the world now really, in Guatemala, Brazil, Kenya, Argentina, Namibia of late so, yeah, we’re having a real impact.

A strong direct-to-consumer base can make retail expansion more strategic, not reactive.

Bex Burn-Callander:

What happens when you buy an acre? Is that to protect rainforest or is that to protect land that might be used for farming?

Christopher Money:

Yeah, exactly. So it’s to protect rainforest, first and foremost, but we’ve been able to take it sort of a step further.

So not only now do we protect that land through local NGOs, so it’s saved forever and obviously the people that live on that land are protected and can live there and earn a living from it for the rest of their lives.

But we’ve been able to take things a step further. So we also now fund educational scholarships for predominantly girls that live in these areas, so obviously girl power.

And now we also buy vital medicines for these remote communities as well.

So coming back to that original goal to every time you change a nappy or you give someone a bath, you know someone is benefiting from that purchase, just like Tom’s were doing back in the day.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I mean, to play devil’s advocate here, tired, grumpy parents just trying to get nappies on their kids, how much do they care about the world? They are sleep-deprived.

Are they actually really conscious and thinking about picking a brand that makes an impact in that way? Is that what the modern consumer does now?

Christopher Money:

I think ultimately, as a dad of 3, when you are bringing children into the world, you become more conscious of the impact you are having. And we’re certainly seeing that.

The eco sustainable market is growing year-on-year and families are willing to spend that little bit extra on our nappies.

People might think eco nappies are so much more expensive than the mainstream brands, but the reality is it’s only a couple of pounds more a month.

So people can be quite price-sensitive when it comes to nappies, and then they’ll walk around the supermarket aisle and pick up a bag of kale, but it’s 1 or 2 coffees a month.

Purpose becomes more powerful when it is built into the commercial model.

How to raise startup funding while protecting your vision

Christopher Money prioritised sustainable, profitable growth and selective fundraising to preserve control over Kit & Kin’s long-term purpose.

Bex Burn-Callander:

I guess if they are willing to spend a bit more on a premium product that’s really good for their baby’s skin, does that mean that you have to raise less funds because you’ve got people spending a bit more, you retain a bit more of a margin?

Or has it been tricky fundraising this brand?

Christopher Money:

We’ve grown the brands in a really sort of sustainable, profitable way, which I think is a lot more in fashion nowadays.

At this moment in time, coming out of the back of the cost of living crisis, when there aren’t sort of available funds that there used to be. So yeah, we’ve raised about £1,000,000 to date over the 7 years, which I think is a lot less than people might expect.

We’ve done that from Angels, high net worths. We haven’t taken institutional money at this moment in time.

So the Angel Investment Network has been a great platform for us. We’ve done a couple of raises over the 6, 7 years.

We actually had the fastest raise in AIN history about 3, 4 years ago now, where we raised just over £700,000 in a week.

And I think that just goes to enforce again there are people out there that are really passionate about what we’re doing and are willing to support it.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And just for our listeners, one week, that compares to an average of 6 weeks, so it really was an astonishingly fast fundraising.

And you said that it’s more the norm now that you kind of prioritise organic growth versus loads of venture capital and then trying to pursue really aggressive growth goals.

Is that also because if you are trying to be a sustainable business, it’s kind of at odds with the sort of capitalist mentality of grow, grow, grow, get as big as you can, as fast as you can?

Do you find that there is a bit of that tension between trying to have this very sustainable switched-on brand, but also being a business? Is there ever a kind of trade-off there as ever quite difficult to make decisions with both of those hats on?

Christopher Money:

Look, there were two ways to go about it. So obviously, the route we’ve taken, Emma and I were really keen to retain control over the running of the business for as long as we possibly can.

Ultimately, we’ve got a very clear vision of what we want the brand to be, and we don’t really want interference in that.

Now there are several emerging funds that have a different mindset where profit and purpose can live together. So if we do go down that route, then they will be the right sort of partner for us, I think.

Businesses ultimately have the power to do good and be a force for positive change and I do, I truly believe that profit and purpose can live together and ultimately as a brand, the bigger we get, the more we can help people and planet.

Because God knows I don’t think we can really rely on government to do the right thing nowadays. So that’s what we set out to achieve, and I think we’re well on the way to doing that.

Funding strategy should support the company’s values, not override them.

How did Kit & Kin expand from baby products into home cleaning?

Kit & Kin expanded into home cleaning by extending its original promise of safer, sustainable family essentials into another category parents already trusted it to serve.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And your strap line is quite a catch-all. It seems like you’re leaving a lot of space to bolt on a lot of interesting new products and go in lots of different directions.

Was that your plan at the start, or did you originally think, “Oh, I’ll just do nappies, or I’ll just do nappies and wipes,” but then as time has gone on, you’ve got more and more ambitious, and your confidence has grown?

Christopher Money:

Yeah, I think that’s absolutely right, but to be honest, we have sort of stayed true to the original vision, if you like, and that was to create a brand of sustainable essentials for the family.

As I mentioned, given my background, it made perfect sense for us to start with nappies and wipes.

And skincare was kind of a must-have at that time because with the subscription model, at some point, you’re probably going to get a little bit of nappy rash.

So nappy salve was obviously a good add-on and skincare, hair and body wash, bubble bath, all the essentials you will need.

But cleaning was part of the original plan and just at the time I really didn’t have the money or the expertise to launch cleaning.

I met various manufacturers at the time who were telling me, “This is the best thing, that’s the best thing,” and to be honest, I didn’t really know.

So over the last 6, 7 years, it’s been a real learning curve, if you like, and it just felt like now, with really solid foundations in place, it was the right time for us to branch out and add household cleaning products.

Any product area that we think we can move into and create better products, then we’re going to try and do that.

And when you bring your child into the world, you want to do everything to create that safe space for your child, so we’re doing that with all your everyday essentials.

But when you’re bringing them into the home, some of the most toxic things you can have in your home are cleaning products, chlorine, bleach, et cetera.

So our range of household cleaning products is 100% plant-derived or vegan, cruelty-free and available with a refillable model and, as ever, some very nice-looking packaging as well.

So they’re products that do the job and, again, fits really well into our subscription model and makes it really convenient for the consumer.

And I think, over time, we’ll see some natural product extensions come from that range. As the strap line suggests, it’s all about protecting your world and that includes your home.

Bex Burn-Callander:

On the point of cleaning, you’ve just reminded me that I stumbled across my toddler, who’d managed to get a bottle of toilet cleaner out of the bin and was, literally, holding it over her mouth.

Luckily, the lid was on, and it was empty. But on the subject of toxic chemicals in the home, that was quite a wake-up call.

But it’s very much a different, I suppose, market approach because when you were going for the nappies, you were kind of a pioneer.

Whereas in cleaning now, especially eco-cleaning, there’s been such an explosion of different products, there’s a lot of competition, so it’s a slightly different ballgame.

Does that mean that it’s kind of a trickier approach? Or do you feel that because you’ve got this customer base and the subscription model already set up, they just sort of naturally migrate into these new product lines because they trust you already?

Christopher Money:

Exactly that. Obviously with our nappies, with our wipes, we’ve got, to your point, a very loyal customer base in our subscription model. There’s a reason why we’ve won 59 industry awards, and we have more than 2,000 five-star reviews across Trustpilot.

First and foremost, yes, we have a beautiful-looking brand, but we focus, firstly, on products that work and products that are effective.

So we saw an opportunity in the cleaning world as well. I think there’s still kind of a general feeling that eco is not as good, or it doesn’t do the job as well as the mainstream products.

So we saw an opportunity there to come in with the best performing products that are also 100% plant-derived and give back and purchase and protect rainforest.

So, again, I think with our niche in terms of protecting families and having that loyal subscription base, I think it’s the perfect add-on to our existing product range.

What impact can celebrity star power bring to a startup?

Emma Bunton’s involvement gave Kit & Kin launch visibility, but her authentic connection to the mission made the partnership commercially credible.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And back to Emma B, the lovely Emma, you said that you wanted a celebrity on board because that gave you the confidence that you could make more of an impact with a startup, so I’d love to know a bit about what impact she’s had.

So obviously she’s very much involved in the day-to-day and the product, but in terms of her actual celebrity status, do you feel that you’ve got loads of Spice Girl fans on your customer base? Or how has it played out in terms of winning people’s hearts and minds, getting more people to try the product?

Christopher Money:

So it’s a bit heart-in-mouth when you’re launching anything, but when I think back, we didn’t have a lot of money to launch the brand.

I think people would assume, “Oh, well, Emma Bunton is involved, you had bucket loads of cash to launch.”

No, we didn’t.

I think I had just about enough money to buy 1 container of nappies. So any sort of launch was really based on the star power in terms of what Emma could bring to the brand.

So we had a press day, we had all the major titles come along and meet us and interview Emma and myself at that time. We had Emma’s social media following, which is fantastic.

But at the same time, the Spice Girls were really sort of pre-social media. So it’s not like Emma came along with 20, 30, 40, a hundred million followers.

But Emma brings that star power and lots of people, so any product launch, people want to talk to her and understand what she’s doing.

And she’s so genuine and authentic, and anyone that meets her always say, “Oh, she’s just as lovely as I expected her to be,” because that’s exactly who she is.

And she has a massive heart, which is such a big reason why she wanted to do it and why the giving back was so important to her as well. So she just brings that star power.

I always tell people that ultimately as a brand, first and foremost, we’re about producing the best possible products, and then it comes back to the 3 pillars, right? It has to be better for baby, has to be better for our world, it has to give back.

And then you sprinkle a little bit of Emma Bunton’s Spice Girl magic on it. And, of course, a lot of people who were massive Spice Girl fans are having babies today. So every little helps, as they say.

Star power works best when fame is backed by genuine founder involvement.

How to build resilience and keep innovating as a founder

Christopher Money argues that founders need courage, repeated testing, resilience, and continuous innovation to turn setbacks into momentum.

Bex Burn-Callander:

And just finally, for anyone who’s starting a business or running a business and would love to get the kind of celebrity power behind them that you have with Kit & Kin, the way that you approached Emma Bunton is just so inspiring.

It’s just like you are just unstoppable. You’re cold-calling, you went through the agent, you just didn’t give up and you didn’t think, “Oh, I’m going to fail.”

You just gave it a shot.

Are there any other bits of advice you’d give anyone who’s looking to recruit a really great name or celebrity to their brand? What were the things that you did that worked really well or that you think would be really impactful?

Christopher Money:

So it’s hard to give advice, that’s not a cliché. But there’s a reason why they’re a cliché, and they’re repeated by founders again and again.

And the first one you absolutely hit the nail on the head there is, you can’t be scared. Don’t be scared to fail.

You really have to have the courage to go for it, and there’s rarely that sort of opportune perfect time in life where everything lines up, and you have that opportunity to do something.

