Booked!

There are not many things I hate about being self-employed but doing the books probably comes top of the list. When I first started freelancing, I was really organised and sat down on the last Friday of every month to enter everything into my accounting programme and file invoices and bills. A look back through some of this blog's earliest entries shows that even a couple of years ago I was still relatively in control of the paperwork.

And then it all started to slide. Part of the problem was I never quite got to grips with the software - there didn't seem to be a massive incentive to keep struggling with it, especially as my accountant doesn't use it and is quite happy to just take a file of paperwork off me. So about a year ago I just gave up on it completely, but I kept putting off starting up a simple spreadsheet instead. It helps that I have a good memory for keeping track of which clients have paid up and I log into my bank account several times a week to look at what's going on there.

This year, I've not even filed the paperwork, just slung it all into a box folder as it was generated. But there's nothing like a deadline to galvanise you. Armed with the certain knowledge that my accountant will be on my doorstep bright and early tomorrow expecting coffee and a neatly bundled package of admin to take away, there was only one option.

And so, dear reader, I spent my entire afternoon wading through the box file and attempting to make sense of all my expenses (the invoices are pretty straightforward). I quickly discovered that a lot of bills that arrived by email I'd not printed off, then I had to peer at fading till receipts and scrawl notes on them so my long-suffering accountant knows what I spent money on.

Finally, it was all done. Everything is in date order in a lever arch file, neatly sorted into income, expenditure, bank statements and "other".Tomorrow my fairy godmother will start waving her magic wand and a few weeks later she will have filed my tax return for me and printed off a full set of accounts for me, including a profit and loss statement, balance sheet and all the rest.

She's worth her weight in gold. And she's tax-deductible.

More on 101 Reasons - health

Yesterday, I mentioned the 101 Reasons Freelancers do it Better list.

This morning, while I was pounding away red-faced on the treadmill at the gym (at 6.30am!) I was thinking that something important missing off that list is health. Actually, both physical and mental health have sections on that list but because the list is so relentlessly upbeat about why freelancing is so fantastic, it fails to mention any downsides at all.

Don't get me wrong, I love freelancing and have never regretted making the switch. But there is one very big negative to sitting at home in front of a PC all day. You don't get any exercise. And that is definitely A Bad Thing. In 1 year of sitting at the computer and making only the most feeble, half-hearted attempts to pop into the gym occasionally, I put on more kilos than I'm willing to admit. No, I haven't blobbed out like Michelle McManus. But I'm still 2 sizes bigger than I ought to be. Which is why I get up at 5.30 am these days and start working out an hour later.

It's really important to take care of yourself when you're self-employed as there's no company doctor to haul you in for the occasional check-up. There's no office stairs to climb instead of taking the lift or deciding to walk down the corridor to speak to someone instead of emailing or phoning. The opportunities for built-in exercise shrink drastically when you work at home.

I reached the point where I could barely do up my jeans, which is why I now haul my carcass off the mattress so early - I know I'll be too tired in the evening but the gym at 6.30am suits me fine. The pounds are gradually starting to shift.

It doesn't have to be the gym, but if you're thinking of working for yourself and it's going to be largely sedentary, I'd strongly advise you to think of how best to ensure you exercise and stay fit.

Home work is the curse of the self-employed classes

Wilde fans - feel free to put me on a hit list for so dreadfully paraphrasing Oscar's finest epithet.

However, there is a nugget of truth in today's title. Reader, I have grown fat. The drawback with working from home is that one does not get enough exercise. In my last salaried job (ended February 04), I had my daily trip to and from the railway station, with a walk at the other end, plenty of walking around the office during the course of an average day, plus two company-sanctioned workouts at the gym in the building every week.

I still get up at the same time in the morning - 5.45ish - but instead of leaping into the shower when the alarm goes off, followed by dressing, making up, breakfast and the race to the train, I have become lazy and developed bad habits. At 5.45, I stagger downstairs, brew tea and sit at my PC reading emails, surfing the net, doing sudoku puzzles and faffing on Facebook. I do this until about 8am, whence I shower, dress and tidy the house before the cleaner arrives, before starting work at 9.

Well, no more. I had a wake-up call on Saturday evening. I knew my weight had crept up because going to the gym was something I'd resume tomorrow, but I actually cancelled a night out when I discovered I couldn't fit into any of my going-out clothes. None of them. So this morning at 5.45, I skipped the tea and the PC and hit the shower before heading off to the gym at 6.45 for an hour's workout (last done sometime in January).

Reader, I won't be boring you with Bridget Jones-style reports on how I'm doing, but I have set a goal to drop 4-5 kilos and a dress size within 4 weeks. It's not that difficult. I'm fed up with having only two pairs of jeans that I can get into, so from now on I'll be heading out the door at 6.45 on a regular basis.

Working from home means you have to find ways to stay fit, as it's so easy to turn into a desk potato. My motivation is my fabulous wardrobe of vintage clothes that I long to wear again...

The business of business

I watch very little TV, but one programme I always enjoy is The Apprentice. I tuned in last year, as you can see, and got hooked. This year's series looks as if it will be equally enjoyable, not least because none of the current candidates appear to have watched the previous series. They are making the same stupid mistakes as before. Cue big sigh.

All these candidates with their MBAs and experience in large companies, and they still appear not to have a clue.

I'm not just a freelance - being self-employed means I run a business and I'm damn sure that if I were on The Apprentice, I'd be doing things very differently (not that I'd ever humiliate myself on reality TV). I've been freelance for two years and it was a steep learning curve, but I've made very few mistakes. There are things, with hindsight, that I'd have done differently, but I've made no serious screw-ups.

Call it instinct, or just common sense, but running a business (at least of one person) is not that hard. You'd have to be a complete idiot to make a real mess of it. Which is why I'm gobsmacked at the sheer incompetence of Sir Alan Sugar's candidates, who are supposed to be the creme de la creme. Frankly, I wouldn't put them in charge of organising a pub crawl.

Still, that's the main attraction of tuning in - it's an object lesson in how not to do business.