Contracts & Compliance

How are you going to trade? As a sole trader, limited company, a partnership, a co-operative? Our business advisers will help you to understand the options and if you need specialist tax or legal advice, then we will direct you to one of our partners.

We don’t provide funding but we do help you to find and apply for funding through local and central government schemes and grants, european funding, bank loans or overdrafts, secured and unsecured lending, invoice financing and equity funding (angel investors, venture capital, crowd sourcing and EIS and SEIS).

From dealing with pricing strategies, logistics and service level agreements through to preliminary negotiations, heads of agreement and import and export trade, our specialists provide business advice, guidance and practical hands-on support.

Contracts (or the lack of them) can make or break a business. Having the right contracts in place will help protect your business interests and if things go wrong or relationships break down, they set out the rules that each party must follow. Contracts include sales agreements (terms and conditions), confidentiality agreements, shareholders’ agreements, insurance contracts, licence agreements and employment contracts to name but a few.

Contracts are written to protect the interests of one or more parties. Some contracts provide mutual and reciprocal benefits. Be sure to understand what kind of contract you are using and whether it protects your interests or is written in favour of the other party.

Our business advisers will help you review and understand contracts (ideally, before you sign them!) and negotiate and draft contracts for you to use with your clients, suppliers, employees, business partners and other stakeholders or collaborators. If you need legal advice, we will direct you to one of our partners.

Following best practice and keeping up to date can be a time consuming and often overwhelming task, especially for small businesses.

Our specialists will audit your business to make sure you are compliant with legal, professional and industry specific regulations. They will identify what and when action needs to be taken, and guide you through the process of compliance.

If you don’t have the time or skills to do it all yourself, then we’ll implement specific tasks or take on the whole project.

All business transactions warrant a level of due diligence. The depth and breadth of this will be determined by the complexity, monetary and strategic value of the deal and associated risks. Our commercial team works closely with our finance team to help you complete due diligence so that you can make informed business decisions.

GDPR compliance is not an option – it’s the law.

It impacts all parts of your business where you are collecting and processing personal data. In addition, staff (as well as business owners and managers) should be aware of your organisation’s legal duties and responsibilities to protect personal data. For more information about the GDPR, visit our overview.

Our 6 Step Action Plan, will help you to be compliant, but if you need training, support or help with implementation (from doing data audits, through to evaluating security and drafting privacy notices), then our team of specialists are here to help you.

If your business is looking to expand internationally, or you have clients and suppliers abroad, it is crucial that you understand each other. We can provide support in a number of languages whether it is:

• Understanding each other at a meeting;
• Translating contracts and other legal documents;
• Preparing a presentation;
• Writing marketing material; or
• Making your website multi-lingual.

Our consultants speak French, German, Italian, Russian and more. Given notice we also have a pool of translators on whom we can call on for larger projects. If you would like to know more contact us.