When I started Kit & Kin, my wife and I, we were renting. We just had our second boy. He was about a year old. The last thing I probably should have done was launch a startup, but ultimately, it was something I really believed in and something I was really passionate about.

So first and foremost, you’ve just got to go for it. Don’t be reckless, of course, but go for it.

And then once you’ve started it, don’t be scared to fail again. Test and test and test. That’s the best way to learn.

You’re going to have to be really resilient. There’s no doubt about that. You’re going to face so many challenges along the way.

And I’ve always tried to have the mindset to try and find an opportunity in every problem because ever since I started at the factory 20 years ago, thrown in the deep end, just problem after problem, firefighting the whole time.

I think that’s helped me massively in terms of having a startup because I just tend to roll with the punches and just try and find a positive in any negative.

And innovation. Innovation is so important as well because, again, coming back to the factory and the complacency there and the lack of investment.

I’m amazed even 7 years into Kit & Kin when I think, “Oh, surely no one else is going to come into this very busy, busy market,” and then someone always does because they’re looking at what you’re doing and thinking, “Oh, I can do that slightly different. Oh, I can do that slightly better.”

So you’ve always got to innovate to stay ahead of the crowd.

But in terms of a celebrity-endorsed brand, I think today’s different. You don’t necessarily need a celebrity to drive your business forward, but if you are going to go down that route, then it comes back to the original one. Don’t be scared.

If you’re really passionate about something, you really believe in it, then celebrities are normal people as well. Just pick up the phone, reach out, and see what you can do.

Startup progress depends on learning quickly and improving before competitors do.

Frequently asked questions about creating innovative startups in the UK

How do you come up with an innovative startup idea?

Strong startup ideas often come from spotting a problem that existing businesses are not solving well enough. In Kit & Kin’s case, Christopher Money saw demand for baby products that were both effective and more sustainable, then used his industry experience to create a better alternative.

How can a startup stand out in a competitive market?

A startup can stand out by solving a specific customer problem, building a clear brand position, and finding creative ways to compete without matching larger companies’ budgets. Kit & Kin did this through sustainable product development, strong branding, and a high-profile co-founder partnership.

How can founders build partnerships for a startup?

Founders can build partnerships by identifying what their business needs, finding partners who share the same vision, and being willing to make a direct approach. Christopher Money secured support from suppliers, a branding agency, and Emma Bunton by clearly explaining the opportunity and the purpose behind the brand.

How can startups balance profit and purpose?

Startups can balance profit and purpose by building impact into the business model from the start, rather than treating it as a later add-on. Kit & Kin tied its commercial growth to product standards, environmental commitments, and giving-back initiatives.

What is the best advice for first-time startup founders?

First-time founders should expect setbacks, test ideas quickly, and keep improving their product or service. Christopher Money’s advice is to avoid waiting for the perfect moment, build resilience, and continue innovating so the business can stay relevant as the market changes.

Inspired by this business story?

Wherever you’re listening or watching, subscribe to Sound Advice on Apple iTunes here.

We are also on Spotify and anywhere else you get your podcasts.

Join our community to share your insights and stories on X @SageUK using the hashtag #SoundAdvicePodcast, on Instagram @SageOfficial or in the comments below!

Want to know more about Christopher Money or Kit & Kin?

You can find out more about Chris on his LinkedIn.

For more on Kit & Kin, check out their website or Instagram.

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Nonprofit Budget Template Guide | Sage UK

gentong4d — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:25:00 +0000

Fundraising is already challenging enough, but keeping your organisation financially sustainable adds another layer of responsibility.

In fact, a survey conducted by Sage in the US found that nonprofits rank budgeting and financial planning as one of their top five internal challenges.

Why?

Because nonprofit revenue streams can be unpredictable, and it’s easy to prioritise programme funding over internal needs.

However, a solid budget helps you navigate these challenges, ensuring your nonprofit can operate effectively whilst making a meaningful impact.

In this guide, you’ll walk through the essentials of budgeting for nonprofits, covering different budgeting methods, best practices, and key components.

By the end, you’ll have the knowledge and tools to build a reliable financial plan with confidence that balances financial constraints with your nonprofit’s ability to carry out its mission.

This is what we cover:

What is a nonprofit budget?

A nonprofit budget is your organisation’s financial blueprint.

It outlines your projected income and expenses over a specific period, usually a fiscal year.

Think of it as a roadmap that helps your team manage financial resources effectively, ensuring you have the funds to support your programmes and initiatives.

Your budget brings together income from various sources, including donations, grants and fundraising efforts.

It indicates which items are subject to specific stipulations—otherwise known as restricted funds—which typically make up the bulk of revenue for nonprofit organisations.

To keep everything organised, your budget categorises funds into clear nonprofit budget categories, helping you allocate resources efficiently and maintain financial stability.

The purpose of budgeting for nonprofits

If your organisation qualifies for special tax rules, a nonprofit budget serves as a financial model that outlines projected income and expenses.

Unlike standard budgeting, your priority as a nonprofit is to consider project goals from the perspective of donors and stakeholders rather than generating profits.

This means your budget must detail the use of restricted and unrestricted funds and prioritise mission-driven spending over the financial results.

A well-structured budget details how restricted and unrestricted funds will be allocated, ensuring transparency and accountability.

By prioritising mission-driven spending, you can clearly demonstrate to donors how their contributions directly support your organisation’s goals and impact.

At the same time, balancing mission-driven initiatives with responsible financial management is key to ensuring your nonprofit’s long-term sustainability.

Nonprofit budget example: layout and key components

When creating a nonprofit budget, you’ll typically include key financial details in a structured format.

Most nonprofit budgets have columns indicating the period covered, budgeted amounts, actual spending, and the percentage difference from the previous period or year.

Your budget will also have two main sections.

Income sources— including donations, grants, fundraising revenue, and other funding streams.
Operating expenses— including programme costs, administrative expenses, salaries, and overhead.

Many nonprofit budget templates include separate sections for restricted and unrestricted funds, helping you track donor-restricted contributions and general operating funds more effectively.

Below is a basic nonprofit operating budget example to show how these components typically come together.

Category	Item	Current year figure so far	Current year projected budget	Previous year budget	% Difference
Revenue Sources	Donations (Restricted)	£	£	£
Revenue Sources	Donations (Unrestricted)	£	£	£
Revenue Sources	Grants (Restricted)	£	£	£
Revenue Sources	Grants (Unrestricted)	£	£	£
Revenue Sources	Investment returns	£	£	£
Revenue Sources	Total revenue	£	£	£
Expenses	Salaries	£	£	£
Expenses	Materials and services	£	£	£
Expenses	Rent	£	£	£
Expenses	Total expenses	£	£	£

Methods for building a nonprofit budget

Not only do the key budget components vary depending on your mission and structure, but there may also be differences in the budgeting method used by different nonprofits.

Here are some common methods:

Zero-based budgeting

Zero-based budgeting requires your financial planners to evaluate each expense based on current needs, starting from scratch for each new budgeting period.

This approach ensures that resources are allocated more strategically and efficiently.

It is most useful for nonprofits that want to avoid unnecessary expenditures or when they need to adapt to significant changes in their operating environment.

Such changes could include the addition of new funding sources or new restrictions dictated by existing donors.

Preparing a real-world budget example for nonprofit organisations can help guide your approach and aid in the decision on whether to use these budgeting methods or another variant.

Driver-based budgeting

Rather than starting zero at the beginning of each budgeting period, the driver-based method links budget resources to the key drivers influencing your costs and revenues, such as the number of programme participants, fundraising events, or grant cycles.

By focusing on these drivers, you can create more accurate and dynamic budgets that reflect the underlying factors affecting your financial performance.

Driver-based budgeting helps your nonprofit align its financial planning with operational activities, making adjusting to changes and improving decision-making easier.

Top-down budgeting

In this method, your nonprofit senior management first develops a high-level budget for the organisation.

Once the top-level numbers are created, amounts are allocated to individual functions, programmes, or departments that must create a detailed budget and plan with their allocated expenses or revenue targets.

With top-down budgeting, you can ensure all departments and programmes in your organisation are working towards the same goal.

It’s also quicker to implement and help senior leaders stay on top of the organisation’s resource allocation.

Bottom-up budgeting

Bottom-up budgeting starts with the people who know the details best—your team.

By involving staff from various departments in the budgeting process, you get a more accurate and realistic picture of your financial needs.

This approach establishes trust and openness within the organisation, as your employees understand how their input influences the overall financial plan.

Different nonprofit budget types

Having a detailed plan, such as a nonprofit budget sample for each programme or fundraising activity, helps you maintain transparency and meet donor expectations.

However, the budget type you choose will depend on the size of your nonprofit and where you are in your mission’s journey.

Here are some common nonprofit budget types and when to use them:

Operating budget

This is the most common type of budget, typically covering an entire fiscal year (usually 12 months).

It serves as your financial roadmap, guiding day-to-day financial planning, monitoring cash flow, and evaluating your organisation’s overall financial health.

In this sense it is the primary source for making informed decisions, assessing funding needs, and communicating financial expectations to your board and stakeholders.

Capital budgets

A capital budget focuses on long-term investments and major expenses, such as acquiring property and equipment, or technology upgrades.

It is typically used when you embark on projects that require large upfront costs and may span multiple years.

You can use a capital budget to ensure such initiatives have minimal impact on daily operations.

Examples include building a new facility, such as an aid distribution centre, purchasing vehicles, or investing in new IT infrastructure.

Programme-specific budgets

Programme-specific budgets detail the income and expenses related to a specific initiative, such as a youth mentoring programme, a community food bank, or an educational campaign.

This budget model helps you track each programme’s financial performance separately, ensuring funds are used effectively and in accordance with donor or grant requirements.

This type of budget is particularly useful for managing restricted funds—allowing you to demonstrate compliance with donor stipulations, report to funders, and evaluate a programme’s financial sustainability.

Following on from programme-specific budgets, it’s worth noting that this category includes the subcategories of grant proposal budgets and opportunity budgets:

Grant proposal budget

If your nonprofit relies heavily on grant funding, this budget outlines programme costs to meet grantor specifications, including fund-matching requirements.

Opportunity budget

This budget allocates funds for unplanned or emerging opportunities, such as piloting a new programme, investing in innovative technologies, or responding to unexpected needs.

It reflects your capacity for strategic growth, agility, and flexibility.

How to write a nonprofit budget

A well-organised nonprofit budget makes all the difference in your effort to align financial resources with your mission.

Here are the basic steps for drafting a nonprofit budget template that will guide your success:

Define the initial plan and process

Start with setting clear goals and bringing in key stakeholders—such as programme managers and department heads—who can provide detailed estimates of expected costs and revenues.

At this stage, it’s also important to assign roles to those involved in budget management.

Clarify who will oversee different aspects of the budget as your project takes shape and outline the processes that will guide them.

