My first month as a contractor draws to an end. The client are happy with my work; I’m happy working there; things are looking good.

There was only one slight panic. On Tuesday I suddenly remembered that all the money I’d charged the client was sitting in my company bank account … and hence of precisely no use to me when it came to covering personal bills and expenses. Cue a lunchtime cycle ride into Cambridge to get the bank to transfer money between accounts. Apart from that there have been no major hiccups and I’ve completed my accounts for the month which will keep the accountants happy. On the advice of friends I appointed SJD to co^H^Hrun my books.

Even so I confess to being wholly unprepared for the amount of paperwork I’ve had to do. Sometimes even when someone tells you something and it sounds perfectly reasonable, you just can’t grasp the magnitude of what you’re hearing. I’d been told there would be a load of paperwork. It made sense that there would be a load of paperwork. I was expecting a load of paperwork.

Yet the load I got was about ten times bigger and more loady than the paperwork I had envisaged.

Consider that I had to fill in half a dozen pages to authorise the accountants to act on my behalf. That’s filling in a load of paperwork to get someone else to fill in your paperwork…

If I could give two pieces of advice, based on my experience so far, to people considering forming their own limited company, being prepared for the paperwork and making sure you stay on top of it would be one of them. The other would be to appoint a company secretary who lives near you. The standard way of doing things is to get your significant other or a family member to fill the role. I got my father to do it and, since he lives in Stourbridge, that means posting forms back and forth to get things done.

Which is bad enough when he actually fills in the forms correctly and doesn’t forget to sign in the right place!