The feedback we got was, thankfully, overwhelmingly positive, but there was still lots of useful information on areas in which we can improve.

Would you recommend us?

The headline statistic was that 99.5% of all respondents said that they would recommend FreeAgent to a friend and you can see the breakdown below:

It's incredibly encouraging to hear, but we know there's still lots of room for improvement. As was to be expected, given the scope of the app, there wasn't a single thing that stood out, but we did find recurring themes, including:

• Better time tracking and project management
• Cashflow projections
• Integration with 3rd party services and HMRC
• An iPhone App

To be honest, none of these are a massive surprise to us. There's been discussion about each of them on Get Satisfaction and as such they do feature very highly on our to-do list for the coming months, but it's good to know that our priorities are still aligned closely with our users.

Survey Winners

As a thank you for taking part we were offering 3 lucky customers £50 Amazon Gift Vouchers, and the winners were:

• Paul Stone - Paul Stone Design
• Dan Fairs - Fez Consulting
• Tony Cook - CuCo Creative

Well done to all three, and a huge thank you to everyone who took part in the survey.

They've got to be filed by Sunday 31st January (yes, this Sunday) or you'll get an automatic fine of £100.

If you're in partnership, you've also got to file the partnership's tax return by the same date, or each partner will be fined £100.

And no, you don't get an extra day because 31st January happens to fall on a Sunday this year.

Also, it's not a good idea to file late even if you don't mind paying an extra £100 to Mr Darling, because it means HM Revenue have a longer enquiry window in which they can pick your tax return to look at further.

And if you file late, some sources say you're more likely to get put on a blacklist and be investigated anyway.

All good reasons for making sure you file your tax return on time.

I can't file on time, but it's not my fault!

HM Revenue list various "reasonable excuses" that they'll accept for not filing your return on time, such as if your documents are stolen, or you suffer a life-threatening illness. More information here.

You've still got a few days though to beat the ticking clock voiced by Ms Stuart...

Filing online

The deadline's already passed for filing your tax returns in the old traditional way by taking them to your nearest HM Revenue office as a paper form. That was 31st October.

You've now got to file your return online.

If you don't have an accountant, and haven't already registered with HM Revenue to file your return online, you'd better dig out £100 because you can't register and file all in one go. Part of the registration process is entering an activation PIN that HM Revenue send you, and it takes up to 7 days for your activation PIN to come through the jolly old snail mail.

But if you have registered with HM Revenue in time, where to start?

Income

If you have to file a tax return, then you'll have to put on it, almost without exception, all the income you've received in the tax year 2008/09.

Here are some of the more common examples of income you'll have to put on your tax return:

• Income from employment, which would be on your form P60 or form P45 as supplied to you by your employer. Remember, if you're the director of your own limited company, the company is your employer, so you'd have a salary to put on your tax return.
• Benefits from employment, which will be on your form P11D, which again your employer should have given you before July 2009.
• Bank interest paid to you subject to tax, whether or not it actually had tax taken off it. But don't include interest received from an ISA - and sadly no, you don't get any tax relief on interest paid to the bank, unless it was for a business loan or on a business account.
• Dividends received in the tax year 2008/09 - that's dividends received, not dividends declared, so if you hold shares in a company that said on 1st April 2009 it was going to pay a dividend but that dividend wasn't paid until 7th April 2009, that dividend goes on your 2009/10 tax return.
• Rental income and expenses, if you own property that you let out, or rent out a room in your main home to a lodger for more than £4,250 a year, or rent out a room for less than that amount but still decide to complete income and expense accounts for that room (for more information about rent-a-room relief please see our earlier post here).
• Income from self-employment, less expenses; that might include sales you've made on eBay if you're trading (more about that in a future post).
• Pension income, e.g. the State Pension or a company pension. If you receive the State Pension, what goes on your tax return is 52 x the weekly amount you receive.

Capital gains

If you've sold a large asset, then you may also have a capital gains calculation to do and capital gains tax to pay.