Finally, a realistic timeline for budget preparation should be established, ensuring enough time for review and adjustments before final approval.

Evaluate your organisation’s readiness

Your budget is a recipe for financial health over the forthcoming year, but don’t ignore the health status you expect when closing the current year.

Failure to do so could set you up for awkward surprises if the budget is built on shaky ground.

Another finding from our nonprofit tech trends survey was that global economic uncertainty in 2024 was a significant concern for most nonprofit leaders.

An assessment of your readiness should therefore also consider the external factors and trends shaping the current context, as well as past performance of your programmes.

Align nonprofit budget planning with your goals

A well-structured nonprofit budget aligns expected financial resources with your organisation’s mission and goals, ensuring financial sustainability whilst maximising project impact.

For example, your programmes may have multiple goals, such as improving the quality of aid whilst also reaching more beneficiaries.

Since different funding sources often come with specific restrictions, your budget should carefully allocate resources to cover each need effectively.

A popular methodology for this kind of planning is the S.M.A.R.T model, originally formulated for determining management goals.

The acronym stands for Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time-related criteria.

In the case of budget planning, the criteria translate into:

Specific: clearly defined the goal
Measurable: means of tracking progress and success
Attainable: how to achieve the goal, and who will do it
Realistic: ensuring there are sufficient resources to achieve the goal
Time-related: a workable timeframe for each goal

Thorough research on revenue and expenses

Creativity is key to keeping your fundraising campaigns fresh and engaging.

But with each campaign being unique, costs can vary significantly.

Plus, funding sources like grants, social campaigns, or corporate donations can be unpredictable, changing from year to year. So, how do you plan for these variables?

In both cases, the standard advice is to start by reviewing past performance to isolate patterns, such as cyclical trends.

This will also show you which funding sources are most reliable, especially true of recurring donations and multi-year grants.

Be sure to analyse external factors, such as economic trends and changing industry conditions, that may affect your sources’ ability to maintain the flow of contributions.

Whilst variations in funding may be beyond your control, make sure to monitor your expenses.

A popular rule of thumb is to ensure that at least 65% of total resources go to programme costs, such as materials, rentals, and operations, whilst overheads never account for more than 35% of resources.

For nonprofits, overheads include fundraising costs (such as maintaining your website and hiring campaign staff) and administrative costs (such as maintaining your HQ).

Modern solutions like predictive analytics can help you visualise past and future scenarios and are often built into commercially available nonprofit accounting solutions.

Nonprofit budget best practices

It’s easy to be overly optimistic when planning a nonprofit budget, especially when launching new programmes or initiatives.

A common mistake is prioritising programme spending without setting aside emergency funds for unexpected challenges.

To help you avoid these pitfalls, here are some essential budgeting best practices to keep your nonprofit financially stable and mission-focused.

1. Adequate research and realistic cost estimation

Use detailed historical data and consult with your nonprofit programme managers to develop accurate estimates of expenses and stay on top of underestimating costs.

Be sure to consider inflation, potential cost increases, and one-time expenses.

Regularly update budget estimates based on real-time information and feedback from staff involved in programme delivery.

2. Monitor cash flow regularly

Budgeting is all about staying on track.

Review your spending regularly to ensure it aligns with your strategic goals and keeps your nonprofit financially healthy.

These check-ins also help your team adapt to unexpected changes, like programme roadblocks or additional funding needs, so your budget stays relevant and effective.

One critical area to watch?

Cash flow.

Creating a cash flow forecast that tracks expected income and expenses on a monthly or quarterly basis can make a big difference.

It helps prevent your organisation from focusing only on total budgeted amounts without considering when the cash will actually be available.

This is especially important for nonprofits that rely heavily on grants or fundraising events, which often lead to large, irregular payments instead of a steady revenue stream.

By monitoring cash flow closely, your team can anticipate and plan for periods of lower cash availability.

Investing in cash management software is also a great way to gain better visibility and ensure financial stability.

3. Implement a contingency fund

Setting aside a portion of the budget (typically 5-10%) as a reserve will help your organisation handle unexpected challenges like sudden drops in donations, emergency repairs, or economic downturns.

To prepare for anomalies without disrupting operations, you should regularly review and adjust the contingency fund based on your financial situation and any emerging risks.

4. Attention to detail

When creating your nonprofit budget, it’s important to strike a balance—you want it to be clear and easy to follow whilst still capturing the details that impact your organisation’s financial health.

Whilst big-ticket expenses often take centre stage, small costs add up fast.

Things like utility bills, office supplies, and software subscriptions may seem minor on their own, but when combined they can create significant overhead costs that eat into your budget.

Make sure your budget clearly outlines the key components needed to sustain operations, so all stakeholders understand how financial resources are being managed.

5. The right tool for the job

You may see many nonprofits start as grassroots organisations, and at that stage it’s reasonable to use spreadsheets to plan budgets.

But sooner or later you need to take a more formal approach, to meet compliancy rules, impress potential donors with clearly displayed information, or simply to avoid errors.

More and more nonprofits are finding that cloud-based tools solve these issues, often incorporating templates and automated pathways that take a lot of the stress out of budgeting.

Such tools centralise data storage and manipulation, eliminating the need to copy or download documents, and adding a layer of security.

Nonprofit budgeting made easy

Making a real impact starts with financial stability.

A well-planned budget ensures that your nonprofit can continue serving its mission whilst maintaining its financial health.

You can simplify the process—incorporating best practices, adapting to your organisation’s needs, and making budgeting easier to manage—with Sage cloud-based financial planning and budgeting software.

Choosing the right nonprofit accounting software will streamline how your organisation understands itself.

Getting the right tools to help with research, reporting, and financial tracking will give your mission programmes the support they need to grow healthily and stay resilient.

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Accountex 2026: Accounting work has changed. Most firms are still structured for what it used to be

gentong4d — Sun, 17 May 2026 14:53:00 +0000

Accountex 2026 took place in mid-May 2026, and delivered some powerful, game changing insights about the state of the accountancy profession.

We’ve a full write-up in this article, as follows:

Operational pressures: Beyond compliance and deadlines

One of the most revealing moments at Accountex 2026 came during a session discussing operational pressure inside accounting firms.

The conversation quickly moved beyond compliance and tax deadlines.

Accountants and bookkeepers talked about chasing records late at night, managing confused clients through software transitions, correcting transaction categorisation issues before quarterly submissions, and repeatedly explaining HMRC changes to businesses already struggling to keep up.

Several described absorbing administrative and operational support work that sat well outside traditional accounting boundaries.

At one point, there was a noticeable shift in mood from discussion to frustration.

Firms weren’t resisting technology. Many had already invested heavily in cloud systems, automation tools, and AI-assisted workflows.

The frustration came from something else: the growing sense that accounting work itself has changed shape, while many firms are still structured, priced, and staffed for an older version of the profession.

That theme surfaced repeatedly across Accountex 2026.

Accounting feels broader, faster—and harder to contain

Whether sessions focused on AI, Making Tax Digital for Income Tax, workflow automation, pricing, or advisory services, conversations kept returning to the same underlying pressure: work feels broader, faster, more continuous, and harder to contain.

The Hidden Hours research launched at the event helped explain why.

Based on a survey of 1,000 UK accountants and bookkeepers, the research found that less than half of working time is now spent on core accounting and compliance work.

Increasing amounts of time are absorbed by the operational layer surrounding the work itself—coordinating clients, resolving workflow gaps, maintaining software processes, managing incomplete records, explaining systems, and helping businesses maintain financial discipline throughout the year.

Eighty-one percent of firms said they regularly perform work outside their formal scope, while 70% said their fees no longer reflect the full range of support they now provide.

This is no longer occasional overflow work.

It is becoming part of the operational baseline of modern practice.

Visibility changes the accountant/client relationship

One of the clearest themes running through Accountex was visibility.

Connected platforms, cloud accounting systems, AI-assisted workflows, and digital reporting environments are giving firms and clients far greater visibility into financial operations than they had historically.

That visibility creates obvious advantages. Problems surface earlier. Errors become easier to identify. Businesses can make decisions using more current information rather than waiting for retrospective reporting cycles.

But visibility also changes expectations.

Once financial issues become continuously visible, clients increasingly expect continuous guidance too.

Several sessions returned to the same operational tension: accountants and bookkeepers are now often expected to intervene earlier, respond faster, and stay closer to live business activity than many firms were originally designed to support.

Historically, accountants often worked after financial activity had already taken place. Increasingly, firms now find themselves operating much closer to live workflows—monitoring process quality, resolving operational bottlenecks, maintaining reporting discipline, and helping clients respond to issues in real time.

That work is valuable. But much of it remains difficult to see internally inside firms themselves.

And when work becomes continuously visible to clients, it also becomes much harder for firms to contain where responsibility begins and ends.

Moving from episodic work to continuous responsibility

For decades, accounting work followed a relatively predictable rhythm.

Information arrived after the fact. Work accumulated toward deadlines. Most client relationships centred around periodic compliance events such as year ends, VAT returns, tax filings, and reporting cycles.

That model is now under pressure from multiple directions simultaneously.

At Accountex, firms repeatedly described the same operational reality: the work no longer arrives neatly in cycles. It now flows continuously through connected systems, ongoing communication, and real-time operational visibility.

Making Tax Digital increases the frequency of reporting and workflow coordination. AI accelerates execution and compresses turnaround expectations. Connected financial systems expose operational issues earlier and more continuously.

These trends are often discussed separately. Firms experience them together.

The result is that accounting work increasingly behaves less like periodic compliance work and more like continuous operational oversight.

For many firms, this is creating a wider operational rethink around AI adoption, workflow design, and practice readiness.

AI compresses execution. It doesn’t remove accountability

Of course, AI dominated much of the conversation at Accountex 2026.

But the most interesting discussions weren’t about the replacement of professionals. They were about what happens when production becomes dramatically faster while accountability remains firmly human.

Tasks that once consumed hours can now take minutes. Meeting summaries, transaction categorisation, reconciliations, initial analysis, and client communications can increasingly be accelerated through AI-assisted workflows.

The constraint shifts.

Less time is spent manually producing outputs. More time is spent reviewing, validating, interpreting, correcting, explaining, and standing behind the result.

During the keynote session, Sage’s Chief Financial Officer Jacqui Cartin repeatedly returned to the pressure firms face operating in environments where “nearly right” is often still wrong.

That distinction matters because AI changes the economics of execution without removing the commercial risk attached to accuracy.

A categorisation error produced in seconds still needs to be identified, corrected, explained to the client, and ultimately signed off by someone accountable for the outcome. Faster workflows do not eliminate responsibility. In many cases, they redistribute it.

Several conversations across the event reflected this tension. Firms are becoming faster operationally, but they are also absorbing more continuous oversight, validation, and coordination work around the output itself.

