Todays lecture was conducted by Helen McCarron who is a Careers and Employability Advisor and Claire Butler who is the Student Enterprise Co-ordinator. The lecture was an introduction into freelance and Self Employment Working.

This lecture was extremely useful to me as I’ll probably be working freelance for a while after University in order to build up my client list and creative portfolio. Both Helen and Claire provided some very useful information about registering as a sole trader with the HMRC, book keeping and tax, what you should be charging, business expenses, accountants, invoicing and VAT. They also recommended that it could be a good idea to look into getting a business account at the bank and it’s probably to wise to work with a media accountant as they have a better understand of how to claim your business expenses.

They then went on to list some of the Pros and Cons of working as self employed. These were as follows:

Pros

• Freedom to work around requirements.
• Cost of commuting.
• Variety of projects – portfolio working.
• Being your own boss.
• Flexible for the creative industries – high % of freelance workers.

Cons

• Initial start up costs.
• Security – e.g. maternity/ paternity, sickness, paid holiday etc.
• Switch off time from work.

To finish up the lecture, they then provided some great info and links which we can use when setting up our business. They mentioned that Student enterprise can offer a £2,500 start up grant, 30 hours of support via workshops and mentoring, virtual office and tenancy spaces, information resources and UoL enterprise networks. They also showed us the free lance toolkit as well as the creative toolkit.