But there are some assets on which capital gains tax isn't due. For more information see here on HM Revenue's website.

And there are some circumstances in which you might not have to pay capital gains tax, or unexpectedly have to pay, such as sometimes when you give an asset as a gift. For more information see here on HM Revenue's website.

Reliefs

It's not all bad news. You are entitled to some reliefs which could reduce your tax bill.

Here's a few examples of those:

• If you make donations to charity through Gift Aid, and you're a higher-rate taxpayer, you can claim tax relief on your donations by putting them on to your tax return. More information on HM Revenue's website here.
• If you make contributions to a pension scheme (other than directly from your pay packet, because you'll already have received tax relief on those through your company's payroll), and you're a higher-rate taxpayer, again you'll get tax relief on your pension contributions if you fill in the correct box on your tax return. More information here from HM Revenue.
• If you're married, or in a civil partnership, and one of you was born before 6th April 1935, you could be entitled to Married Couple's Allowance. Click here for more information.

So all in all, there's a lot to put in!

How could I make it easier for next year?

• Try doing it earlier! It's always harder if you're trying to collect everything together and do it at the last minute.
• Find an accountant to help you. Accountants don't have to cost the earth and can offer a lot of helpful advice about how to simplify your tax affairs and maybe even reduce your tax bill. And they can help you if you're ever selected for investigation by HM Revenue. For a list of our FreeAgent Friendly accountant partners, please click here.

But whoever said "tax doesn't have to be taxing" obviously never tried to fill in a tax return :-)

You can now produce foreign-currency estimates and send foreign-currency invoices. Just select the desired currency whenever you create your invoice and FreeAgent will automatically calculate the daily unrealized and realized gains and losses on these invoices between the date of the invoice and the date customer payment is received.

We use an automatic data-feed of mid-market currency exchange rates from XE.com to calculate the daily exchange rate fluctuations - there's no work on your part required!

This is still a first iteration though, and there are a couple of limitations that need to be mentioned. For the moment you can't rebill expenses and estimate items to foreign currency invoices. We know this isn't ideal, but we'll address it in a forthcoming release.

We've created a couple of video tutorials to help you get started with multi-currency invoicing. Check out the Multi-currency invoicing and Receipt of a foreign currency invoice for uploaded or manual bank entries.

Overview update

The Overview screen has undergone a minor facelift with a new, easier to interpret, Profit and Loss display which makes more sense of the numbers.

The mini Bank Account displays now feature the appropriate bank logo for recognised UK bank accounts.

Updated Accounts Stuff

Of less interest to some but still of vital importance when it comes to keeping the accountants happy, we've also made a number of changes to what we technically refer to around here as "accounts stuff".

A new Opening Trial Balance Builder has been added to replace the previous ways of entering opening balances across company settings, users and bank accounts. Head thee to the Knowledge Base for a full explanation of Opening Trial Balance Builder.

We've revised our PAYE Calculations so these now exactly match the outputs derived from the HMRC-Payroll calculations. Previously the end numbers were the same but there were sometimes discrepancies from month-to-month.

FreeAgent now calculates the PAYE and NI when you make changes to any of the pay elements of the payslip, whereas previously entering these values would require you to do the calculations yourself. FreeAgent automatically rolls on the results of the calculation to any remaining payslips in the year. And you can now add both employee's and employer's pension contributions to your payroll calculations for each payslip.

Also of note

• As of the 1st of January FreeAgent has used the updated Flat VAT rates for 2010
• FreeAgent now automatically creates Journal Entry postings to the Suspense account to ensure balanced accounts at all times
• New invoice and estimate languages: Czech and Brazilian Portuguese
• Rejected Estimates no longer appear on the Overview panel
• Support for Bills has been added to the API

Until next time,
Roan & The Team at FreeAgent.

What can you do as a business to cope in this weather, and what are the tax consequences?

The temperature is one problem, but the main one is that it's much harder for people - staff, customers, suppliers - and goods to get from A to B.

So what can you do to mitigate this problem?