The work becomes operationally broader even as individual tasks become quicker to complete.

MTD changes the rhythm of operational pressure

The HMRC sessions at Accountex reinforced how significant the operational implications of MTD for Income Tax may become over time.

Quarterly submissions are only the visible layer of the shift.

The deeper change is behavioural and operational.

Under a more continuous reporting environment, poor record keeping becomes visible earlier, incomplete information disrupts workflows faster, and client responsiveness increasingly shapes delivery capacity throughout the year rather than near filing deadlines.

Several discussions throughout the event kept circling back to the same operational challenge: client behaviour increasingly drives workload.

That changes the nature of accounting work itself.

The issue is no longer simply producing year-end outputs efficiently. It is maintaining operational flow across hundreds of ongoing client interactions, corrections, reminders, explanations, and interventions.

Responsibility no longer builds toward a single annual event.

It becomes continuous.

Why efficiency doesn’t feel like relief

One contradiction surfaced repeatedly across the event.

Accounting firms are more digitised than ever. AI tools are accelerating routine tasks. Automation continues spreading across workflows.

Yet many firms still describe work feeling heavier.

The Hidden Hours research helps explain why.

Technology reduces friction inside individual tasks. But at the same time, responsiveness expectations increase, workflow visibility expands, coordination demands grow, intervention happens earlier, and operational involvement deepens.

The result is that efficiency doesn’t necessarily translate into relief.

The underlying scope of responsibility expands at the same time automation accelerates execution.

This is why many firms experiencing the greatest pressure are not necessarily behind on technology adoption. In many cases, they are among the most operationally advanced.

The challenge isn’t ‘digitisation’.

It is that many operating models—pricing structures, workflows, client boundaries, and staffing assumptions—still reflect a more episodic version of accounting work, while the day-to-day reality has become increasingly continuous.

Over time, continuous operational support risks becoming absorbed invisibly into the practice itself—through constant responsiveness, ongoing coordination, small interventions, and workflow management work that accumulates faster than firms redesign around it.

Firms trying to make MTD operational pressure more visible internally may find it useful to work through this MTD operational checklist for practices.

Final thoughts: Accounting and bookkeeping work is becoming structurally different

The most important takeaway from Accountex 2026 may not be about AI or MTD.

It may be that the accounting and bookkeeping work itself is becoming structurally different.

The profession is moving closer to live operational support, workflow coordination, and continuous financial management inside businesses. As execution becomes faster and increasingly automated, competitive advantage shifts elsewhere—toward judgment, responsiveness, operational visibility, and the ability to manage continuous responsibility without overwhelming the firm itself.

The firms that adapt fastest may not be the firms at the frontier adopting the most technology. They are likely to be the firms that recognise where responsibility has already moved—and restructure themselves around that reality before continuous operational pressure becomes unsustainable.

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Unique Start-Up Ideas That Work in the Real World

gentong4d — Fri, 15 May 2026 14:03:17 +0000

Whether you’re starting a traditional business or something more offbeat, the core principle is the same: your idea needs real demand, practical development, and a willingness to try something different.

A business may need broad appeal, but that doesn’t mean the idea itself has to be conventional. Even the strangest concepts can succeed if they solve a genuine problem and can be shaped into something workable.

Some start-up ideas come from obvious market gaps, while others grow out of niche interests, overlooked frustrations, or industries ready for change. What matters is not how unusual the idea seems at first but whether it stands up to real-world testing.

Real businesses built on unconventional concepts show how these start-up ideas can be developed, refined, and turned into something viable.

Here’s what we cover:

How extreme can a start-up idea be?

There’s virtually no limit to how creative or unusual start-up ideas can be, as long as they solve real problems and people are willing to pay for them.

What might seem unusual, niche, or even uncomfortable on the surface can still form the foundation of a viable business if it taps into genuine demand. In fact, some of the most successful start-ups began by challenging expectations or exploring ideas others overlooked.

It helps to start with an open mind. That’s why Sage partnered with Vice on the On the Up series, highlighting founders who have built businesses from unconventional starting points.

The Vice spirit

Vice itself is a good example of a business with an offbeat origin. It started in 1994 as an alternative; free punk magazine built with money from a government welfare programme. Today, Vice Media is a multi-million-pound global media brand and content studio.

The stories in this On the Up episode show there’s no single formula for a “good” idea: some are bold, some are unexpected, but all of them work because they cater to existing demand and have been tested in the real world.

How do you choose and develop a unique start-up idea?

Choose a start-up idea by balancing three things: a real need in the market, your own motivation or expertise, and the potential to turn the idea into something you can test and improve.

Here are some tips to help you generate and develop your concept:

Consider your motivation

Look at your reasons for wanting to start a business.

This could help you filter out some of the wilder ideas you might have and narrow them down to those suitable for your interests, needs, and motivations.

Start by asking yourself these questions:

Is your goal to make more money?

Would you like to solve a specific problem people face?

Are you looking for a way to supplement your income?

Do you want to launch the next global corporation?

By figuring out your motivations behind starting a business, you’ll be able to narrow down your ideas.

However, be careful—make sure that you don’t unconsciously reject your best start-up ideas.

Supply what people need, using your passion and expertise

Starting a business is easier (and more fun) if your knowledge of the latent demand is built on personal insight. If you understand a market well, whether through your work, your interests, or your own lived experience, you’re more likely to spot gaps that other people miss.

That gives you a clearer view of what customers actually want, what feels underserved, and where there may be room for a business that offers something more relevant or more useful.

Building around a real need also makes it easier to shape an idea into something practical. Instead of chasing originality for its own sake, you can focus on creating something that people will genuinely value.

And when that need connects with your own expertise, you’re often in a stronger position to understand the audience, communicate with them, and keep developing the business over time.

No Signal: A radio station addressing a clear gap in the market

The story of No Signal shows how a founder’s own interests and community knowledge revealed demand that others had missed.

As a child, David Sonubi listened to inspirational church gospel sounds and had a deep love for music, which carried on as he grew up.

A few years later, he set up Recess club nights, which focused on bringing hip-hop, R & B, dance hall, and Afrobeat to black millennials.

When lockdown hit in spring 2020, Sonubi pivoted to launch an innovative, independent, and massively popular radio station called No Signal.

It has plugged into the fact that young black communities didn’t have a radio station that represented them, either in the music being played or who was playing it.

Sonubi’s vision expanded beyond the radio station with the launch of the No Sounds Academy, a training scheme aimed at the next generation to develop technical skills for a career in broadcasting and audio production.

Come up with something different by looking where others don’t

Big start-up ideas often come from places other people ignore, avoid, or assume are too unusual to build a business around.

Sometimes the opportunity isn’t in inventing something completely new but in looking at familiar situations from a different angle and asking whether there’s a better, easier, or more human way to approach them.

Strong ideas are not always obvious at first. Some come from taboo subjects, overlooked customer experiences, or industries that haven’t changed for years.

The challenge is to stay open-minded enough to recognise potential where others might see something too niche, too uncomfortable, or too unconventional.

Farewill: Turning a difficult subject into a welcome business opportunity

This case shows how looking at an uncomfortable subject differently led to a meaningful business opportunity.

The last thing grieving people want to do is think about funeral arrangements and money, usually while dealing with unfeeling strangers who don’t truly know what they’re going through.

Farewill is a start-up that makes it easier for people experiencing loss.

With its suite of services, the business, co-founded by Dan Garrett, provides a platform for people to write online wills, organise probate services, and order cremations.

Farewill has built a strong business, and investors understand that it solves a real but underserved problem. That explains why the company attracted £30m in funding in its first five years.

Innovate and test your idea

Innovation is not always essential for a start-up idea to succeed. But it is often what gives a business its original angle.

Start-ups are typically associated with new thinking, a willingness to take risks, and the ability to approach old challenges in a different way. In industries already under pressure to change, that can create real opportunities for founders with a strong point of view.

Take fashion, for example. Textile production is estimated to be responsible for around 20% of global clean water pollution, with dyeing playing a major role. As manufacturers look for ways to reduce the environmental impact of clothing and textiles, there is growing space for start-ups to explore more sustainable alternatives.

Mykkö: A novel material from fungal fibres

This start-up shows how industry pressure and trends could be all it takes to develop more sustainable business ideas.

Mykkö tapped into demand for more sustainable materials by working with fungi, using tiny fungal threads known as mycelium that can be cultivated at scale. Its founders, French fashion designer Aurélie Fontan and British product designer Ashley Granter, saw an opportunity in the huge fashion market and built on it with creativity and experimentation. Their idea is closely aligned with a sustainability trend that continues to grow.

Is a start-up idea enough to make you an entrepreneur?

Having a start-up idea is a strong starting point. But becoming an entrepreneur means knowing how to start a business and putting that idea into practice. Be prepared to test whether it works, and take the time to identify your audience. Farewill, Mykkö and No Signal are living proof that bold, original ideas can succeed.

With nearly half of UK adults thinking about starting a business or side hustle, interest in entrepreneurship is clearly high. What’s to stop you turning your early thinking into something real?

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Frequently asked questions about starting a unique business

How do you know if your start-up idea has real demand?

Start by looking for evidence of demand: are people already trying to solve this problem? Search trends, online communities, and competitor activity can all indicate demand. The most reliable test is to validate your idea with real users before fully committing.

What makes a niche idea scalable?

A niche idea can scale if the audience is large enough, growing, or underserved. It also helps if the product or service can be expanded, adapted, or replicated without a proportional increase in cost.

Should you choose a start-up idea based on passion or profitability?

Ideally, you should choose a profitable idea that you’re passionate about. Passion helps you stay committed, while demand ensures the idea is viable. If you have to prioritise, focus on solving a real problem—interest and motivation often grow once you see traction.

What’s the biggest mistake people make with new start-up ideas?

Too often, start-up founders fall in love with the idea instead of the problem. Strong businesses are built by understanding what people need, not by trying to force an idea to work.

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Hotel Budgeting Guide: Financial Success

gentong4d — Wed, 13 May 2026 13:10:01 +0000

Running a hotel means juggling a lot of moving parts. Every day brings new guests to serve, operations to manage, and numbers to track. As a hotel owner or finance manager, you’re not only focused on delivering a great experience today—you’re also planning for long-term profitability. That’s where your hotel budget comes in.

Your hotel budget is a powerful tool that helps you control costs, forecast revenue, and allocate resources wisely. It provides a clear picture of your current financial health and helps you plan for future growth.

This guide walks through how to take control of your hotel budget, from breaking down the key components to building a reliable financial model. You’ll also discover how accounting solutions are designed to support your budgeting efforts and drive your business success.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Understanding your hotel budget

So, what exactly is a hotel budget?

A budget in hotel management outlines your expected income and expenses over a specific period—typically monthly, quarterly, or annually. It covers everything from operating costs and projected revenue to capital expenditure and marketing spend. It acts as a strategic guide, helping you make informed decisions whilst maintaining control over day-to-day operations.

