We have had the immense pleasure of working in a voluntary capacity with Sara-Jayne from Amethyst Raccoon for the last two years as bookkeeper for New Mills Festival CIC.

Prior to Sara-Jayne joining us the job of generating accounts and invoices, providing updates to the rest of the committee and the multitude of other day to day tasks had defaulted through a lack of volunteers to one of the existing volunteer directors and the additional workload was proving too much. We always seemed to be playing catch-up and preparing the books and making them balance for meetings especially the AGM was hugely stressful.

Since Sara-Jayne has joined us, she has expanded the role of bookkeeper way beyond our expectations. This has freed up other volunteers to think more strategically and to concentrate of the sustainability of the organisation. The directors are now always fully briefed on the finances and are confident that the bookkeeping and day to day financial tasks are in safe hands.

Although Sara-Jayne is a volunteer she treats the role with the utmost professionalism with exceptional attention to detail. A huge benefit has been transferring our accounting to an online and more automated system which has meant the end of large amounts of paper to be archived and a central point where directors can find information.

However, whilst we would highly recommend Sara-Jayne for her professionalism it is her personal touch and genuine interest and concern in our organisation and activities that has impressed us the most.

Anyone who has ever had eureka moments will want to be in a mastermind that’s built the way Sara-Jayne structures them. It can take a little group of creatives in various iterations of a business-orientated world and give them a well-rounded perspective that helps clarify what they can do, and how they can set about to do it.

It doesn’t demand, but it reveals. It empowers, because there is something reassuring about bouncing ideas around with contemporaries who inhabit different worlds but utilise the same business philosophy, principles, and standards. More self-employed people need this as part of their strategising — I certainly benefit from it.

I really appreciate the practical approach to discussing business expenses in this workshop. The pace and focus adjusted with my specific situation because of the nature of my business, and this was very reassuring as we went along. The notes are definitive and clearly outlined, downloadable and very useful for referring to later on. A very wonderful start for me as I tackle my self-assessment for the current financial year.

This workshop was incredibly helpful. I have been selling products for quite a while now, but always have to do lots of “back of a fag packet” calculations every time I work out my pricing. If I’m honest I often have an uneasy feeling that I am not charging the right amount for some of them, or that I am not tracking my profit margins properly. I wanted to understand my pricing properly and thought I’d try out Sara-Jayne’s workshop because I know she works with small businesses and people who make their own products as well as bigger businesses.

The workshop was brilliant! She went through all kinds of concepts but in a way that I could really understand and didn’t make me feel foolish for the bits that I didn’t quite grasp at first. We walked through some pricing psychology that I can definitely use on my website, and looked at some different ways to calculate costs when you sell on lots of different platforms. There was definitely something in there for all the scenarios I was worrying about.

Best of all, she provided me with a spreadsheet that was already set up for me to do calculations from so that I can go away after the workshop and enter my products in. We entered one product during the workshop itself so I was able to check that it would work for me and I have set aside some time to put the others in. It has taken such a lot of work off my plate having the spreadsheet set up exactly the right way for a business like mine that makes things for different audiences.

The two biggest takeaways that I got from the workshop is that I am not respecting my time properly and need to make sure that I am factoring that in more to my pricing, and that I shouldn’t be afraid of looking at my product figures, because if I find out something that I don’t like in them, I should be working out what to change, because they are not serving me well.

Highly recommended if you are a bit overwhelmed by the idea of investigating your pricing and want someone who is expert and experienced to walk through the process with you and provide you with tools to do the rest.

Most of all, recommended if you want help from someone who passionately cares about you making a good living from the thing that you do, and wants you to succeed.

The information Sara-Jayne provided my members helped them to gain so much clarity and confidence around their book keeping, they were all very grateful!