Solo

I've got loads to do at the moment.

Bookkeeping for Paul's epic fulfilment drive.

Organising exhibitors for Tyneside Games Expo.

End of month tasks.

The Gal4Xeon Gamefound campaign page.

Plus I'm trying to step up our social media.

And work on a new game.

This week The Wife is in Dublin again for work.

I have the evenings to myself once the kids are down.

Strangely, I find myself less productive when she's not here though.

Just having her in the house helps me concentrate.

When she's away I'm more easily distracted.

Need to lock in as Daughter the First would say!

Catch-up

Things are flat out at the moment.

Paul is speedily shipping Gamefound rewards.

So I've got to do the bookkeeping for those shipped pledges.

We've had a run of website orders.

So I've got to do the bookkeeping for those too.

It’s not over yet!

And there's a whole heap of post-Expo tasks to do too.

Plus there's a possible game changer that's looming with a deadline of the 19th.

There's loads to do!

Plates

Lots of spinning plates at the moment.

Paul's trying to make room for all the deliveries. And cutting FlickFleets and Expansion 1s.

I'm trying to finish last year's books.

And work out the new costs for all the things we've ordered.

And get the fulfilment spreadsheet ready for Paul.

And place the last few orders.

We're meeting on Tuesday so Paul can take the Xeno Wars printing and wooden bits down to York.

These shouldn't be in Newcastle!

It's all coming together.

It's a very busy time!

Tax Return :(

In the UK, when starting your own small company you have a choice between forming a Limited Company (known as Company Name Ltd.) which is a separate legal entity (I assume very similar to the LLC in the US) or you can set up as a self-employed person (either as a sole trader or in a partnership) where the company is actually just yourself earning some money under a trading name.

When I set up Reiver Games back in July 2006, after getting some advice from Business Link, a now defunct government scheme to give free advice to new businesses, I chose the sole trader route - technically, Reiver Games was: Jackson Pope trading as Reiver Games.

Since at the time I was only setting up the business to try and sell 100 copies of Border Reivers that I was going to lovingly craft by hand, I wanted to keep things as cheap as possible. Setting up a limited company required paying someone to incorporate it, and then paying every year for employees liability insurance and to get an accountant to audit your books. All costs I could do without.

Setting up as a sole trader was much easier: open some bank accounts, create a website and tell HMRC (our equivalent of the IRS) that I was now self-employed as well as an employee and job done. As a self-employed person I would also have to start filling in a tax return every year. In the UK if you are just an ordinary wage-slave, paying taxes straight out of your pay cheque every month (PAYE) you don't need to file a tax return, but self-employed people do.

We have to file our tax returns by the end of January the year after the tax year we're filing for. So at the end of this month I have to file a tax return for the tax year from 6th April 2011 to the 5th April 2012. Reiver Games ceased trading in July 2011 and I finally closed all the bank accounts in November 2011, so this is the last time I'll have to file a tax return I hope.

While I was running Reiver Games (especially during the period when I was doing it full-time) I tried to keep on top of doing my books as I went along, then filing a tax return wasn't too onerous: read some numbers of the annual totals and that was pretty much it. Once I went back to work and Reiver Games was clearly going down the pan it was a bit harder to summon the enthusiasm for staying on top of my books, so filing a tax return turned into frantically catching up on the books, then filing a tax return at the last possible minute. It was like that last January and again this year. I've been doing it during the evenings over the last week or two after The Baby had gone to bed and finally finished and submitted it last night. Theoretically, HMRC will notice I've ceased being self-employed and remove the need to fill in a tax return, though they might need some prodding...

Needless to say, on top of the books, I've got pretty much nothing done on Codename: Vacuum the last couple of weeks, but I've still been having lots of ideas to try out. Now these damn books and tax return are out of the way I'll have to give them a whirl.

Almost!

I've got a few copies in stock so I've been pressing on with my accounts. I've done up to last July now, and seeing as this financial year has been much busier things are going much slower. Still, I now know that I had almost as much turnover in the first five months of this financial year as I got in the whole (nine months) of last year. Yeay!

I've been trying to be a bit more active on BoardGameGeek in an effort to bring It's Alive! to the attention of more people. It's working, I got two orders on Wednesday after posting it on a Geeklist, one from the US and one from Sweden. Went I went to the Post Office at lunchtime to post those copies I got talking to the Postmaster. It turns out he has a passing interest in party games, and was interested in seeing my catalogue. Ain't got no catalogue, but I promised to take a copy in next time I'm in there. After selling a couple of copies of Border Reivers to my bank last year, selling a copy to the Post Office would be the next logical step. I'm incorrigible.

I've also been thinking more about Codename: Jorvik and Codename: Network. I've had another idea for Jorvik which improves upon a previous idea. It's no longer a pure card game, but the addition of two wooden pieces won't push up the weight or price by much, and I think they add quite a lot to the game. Network I've still got issues with my scoring ideas, and I think I might boost the number of categories from six to seven, to improve player interaction.

Busy Sunday

We spent Saturday helping a friend decorate - which left me with only Sunday to work on my games. I wanted to get my books done for last financial year (6th April 2006 - 5th April 2007), and I also needed to make a few games as I was out of stock again.

I'd previously got my Mum (who used to do this professionally) to show me the ropes, and over the last few days I'd got the other stuff I needed ready in preparation. I was missing an invoice from a supplier, so I got them to send me a duplicate, and I had to print out a few invoices I only had on the computer. I also had to get my PayPal transactions printed out. Foolishly I'd not requested a monthly report from PayPal initially, and since I can only get those for the last three months (needless to say I've now turned them on), I had to download a spreadsheet of all the transactions for that year, and then format them myself into a reasonable layout for printing. With all that done, all I had to do today was fill in the books for the nine months from July '06 to April 5th '07 (I didn't start trading until July). I still needed to phone Mum several times during the day to answer various special cases I wasn't sure about. In the end it took the better part of the day, but it's done now, so I've got two weeks in which to fill out the tax return form online. The Wife made me promise to catch up and then do them every month, which makes a lot of sense, as I've been much busier this financial year, so there's a lot to do, and leaving it all to the last minute would be a bad idea.

This evening I made four copies of It's Alive! so I can fulfil any orders I get. Tired now.