To support consistency and accuracy, many hotels use the Uniform System of Accounts for the Lodging Industry (USALI) in their budgeting and financial reporting processes. USALI is a standardised accounting framework tailored for the hospitality industry.

While widely used for internal reporting and benchmarking, hotels in the UK typically align statutory reporting with UK GAAP or IFRS.

Here’s how USALI supports your hotel budgeting:

Standardises financial reporting across departments (e.g., rooms, F&B, spa, admin).
Ensures consistency in how revenues and expenses are categorised.
Improves comparability with other hotels and industry benchmarks.
Supports transparency and accountability within budgeting and forecasting.

By aligning your hotel budget with USALI standards, you can build a more reliable financial model, identify trends more easily, and plan with greater confidence.

Why does creating hotel budgets matter?

Creating a budget is essential for ensuring your hotel’s financial health. It helps you:

Track and manage day-to-day expenses.
Make informed decisions about staffing, purchasing, and investments.
Prepare for seasonal changes and economic shifts.
Set and measure performance goals.

Ultimately, a solid hotel budget ensures you’re not just reacting to changes—but planning for them.

The hotel budgeting process

Creating an effective hotel budget involves several key steps that help guide financial planning and decision-making.

Data collection and analysis

Strong budgeting starts with reliable, relevant data. Historical metrics such as occupancy rates, Average Daily Rate (ADR), and Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR) offer a baseline for evaluating performance. Complement this with market research, guest feedback, and online reviews to identify opportunities and risks. This foundation helps you better understand demand patterns and areas for improvement.

Determining cost structures

A clear understanding of your hotel’s cost structure lays the foundation for a realistic and effective budget. Start by identifying all operational expenses across departments—including staffing, utilities, vendor contracts, and maintenance.

Knowing the types of costs your hotel incurs helps you plan more accurately and control spending without compromising service quality.

Key cost categories to consider include:

Fixed and variable costs

Fixed costs, such as rent and insurance, remain consistent regardless of occupancy. Variable costs, like housekeeping supplies or energy usage, fluctuate based on guest volume.

Direct and indirect costs

Direct costs are tied to guest services, such as room amenities or F&B supplies. Indirect costs include administrative expenses or general overhead that support the business as a whole.

Seasonal variations

Costs can rise or fall depending on the season. Higher occupancy during peak periods may increase labour and supply expenses, whilst off-seasons may allow for cost-saving opportunities.

Understanding these distinctions will help you build a budget that reflects real-world conditions and supports sound financial decisions.

Setting SMART goals

Your budget should support your broader business strategy. Set SMART goals—specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound—to give your financial plan direction. For example, you might target a 10% increase in RevPAR next quarter through dynamic pricing or targeted marketing campaigns.

Revenue forecasting and demand estimation

Project future income based on historical trends, upcoming events, seasonal shifts, and competitor performance. Use real-time market data and booking trends to fine-tune your revenue and budget forecasts, and account for anticipated fluctuations in demand.

Resource allocation

An effective budget enables thoughtful resource distribution. Allocate funds strategically across departments—such as housekeeping, food and beverage, and front desk operations—based on projected occupancy and guest needs. Prioritise areas that directly impact guest experience whilst maintaining cost efficiency.

Plan for capital expenditures

Long-term success often requires investing in the future. Set aside funds in your budget for capital expenditures like renovations, major equipment upgrades, or property improvements. Planning ahead for these investments helps avoid financial strain and supports sustainable growth.

Planning for the unexpected

Every hotel faces unforeseen challenges—weather disruptions, supply chain issues, or sudden drops in demand. Build contingency funds into your budget to prepare for emergencies or slow periods, giving you flexibility without compromising operations.

Monitoring and adjusting

A successful budget isn’t static. Regularly review actual performance against your projections and KPIs. Adjust when needed to address changing conditions or seize new opportunities. Staying flexible allows you to respond quickly and keep your financial strategy on track.

Types of budgets in hotels

Managing a hotel requires a range of budgets to cover the different areas of your business. Here’s a quick overview of the key budgets you should be using for effective hospitality budgeting:

Consolidated budget

This brings together all departmental budgets into one comprehensive financial plan, giving you a clear picture of your hotel’s overall financial position.

Department budget

This tracks income and expenses for individual departments like front office, housekeeping, food and beverage, and more. It helps each team stay accountable and aligned with your financial goals.

Operational budget

Covers the day-to-day expenses involved in running your hotel, from utilities and supplies to staffing and services.

Cash flow budget

Monitors the movement of cash in and out of your business to support an accurate hotel cash flow forecast and ensure you have enough liquidity to cover ongoing expenses.

Capital budget

Plans for long-term investments such as renovations, major equipment purchases, or property upgrades.

Marketing budget

Allocates spending for marketing efforts that attract new guests and drive future bookings. This budget is a strategic investment in your hotel’s long-term revenue growth. Focus on high-impact channels such as digital advertising (Google Ads, Meta Ads), search engine optimisation (SEO), social media marketing, and email campaigns or loyalty programmes.

To make the most of your marketing spend, monitor Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) like cost per booking, conversion rates, and Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). Use these insights to optimise your strategy—doubling down on what works and refining or reducing what doesn’t.

What influences your hotel budget?

Several key factors can shape how you plan, manage, and adjust your hotel budget. Being aware of these elements helps you create a more realistic and flexible financial plan.

Revenue forecasts: estimate future income based on historical performance, booking patterns, pricing strategies, and anticipated demand.
Operating cost estimates: factor in all expected expenses, including labour, utilities, maintenance, and day-to-day supplies.
Seasonal demand changes: high and low seasons affect both revenue and expenses. Planning for these fluctuations helps maintain profitability year-round.
Market trends and economic shifts: changes in traveller behaviour, economic conditions, and hospitality trends can impact both bookings and spending priorities.
Competitive landscape: monitoring local competitors and industry benchmarks ensures your pricing and service offerings stay competitive.
Regulatory requirements: changes in VAT rates, labour laws, or reporting obligations from bodies like HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) can introduce unexpected costs . Staying informed and compliant helps avoid penalties and ensures your budget reflects current legal obligations.

Understanding these drivers allows you to fine-tune your budget and stay prepared for both challenges and opportunities.

Hotel budgeting best practices

Enhance demand forecasting and management

Hotel demand forecasting and management is all about understanding and anticipating guest behaviour to make smarter, data-informed budgeting decisions. It impacts everything from room pricing to staffing levels and resource allocation.

Key strategies include:

Monitoring booking patterns and lead times.
Using revenue management (including yield strategies) to adjust pricing in real time.
Aligning inventory and staffing with forecasted occupancy.
Offering targeted promotions during low-demand periods.

When you take control of demand forecasting and management, you can align your budget more closely with actual guest needs—maximising revenue and minimising waste.

Build a robust hotel financial model

A hotel financial model is a powerful, data-driven tool that helps you analyse performance, forecast future results, and support strategic planning.

Key components include:

Revenue projections based on occupancy, ADR, and ancillary income.
Detailed expense breakdowns to monitor operating and fixed costs.
Cash flow analysis to ensure liquidity and financial health.
Investment planning for capital improvements or expansions.
Scenario modelling to prepare for best- and worst-case situations.

Incorporate sensitivity analysis to understand how changes in key variables—like ADR or occupancy—affect profitability. A strong financial model is also essential when sharing insights with stakeholders or securing funding for future growth.

Choose the right budgeting and forecasting tools

Looking for advanced accounting tools to improve your approach to hotel budgeting and forecasting? Digital budgeting solutions simplify financial forecasting, budget planning, and enhance accuracy. With the right financial software, you can:

Build dynamic, adaptable budgets.
Create reliable financial forecasts.
Track performance in real-time.

When integrated with your Property Management System (PMS), these tools streamline data collection, minimise manual errors, and give you more time to focus on strategic decision-making.

Common challenges and solutions in hotel budgeting

Even the most well-planned budgets can run into obstacles. Here are some common challenges hotel finance leaders and managers face—and practical ways to overcome them:

Challenges to watch for:

Overestimating revenue: set realistic expectations based on historical data and market trends.
Underestimating costs: factor in inflation, seasonal wage changes, and fluctuating vendor pricing.
Lack of department input: collaborate with department heads to create more accurate and accountable budgets.
Limited flexibility: leave room for unexpected costs and be ready to adjust your plans when needed.

Solutions that help:

Train staff involved in the budgeting process to improve accuracy and ownership.
Schedule regular budget reviews and performance check-ins to stay on track.
Use budgeting software that streamlines collaboration, reporting, and real-time updates.

Leveraging Sage solutions for effective hotel budgeting

If you’re still wondering how digital tools can simplify your hotel’s budgeting process, Sage offers financial budgeting and planning solutions tailored to the operational needs of the hospitality industry.

With Sage, you can:

Automate budgeting workflows to save time.
Track departmental expenses for better cost control.
Forecast revenue using real-time performance data.
Integrate seamlessly with your PMS.
Generate clear, actionable financial reports.

Whether you manage a single boutique hotel or a multi-property portfolio, Sage helps streamline your budgeting process—enabling smarter, data-driven decisions.

Take control of your hotel’s financial future

Mastering your hotel budget is about building a strong foundation for sustainable growth. From choosing the right budget type to adopting smart financial tools, there are practical steps you can take to gain better control over your hotel’s finances.

Proactive budgeting empowers you to make informed decisions, adapt to changing conditions, and confidently reach your business goals.

Ready to elevate your financial planning? Discover how the right hotel accounting and business management software can support long-term success in the hospitality industry.

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Purchase Order Process: How POs Work

gentong4d — Mon, 11 May 2026 11:37:00 +0000

If you’re new to running a business, you’ve probably put a lot of thought into the basic first steps: sourcing materials, arranging production, and then serving customers. One finer detail of those steps is building relationships with your suppliers. They’ll want to see that you know what you’re doing, and that you’re both speaking the same language.

That’s where Purchase Orders (POs) come in. They aren’t just a formality; they’re a proven way to clearly communicate your needs as a buyer. This helps you establish trust, as well as speeding up procurement in general.

This guide shows you how to use POs to best effect, making your procurement process efficient, helping you keep track of spending, and ultimately safeguarding profitability.

Here’s what we cover:

The purchase order process

Before you can understand how purchase orders work, it’s important to visualise where they fit in your day-to-day operations: POs are part of a step-by-step journey from recognising a procurement need to finalising payment. Here’s the general flow of this process:

Identifying the need

Recognising when goods or services are required is where it all starts. This could be anything from having to restock inventory to hiring a freelancer. For example, you may need someone to redesign your website or develop a new software feature. Any time you need external resources to support your business, you’ll likely need a purchase order.

