{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Talking Family Law - The Resolution Podcast","title":"Resolution Podcast S3 Episode #7 | Business accounts; have a healthy dose of scepticism | w/ Robert Cole & Peter Smith","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":4258,"description":"This month we are treated to this tour de force by Robert Cole who is Head of the Family Team at Broadway House Chambers, Leeds and regularly sits as an arbitrator and ENE/pFDR adjudicator across the country, and Peter Smith from Quantis Forensic Accountants about how to analyse business accounts. \n \nWe immediately launch into a discussion about what should cause you concern in business accounts, and the well known issue that businesses always seem to be failing when people are getting divorced.  Therefore, how professionals need to have four to five years accounts to be able to look at trends.  Peter suggests we should take an overview of:\nHas revenue, sales or turnover gone down?\nHave gross profit margins gone down? And \nHave costs gone up?\nThese factors will provide a good indicator of any causes for concern. \n\nRobert adds to that you should have look at what fixed assets there are, and whether the valuation has been updated.  If you consider these points, you will have good insight into whether you need to ask for a valuer from the Court. \n \nPeter and Robert give us some tips for questionnaires, including: \nAsking for a copy of up-to-date profit & loss accounts, management accounts and balance sheets as most decent size businesses with accounting software will have that immediately available;\nSummaries from the VAT portal; \nAnd always checking viewing the Companies Article of Association; \n \nWe discuss when valuations from the business’s own accountants are reliable. Before moving on to consider what type of valuations should be used for each business. \n \nRobert advises us that to be successful in a Daniels v Walker application that you first need to have tried to clarify matters with the expert, but even where you are not going to pursue a Daniels v Walker application but just want to make submissions about the reliability of the conclusions then questions are important to tease out vulnerabilities in the report.  Peter also points out that there is a...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/6KLL2IpaFH3iBShZ7ocYn8lY8fxSACTIJV16OjWXP6U/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9zaG93/LzE5Mjc0LzE2MTcy/NzQ4OTQtYXJ0d29y/ay5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}