Anticipate your operational needs by regularly reviewing inventory levels, analysing sales data, and forecasting demand. For example, if you notice a particular product is flying off the shelves, it’s time to order more before you run out. The need to restock inventory is one of the most common reasons for issuing POs because you need to be ready to meet customer demand.

Creating the purchase order

A standard purchase order, typically generated through dedicated software or your company’s own branded stationery, outlines the specifics of your order. This includes detailed item descriptions, the number of units required, prices, delivery dates, and payment terms.

To avoid any confusion, your PO should be meticulously clear. Use specific item codes or SKUs to ensure you receive exactly what you need. Double-check the prices listed to match the rates you agreed with the supplier. A well-defined PO will help you avoid disputes if, for example, a supplier delivers late or demands payment earlier than agreed.

Whilst standard purchase orders generally cover one-time transactions, there are variations to suit different operational styles, buyer-seller relationships or the frequency of purchases. For example:

Standing purchase orders: are ideal for recurring orders of the same products. You can set up an agreement once, specifying the items, quantities, and prices. And you simply reference the same PO number for each subsequent order, eliminating the need to create a new one every time.
Blanket purchase orders: are best suited for ongoing relationships where you anticipate multiple deliveries over a set period. For instance, if you regularly order a specific component, a blanket PO allows you to lock in pricing and delivery schedules for a defined period, often with volume discounts or other incentives.

Sending the purchase order to the supplier

When you settled on your preferred suppliers, you likely also established which person in their organisation is responsible for receiving POs. It could be a sales representative or a dedicated order processing team, and should be easy to find if you use supply chain management software.

Another vital part of the conversation with your suppliers is to decide the preferred means of sending the documentation.

You have several options for sending a PO. Email is the most common method, especially for smaller orders. Dedicated procurement software is one step ahead because it can distribute POs automatically, often with built-in tracking and confirmation features. And, if you or your supplier lack digital means, you can always deliver a physical copy.

Regardless of the method you choose, always request a confirmation of receipt. This helps prevent potential delays or misunderstandings. In many cases, when using electronic methods like email or dedicated software, the vendor will respond automatically with a confirmation. However, it’s still good practice to follow up proactively, especially for time-sensitive orders. All it takes is a phone call or email to check that they have everything they need to process your request.

PDF is one of the most popular formats for sending POs because it’s universally compatible—your supplier can probably view it no matter what operating system or software they use. PDFs also tend to retain their original formatting when shared to different organisations.

Supplier review and approval

Once the supplier receives your purchase order, they’ll review it to ensure they can fulfil the order as requested. In most cases, if the PO is clear and the supplier has the items in stock, they’ll accept it without any modifications. This means they agree to provide the goods or services exactly as you’ve outlined in the PO.

However, there might be situations where the supplier needs to suggest modifications. This could be due to factors like limited stock or market conditions such as changes in pricing. If modifications are necessary, the supplier will typically contact you to discuss the proposed changes and reach a mutual agreement.

In some cases, the supplier might reject the PO altogether. This could be because they don’t carry the requested items, or they can’t meet the delivery timeframe.

Order fulfilment

With the purchase order approved, the supplier can now kick off the order fulfilment process. This involves picking, packing and shipping the goods, or organising manpower if it’s a case of providing services.

If the required items are readily available, and the supplier’s internal processes allow, they might begin the shipping process as soon as they approve the PO. This can help expedite delivery and reduce lead times.

However, more complex orders or customised items might require additional steps before shipping. You may have to wait for production, assembly, or quality checks, for example.

Always track your order by following up with the supplier. Regular communication allows you to address any potential delays proactively. In case of interruptions, you can explore alternative shipping options, adjust production schedules, or inform your customers about new delivery dates.

Receipt and inspection of goods or services

Upon receiving the goods, carefully inspect them to ensure they match the PO. Check for any damage, defects, or discrepancies in quantity. Verify that the items match the descriptions and specifications on the PO.

In the case of services rendered, this could mean reviewing deliverables, assessing the quality of work, and confirming that the service was performed on time and within budget.

If you spot any issues, document them immediately and notify the supplier. You may need to include photos or videos–whatever provides ample details of the discrepancies. Run these checks as soon as possible because the window for claiming compensation or requesting corrections is often limited. Many industries have specific regulations or guidelines that dictate timeframes for reporting discrepancies.

Invoice matching and payment

The carrier or delivery service that transported the goods will hand them over with a delivery receipt. This could be a physical document signed by you upon delivery, or a digital confirmation sent by email.

You now have three documents that should all confirm the same details of the transaction. So, after verifying the deliverables, compare the invoice with the PO and delivery receipt. This is known as a three-way match and is an essential step before you pay.

Matching gives you peace of mind–you’re vetting for fraud and errors whilst also ensuring the accuracy of your financial records.

How to create a purchase order

Now that you understand the “why” of issuing purchase orders, let’s run through the “how”. It’s a simple matter of having the necessary information available, arranging it, and issuing the document:

1. Gather the essential information

The key elements of a purchase order include:

Buyer information e.g. your company name, address, contact details.
Seller information such as the supplier’s company name, address, and contact details.
PO number and date that acts as a unique identifier for the purchase order.
Detailed list of items or services including descriptions, quantities, and units of measure.
Agreed prices and total amount which states the price per unit and the total cost of the order.
Delivery and payment terms to include delivery date, shipping method, payment due date, and any applicable discounts.

2. Format the document

Purchase orders typically follow a standardised structure, similar to invoices. This is because both documents serve as formal records of a transaction and need to convey key information clearly and consistently. The typical format is as follows:

Header. Contact information for both buyer and seller, PO number, and date.
Body. A table listing products or services, quantities, unit prices, and line totals.
Footer. Total amount due, payment terms, and an authorised signature.

Here’s what it looks like on paper:

“ACME Devices” Address:	Purchase Order #: Date:
Buyer DetailsDivision: Address: (if different from HQ above) Contact:	Vendor name: Address: Contact:

	Item ID	Quantity	Price
Item 1			£
Item 2			£
Item 3			£

		Order total	£
		Tax	£
		Packaging & shipping	£
		TOTAL	£

Shipping method:
Delivery date:
Payment terms:

This standardised format ensures that all necessary information is presented in a logical and easy-to-understand manner, reducing the risk of errors or misinterpretations.

3. Use software and tools

There are numerous software options that can simplify PO creation. Many types of accounting software have built-in PO templates, or you can invest in dedicated PO management systems. Both offer a pre-designed framework for your purchase orders, ensuring consistency and accuracy. They often include pre-filled fields for common information like your company details and standard terms and conditions, saving you time and effort. In most cases, you can customise the templates to match each order.

Other common features in these tools are automated workflows and tracking. Automated workflows coordinate the entire PO process, from creation and approval to delivery and payment. This reduces manual effort and minimises the risk of errors. Tracking features provide real-time visibility into the status of your purchase orders, allowing you to monitor progress, flag potential delays, and adjust your procurement needs on the fly.

Furthermore, many PO software solutions integrate with other business systems like Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and your banking system. This integration enables seamless data flow between different departments. For example, integration with your accounting system ensures that purchase orders are automatically reflected in your financial records, simplifying reconciliation and reporting.

Purchase order management

It’s not enough to have a good system for creating purchase orders; you need to actively track their progress, ensure timely fulfilment, and accurately match invoices to avoid discrepancies and potential financial losses.

The effects of proper PO management also go far beyond your procurement processes, benefiting both buyers and vendors. For example, buyers gain better inventory control and enhanced visibility into spending patterns. Sellers can streamline their order processing, leading to improved cash flow and better customer satisfaction.

And both parties get to enjoy improved efficiency, cost savings and reduced risk of errors or fraud.

Let’s look at the main elements of PO management:

Tracking and processing purchase orders

The beauty of dedicated PO management software is that you can configure it to track your purchase orders and alert you to key events or potential issues. For example, the software might:

Send automatic notifications when a PO is approved, shipped, or if there’s a delay.
Highlight discrepancies, flagging mismatches between the PO, delivery receipt, and invoice.
Provide real-time dashboards, giving an instant overview of all your outstanding POs, their status, and any potential bottlenecks.

Matching invoices to purchase orders

Remember the three-way matching process to verify orders, deliveries, and invoices? Your PO management system can take care of that.

Here’s what it will compare across the three documents:

Invoice number and date
Item descriptions and quantities
Prices and totals
Delivery address and date

Legal aspects of purchase orders

Whilst purchase orders primarily serve an operational function, they also carry legal weight. Understanding the legal implications of POs is crucial for protecting your business and ensuring compliance.

Is a purchase order legally binding?

In many cases, once a supplier accepts a purchase order, it can form a legally binding contract—provided the key terms are clear and agreed by both parties. In the UK, the enforceability of a PO depends on contract law principles such as offer, acceptance, and intention to create legal relations.

This doesn’t mean you need to hire a solicitor to draft your POs, but it is advisable to have a legal professional review your standard PO template to ensure it adequately protects your interests. This is particularly important if you are dealing with complex transactions, high-value orders, or international suppliers.

Ensuring compliance

In the UK, purchase order compliance typically falls under general contract law and commercial practices, rather than PO-specific legislation

Both buyers and suppliers have a responsibility to ensure compliance with the terms of a purchase order. Whether you’re on the buyer side or the seller side, these tips will help you stay in line:

Maintain accurate records to keep thorough and organised records of all PO-related documents and communications.
Adhere to agreed-upon terms and fulfil your obligations as outlined in the PO, whether it’s delivering goods on time or making payments promptly.
Use clear language to avoid ambiguity in your POs. Use precise language and clearly define all terms and conditions.
Seek legal advice when necessary. If you have any doubts or concerns about the legal implications of a PO, consult with a legal specialist.

Balance budgets and purchase orders to increase your profitability

POs are the blueprint for your procurement process. They facilitate transparency and efficiency, giving you better control over spending and potentially improving your bottom line.

Aligning your POs with your budget starts with accurate forecasting. By projecting your needs and ensuring you have the necessary funds allocated, you create a strong foundation for balanced procurement.

Turning purchase orders into a business discipline

When you present a well-defined PO with clear terms and a firm commitment to purchase, suppliers are more likely to offer favourable pricing and terms. This demonstrates your professionalism and seriousness as a buyer, fostering stronger vendor relationships.

Those positive qualities are even more apparent if you use a seamless and automated purchase order management software. It simplifies the process, reduces manual errors, and provides real-time insights into your procurement activities.

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How many working hours in a year UK 2026

gentong4d — Sat, 09 May 2026 11:35:37 +0000

If you’re managing projects or payroll, budgeting or planning, you need to know how many working hours there are in a year or month.

Maybe you’re planning resources and output, and want to create a detailed plan including the amount of working hours for the year.

Or, you want to reassess productivity and benchmark if you’re meeting average working hours in a month or year.

In this article, we’ll cover how to calculate the number of working hours in a year, month, or week.

We’ll also cover the factors that affect how many hours your employees work, such as employment status and paid leave benefits.

By the end, you’ll even have benchmarks that clarify how many working hours and paid holidays are typical for employees in various locations, occupations, and seniority levels—so your business can stay competitive.

Here’s what we’ll cover

How many working hours in a year for 2026?

To calculate the total working hours for 2026, multiply the number of hours in the working week by the number of weeks in the year.

You’d compute the total working hours per year for a standard 37.5-hour working week like so:

37.5 Hours per Week x 52 Weeks per Year = 1,950 Working Hours per Year

This figure represents gross working hours based on a 52-week year. In UK planning contexts, it is typically used as a starting point only, as statutory annual leave (5.6 weeks) and bank holidays reduce actual available working time.

However, not every employee works 37.5 hours a week, and this doesn’t account for bank holidays.

If you don’t account for employees’ working schedules, you could end up under-booking them or not having enough staff to complete a project.

Need to plan for employees with part-time or overtime hours?

Use this chart to figure out the total weekly hours.

Weekly Working Hours	Annual Working Hours Calculation	Total Working Hours Per Year
20	20 Hours × 52 Weeks	1,040
25	25 Hours × 52 Weeks	1,300
30	30 Hours × 52 Weeks	1,560
35	35 Hours × 52 Weeks	1,820
37.5	37.5 Hours × 52 Weeks	1,950
40	40 Hours × 52 Weeks	2,080
45	45 Hours × 52 Weeks	2,340
50	50 Hours × 52 Weeks	2,600
60	60 Hours × 52 Weeks	3,120

If your employees’ working hours fluctuate significantly from day to day or week to week, the formulas above might not provide accurate results.

Instead, you’d need to track time for employees and tally hours manually.

Does 1,950 hours per year include bank holidays?

The chart above relies on working a standard week for all 52 weeks in a year.

As a result, it doesn’t factor in bank holidays, paid time off (PTO), or other non-working hours.

When you are resource planning for a year, you should consider that UK employees are entitled to 5.6 weeks of statutory annual leave per year.

This equates to 28 days for a full-time employee working a five-day week, and may include or exclude bank holidays depending on the employer’s policy.

Since employees typically take paid or unpaid time off at some point during the year, few actually work the total number of hours in a year.

Below, we’ll walk through the process of calculating time off for bank holidays.

Working hours per month UK

The data above is helpful for annual planning.

But when you plan projects or payroll by the month or quarter, you won’t want to calculate total hours for the week or year.

Don’t make the mistake of calculating working hours in a month by multiplying a week by four.

Months have a differing number of days, so you have to multiply by all the weeks in a year and then dividing by the number of months.

Use this formula to compute the number of working hours in an average month:

((Daily Hours x Workdays per Week) x 52 Weeks per Year) / 12 Months per Year = Working Hours per Month

For example, say you need to know how many hours a new employee will work per month.

Suppose they clock in for 7.5 hours a day, five days a week. You’d compute their working hours per month like so:

((7.5 x 5) x 52) / 12 = 162.5 Working Hours per Month

You can use the same formula to figure out the number of monthly working hours for employees who work longer or shorter hours.

For example, here’s how you’d calculate working hours per month for a half-time employee:

((3.75 x 5) x 52) / 12 = 81.25 Working Hours per Month

And here’s how you’d estimate monthly hours for an executive or team lead who puts in extra hours each week:

((10 x 5) x 52) / 12 = 216.67 Working Hours per Month

To calculate working hours per quarter, divide the working hours by four quarters instead of 12 months. Like this:

((7.5 x 5) x 52) / 4 = 487.5 Working Hours per Quarter

What are the average working hours per week?

The hours that employees actually spend on the clock don’t always align with the total available working hours in a given year, month, or week.

So, what does an average employee’s working week actually look like?

The standard working week in the UK is 37.5 hours.

However, data from the Office for National Statistics shows that the average employee in the UK works for 36.4 hours per week (including full and part-time).

Average weekly hours differ slightly depending on education level and sector.

Workers in professional occupations typically work standard hours.

On average, they work for 37.5 hours per week.

Employees in managerial roles often clock the most hours.

On average, they work for 39.2 hours per week.

The number of jobs a worker holds has a negligible effect on total working hours.

Multiple jobholders work for 36.5 hours per week on average.

On average, single jobholders work for 36.4 hours per week.

How many hours does a full-time employee work in a year?

In the UK, full-time employment is typically defined as working 35 or more hours per week.

On average, full-time employees in the United Kingdom work 37.5 hours per week.

Full-time, the average working hours equate to 37.5 hours per week, 162.5 hours per month, or 1,950 hours per year.

How many hours does a part-time employee work in a year?

Part-time employment involves working less than 35 hours per week.

On average, part-time employees work 16.3 hours per week.

If they work five days per week, they end up clocking in for approximately 3.26 hours per day.

Part-time, the average working hours equate to 16.3 hours per week, 70.63 hours per month, or 847.6 hours per year.

How do actual working hours compare around the world?

Around the world, actual working hours vary significantly, according to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

In the UK, employees work an average of 1,532 hours per year.

Figures are based on OECD average annual working hours per employee and may vary depending on methodology and data collection across countries.

Several countries have higher annual average working hours, including:

Mexico: 2,207 hours
Costa Rica: 2,171 hours
Chile: 1,953 hours
Greece: 1,897 hours
Israel: 1,880 hours

Factors like longer workdays and fewer holidays may drive up the actual hours employees worked in these countries.

Several countries have much lower annual average working hours, including:

Germany: 1,343 hours
Denmark: 1,380 hours
Netherlands: 1,413 hours
Norway: 1,418 hours
Austria: 1,435 hours

Compared to the UK, workers in these countries may have shorter workdays, more holidays, or both.

How to calculate working hours in a year

To calculate actual working hours per year for an employee, you need a few data points, including:

Daily working hours
Bank holidays
Annual leave days, including holiday, sick, and personal days

The following calculation provides a net estimate of working hours after accounting for leave and bank holidays.

Formula to calculate actual working hours per year:

((Daily Working Hours x 5) x 52) – ((Bank Holidays + Annual Leave Days) x Daily Working Hours) = Total Yearly Working Hours

For example, suppose you’re planning to hire a new employee with a standard 7.5-hour workday.

Say their benefits package includes eight bank holidays per year and 20 annual leave days.

For the entire year, their total working hours would be:

((7.5 x 5) x 52) – ((8 + 20) x 7.5) = 1,740 Working Hours per Year

Bank holidays in the UK

The UK observes eight bank holidays each year in England and Wales. Here’s when these bank holidays fall in 2026:

(The table below outlines bank holidays in England and Wales for 2026. Bank holiday dates differ in Scotland and Northern Ireland.)

Bank Holiday	Timing	2026 Date
New Year’s Day	1st January	1 January 2026 (Thursday)
Good Friday	Friday before Easter Sunday	3 April 2026
Easter Monday	Monday after Easter Sunday	6 April 2026
Early May bank holiday	First Monday in May	4 May 2026
Spring bank holiday	Last Monday in May	25 May 2026
Summer bank holiday	Last Monday in August	31 August 2026
Christmas Day	25th December	25 December 2026 (Friday)
Boxing Day (substitute day)	26th December (falls on Saturday)	28 December 2026 (Monday substitute)

Scotland observes two additional bank holidays: 2nd January and St Andrew’s Day (30th November).

Northern Ireland observes two additional bank holidays: St Patrick’s Day (17th March) and Battle of the Boyne (12th July).

As a business owner, you have the option to give employees time off for any or all of these bank holidays, though there is no automatic right to paid leave on bank holidays.

Statutory vs. contractual paid time off

Whilst all UK nations observe the bank holidays above, employers are not legally required to give employees paid time off on these dates.

However, workers are entitled to 5.6 weeks of statutory annual leave per year.

Many employers choose to include bank holidays within this statutory entitlement.

For example, a full-time employee working five days a week is entitled to 28 days of annual leave (5.6 weeks x 5 days).

If the employer observes eight bank holidays, the employee would have 20 days remaining to take at their discretion.

Some employers offer enhanced contractual annual leave above the statutory minimum.

This might increase with length of service or seniority level.

How much time off do employees receive?

Between bank holidays, annual leave, personal days, and sick leave, total time off varies significantly from employer to employer.

There’s no overall average for time off, as it often depends on the employee’s length of service.

The statutory minimum is 5.6 weeks (28 days for full-time workers), but many employers offer more generous packages.

But the longer employees stay with your company, the more annual leave you’ll want to consider offering.

Many organisations increase annual leave entitlement after five or ten years of service as a retention benefit.

What are the average working hours by profession?

Across all professions, employees work 36.4 hours per week on average. However, working hours vary slightly between occupations.

Roles with the highest average hours include:

Managers, directors and senior officials: 39.2 hours per week
Skilled trades occupations: 39.1 hours per week
Process, plant and machine operatives: 38.9 hours per week
Professional occupations: 37.5 hours per week
Associate professional and technical: 37.2 hours per week

These occupations have the lowest average working hours:

Caring, leisure and other service occupations: 30.1 hours per week
Sales and customer service occupations: 31.8 hours per week
Elementary occupations: 32.4 hours per week
Administrative and secretarial: 34.6 hours per week

Depending on your industry and the roles you need to fill, you may find it helpful to adjust your resource or budget planning based on this data.

Keep in mind that your employment contracts should stipulate required working hours.

What are the average working hours by region?

Location also affects working hours.

Across the UK, average weekly working hours range from 38.1 in London to 34.2 in Northern Ireland.

Regions with the highest average weekly hours include:

London: 38.1 hours per week
South East: 37.2 hours per week
East of England: 37.0 hours per week
South West: 36.8 hours per week
East Midlands: 36.7 hours per week

Regions with the lowest average weekly hours include:

Northern Ireland: 34.2 hours per week
Wales: 35.4 hours per week
North East: 35.8 hours per week
Yorkshire and The Humber: 36.0 hours per week
North West: 36.1 hours per week

Depending on where your business is based, local standards may mean you expect employees to work longer or shorter hours.

However, your employment contracts should specify the required hours.

Factors that can affect the total number of working hours in a year

The number of working hours in a year can fluctuate depending on what year it is, when it starts, and which benefits your business offers.

As you calculate total working hours for your employees, consider these factors:

Weekends: Depending on the day of the week when the year starts, it may include an additional workday.
Leap years: Leap years, which happen every four years, typically add an extra working day to the calendar.
Bank holidays: The number of bank holidays can vary if they fall on weekends and substitute days are observed.
Monthly working hours: When you calculate working hours by month, the total depends on the number of days in the month and the number of weekend days it includes.
Employment status: Full-time employees work at least 35 hours per week, whilst part-time employees work less than 35 hours per week.
Annual leave: UK workers are entitled to a minimum of 5.6 weeks’ paid annual leave per year, though many employers offer more.
Sick leave: Employees may be entitled to Statutory Sick Pay (SSP) or enhanced contractual sick pay, which affects actual working hours.

When you haven’t included these factors in your calculations, budgeting for employee salaries can be challenging.

But with the right accounting software, it’s much simpler to manage payroll and incorporate paid leave.

Working hours FAQs

How many working hours in a calendar year?

The number of working hours in a calendar year is different for every business and may vary from employee to employee.

It depends on several factors, including the:

– Number of hours the employee works each day, week, or month.
– Number of bank holidays and annual leave days the employee receives.
– Year’s structure, including what day it starts and whether it’s a leap year.

Use this formula to calculate total working hours in a year:

((Daily Working Hours x 5) x 52) – ((Bank Holidays + Annual Leave Days) x Daily Working Hours) = Total Yearly Working Hours

How many hours in a 37.5-hour working year?

A standard 37.5-hour working week has 1,950 working hours.

How many hours in a full-time work year?

A full-time employee works at least 35 hours a week.
That means in a given year, a full-time worker has at least 1,820 working hours.

How many working hours are in a year minus holidays?

In the UK, working hours after holidays depend on your working week and the amount of statutory or contractual leave provided.
A full-time employee working a 37.5-hour week is entitled to at least 5.6 weeks of statutory annual leave, which equates to 28 days for a five-day working pattern. Many employers also observe eight UK bank holidays, although this varies depending on contract terms.
Using a 37.5-hour working week, net working hours in a year are typically around 1,740–1,800 hours, depending on how bank holidays are allocated and any additional employer benefits.

Sage’s cloud accounting software automates accounting tasks, helping your business stay compliant and avoid costly errors while allowing you to focus on building your business.

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AI is already in your business. Here’s how to get ahead of it in Newcastle

gentong4d — Thu, 07 May 2026 11:02:52 +0000

Your team may be using AI. The question is whether anyone’s in charge of it.

Nobody announced it. There was no policy meeting, no training session, no sign-off. But somewhere, somehow, AI has quietly become part of how your team works.

Customer emails drafted with ChatGPT or Claude. Meeting notes summarised in seconds. A prospecting template built in minutes rather than hours.

None of it flagged. A lot of it useful. All of it happening with or without you.

For most small businesses, that’s where AI adoption starts—not with a strategy, but with individuals finding shortcuts and not mentioning it.

This creates a problem that has nothing to do with the technology.

The risk with AI is when you have no shared understanding of how to use it well. No common baseline for what good looks like, what needs checking, or who’s accountable when an output turns out to be wrong.

That gap between informal use and applied capability needs closing. And the North East TechNExt Festival, with Sage, Google and Multiverse, is your shortcut to doing so, if you live in Newcastle or the surrounding areas.

Free AI skills for your future

16 June 2026 at Sage, Cobalt Business Park, Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Join this practical, hands-on session which will focus on simple, proven ways SMEs are already using AI moving beyond—and how you can apply the same approaches.

Book your place

From shortcut to skill

The difference between AI as a time-saver and AI as something your business can genuinely rely upon comes down to judgment: Knowing when to trust an output, when to question it, and when not to use AI at all.

That judgment comes from practice—and from seeing how other businesses in similar situations are applying these tools.

On 16 June, techUK, Sage, Google and Multiverse are running a free, full-day AI skills session in Newcastle as part of the North East TechNExt Festival, aimed specifically at small and medium-sized businesses.

It’s practical by design. You’ll work through prompting techniques that improve results immediately, identify where AI can reduce effort in your existing workflows, and see real examples of how other businesses are using it for repeatable, day-to-day tasks.

The afternoon covers what needs to be in place before you think about scaling—processes, data, defined outcomes, human oversight.

All you need to bring is yourself and your laptop. You should expect to leave with something you can use.

What applied AI looks like

Tyne Chease, a UK food business, used Sage Ai to automate part of its invoice chasing process—something it had been doing manually, every week.

The result was straightforward: the business was paid up to seven days faster, around 14 hours of admin time saved every week. No technical rebuild. No transformation programme. One routine task, improved with AI, with a clear and measurable outcome.

That’s the version of AI adoption that sticks. Not the one built on hype, but the one built on identifying a specific problem and testing whether AI can help solve it.

Building the baseline

If your team can’t make the Newcastle session, have a look at the AI Skills Boost hub.

It’s a free government-backed initiative, delivered in partnership with organisations including Sage, offering short, practical courses designed for everyday business roles. Courses take as little as 20 minutes and cover the foundational skills people need to use AI confidently and responsibly at work.

It won’t replace the experience of working through real examples in a room with other business owners. But it gives your team a shared starting point.

You’ll get the most from AI if you have the judgment to use it well. The Newcastle session is a good place to start—and you’re invited. But be quick. Places are strictly limited.

Free AI skills for your future

Book your place

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The AI pricing trap: How accountants can avoid it

gentong4d — Tue, 05 May 2026 10:56:20 +0000

For accountancy practices that have investigated AI, there’s only one question:

“We saved time. But did we make money?”

It’s blunt but it also cuts through the hype.

AI can draft faster, summarise faster, compare faster and prepare a first pass faster. But if the client still buys “hours” and the firm still prices by assumed manual effort, the commercial result can be disappointing.

Finding a way out of this trap is what this article is all about. Here’s what we cover:

AI trap #1: Speed isn’t the product

The danger isn’t that AI fails.

The danger is that it works so well that it exposes a fragile business model.

If a piece of work used to take four hours and now takes one, the client may expect the fee to fall. If the firm lowers the fee without changing the service proposition, it has transferred the value of AI to the client while keeping the implementation cost, review risk and governance burden.

Sadly, that’s not transformation. It’s margin erosion.

The efficiency trap appears when firms confuse time saved with value created.

A faster reconciliation is helpful, but clients don’t ultimately remain on your books because the reconciliation happened quickly. They stay because the figures are clean, the risks are understood, the story is explained and they feel in control of their business.

If AI simply accelerates the old hourly model, it can collapse the logic of that model. Time becomes a cost to be reduced, not a product to be sold.

That’s why practices must stop presenting AI as a cheaper way to do the same work.

The commercial opportunity is to create a better service: earlier insight, clearer client questions, proactive exception reporting, stronger working papers, documented controls and more regular conversations.

The output should feel more valuable, not merely faster.

AI trap #2: It’s not about repricing

Pricing should follow workflow redesign, not the other way round.

Start by mapping the service and asking where AI can reduce admin, where humans must review, where exceptions arise and where the client experiences value.

Then remove unnecessary steps: standardise templates, create human checkpoints and define the review evidence required before anything is issued.

The webinar set out a clear sequence: redesign workflows, reduce work, productise services, reprice outcomes, create human checkpoints and standardise templates and agent patterns.

Sequences like this matter. If you put AI into a messy workflow, you get faster mess. If you put AI into a controlled workflow, you get repeatable capacity.

A practical example is quarterly compliance and insights. The old model might be “VAT return preparation – £X”. The new model is stronger: “Quarterly Compliance and Insights Pack – £X”.

That package can include digital record checks, exception reporting, variance commentary, client questions, cashflow observations and a short review call.

The client is no longer buying a submission. They’re buying certainty, insight and reassurance.

AI trap #3: Clients value confidence, not time

The most valuable practices will translate AI efficiency into defined service tiers.

A basic tier might offer clean records, core compliance and exception lists.

A higher tier might add monthly commentary, board-pack narratives and proactive client questions.

A premium tier might add always-on monitoring, predictive cashflow conversations and regular management insight.

This isn’t artificial upselling. It’s a clearer expression of value that was previously hidden inside labour.

The pricing language should shift from activity to outcome: speed, certainty, unlimited questions within scope, proactive insights, predictive capabilities and tiered service packages.

Clients don’t wake up wanting a journal review; they want fewer surprises. They don’t value a beautifully reconciled control account in isolation; they value confidence that the numbers are reliable and that someone will tell them what needs attention.

AI trap #4: Governance makes it sellable

Some firms see AI governance as a brake on innovation. In reality, it’s what makes the service sellable.

The direction from professional and regulatory guidance is consistent: use AI with accountability, data protection, documentation, testing, explainability, and human oversight.

Accountants and bookkeepers already work this way in tax, payroll, bookkeeping, accounts preparation and assurance-adjacent processes. AI simply needs the same discipline.

An AI File should sit behind every material AI-supported service.

It records the purpose of the tool, the data used, the prompt structure, the version of the model or software, known risks, testing evidence, accuracy over time, reviewer notes and final sign-off.

That file protects the client, the firm, and the practitioner. It also helps insurers, professional bodies and clients understand that the firm has not delegated judgement to a black box.

AI trap #5: Old roles stay, but new ones arrive

The AI-enabled practice needs new responsibilities, even if the same person wears several hats.

The AI librarian manages approved prompts and templates. The model risk approver signs off tests and known failure points. The workflow owner keeps the human and AI sequence efficient. The data quality lead ensures clean inputs. The client communication lead turns output into plain English advice.

These roles protect both quality and profitability because they stop the team reinventing the same prompt, review, and client explanation every week.

Final thoughts

Don’t lead with “we use AI”.

Lead with what the client now receives: faster turnaround, clearer explanations, stronger controls, more proactive questions and fewer surprises.

The practices that learn this pricing shift will convert AI into margin, capacity, and client loyalty. The practices that don’t will still save time, but they may discover that the time saved has become someone else’s discount.

Frequently asked questions

How should accountants price AI-assisted services?

Price AI-assisted services around client outcomes rather than hours saved. Build packages around certainty, proactive insight, speed, exception reporting, cashflow visibility and review conversations. The fee should reflect the value of the service, including human oversight, not just the reduced time spent producing it.

Should AI make accounting cheaper for clients?

Not automatically. AI may reduce manual admin, but firms still carry responsibility for review, accuracy, controls, data protection and client advice. If AI enables a better service with clearer insight and faster turnaround, the value can increase even if the production time falls.

What is value-based pricing for accountants and bookkeepers?

Value-based pricing links fees to the result the client values, such as reliable records, confidence, compliance, decision-ready information and fewer surprises. For bookkeepers, this can mean moving from hourly or task pricing to tiered packages that include reporting, commentary and proactive support.

What AI governance should an accountancy firm have?

At a minimum, a firm should define approved tools, data rules, prompt templates, review responsibilities, audit trails, testing evidence, known limitations and sign-off. An AI policy and AI file help show that humans remain responsible for judgement and client-facing output.

How can AI improve client advisory services?

AI can draft commentary, identify anomalies, prepare client questions, summarise movements and turn financial data into plain English. The practitioner then adds context, prioritisation and commercial judgement. This can make advisory conversations more regular, clearer and easier to scale.