Remote working / working from home

These conditions are when remote working really comes into its own. If your staff can work from home, then they don't have to worry about whether they can safely get to work, and you don't have to worry about whether they're only pretending to be snowbound and are actually having an extra day off. And to meet with your customers, you could use video calls or telephone conferencing.

Providing homeworking equipment

If you provide equipment to your employees to let them work from home, such as a computer or Internet connection, then unless the employee is only allowed to use it for work, the equipment is a taxable benefit and needs to be reported on your form P11D.

Reimbursing homeworking costs

You may also decide you'd like to reimburse your employees for some of the cost of running their home while they're working at home during the bad weather.

There is a restriction on reimbursing homeworking costs, though. HM Revenue's website says that you can reimburse these costs only if:

• the facilities the employee needs for their work aren't available at your workplace, or
• the employee's work requires them to live too far from your workplace for it to be reasonable for them to travel there on a daily basis

In my own view, the first case would only apply in bad weather conditions if your entire office, or the employee's department, was shut because of snow, or if you'd told them not to come in.

And in the second, you'd be reimbursing the expenses all the time, not just when it snowed. Because it has to be that the employee lives too far away because of work. If your employee lives on their sales patch and can't get into the office because of snow, that's fine. But if your employee chooses to live in the heart of the Northumbrian moors, normally commutes quite happily to Newcastle but can't because of the snow - then no go.

Be prepared to argue your case with HM Revenue.

Even if one of these conditions is met, if you want to avoid the reimbursement becoming a taxable benefit, you can only pay them back for the additional extra costs they incur. So if your employee would normally set the heating to switch off at 9am after they go to work and come back on at 4pm to warm the house through for when they come home, but has to leave it switched on all day, then you could only pay them back for the cost of running the heating between 9am and 4pm - because that's the extra caused by them working from home. You can't pay the whole cost of heating the house without incurring a taxable benefit.

And if you're reimbursing more than £3 a week, you have to keep evidence to show you have only reimbursed the additional extra cost.

More info here on HM Revenue's website.

Remote working impossible

But what if the kind of business you run means that remote working isn't an option?

Providing vehicles

To make sure your staff can get to work, you could issue them with a company skidoo (now I wonder what the benefit in kind issues would be on a company skidoo?).

More practically, if you provide company cars which are available to your employees for private use, that is of course a taxable benefit. So to have any chance of reducing the benefit, you'd need to stop your staff using the car for private use while the bad weather lasts - and as travelling to and from work counts as private use, you'd have a job to do that!

But part of your fleet maintenance could include making sure all company cars are fitted with winter tyres, and that any employees who have to drive on minor roads to get to work are issued with snow chains.

Providing local hotel accommodation

Some businesses are putting their staff up in hotels local to the workplace, to make sure they can get in. BUT there is actually no tax relief on this cost - because any travel between a permanent workplace and somewhere else that isn't a workplace counts as what HM Revenue call "ordinary commuting" on which no tax relief is available. See point 3.4 on this helpsheet from HM Revenue, which actually gives the example of an employee put up in a hotel near his permanent workplace.

"No tax relief available" means that, if you've put it in Travel and it's showing as part of the expenses that reduce your tax, you have to add it back in your tax computation when you're working out your taxable profit, so that the amount of profit you have to pay tax on, goes up. Ouch!

And also, the accommodation is treated as a benefit in different ways depending on how the accommodation is paid for, so whether your employee arranges and pays for it and you pay them back, whether they arrange it and you pay for it, or whether you arrange it and pay for it directly. More information here on HM Revenue's website. This page covers both travel costs and related costs including accommodation.

So the tax cost of putting staff up in hotels can get very nasty, and you need to weigh this up against what you would lose in terms of income earned if your staff couldn't get to work on one or more days.

I'm a freelancer with no staff and I work from home.

If you're freelance, and you can't get to your customers and find you can't work - then take Nigel Temple's excellent advice which he posted on Twitter:

"Snowed in again? Great opportunity to work on your marketing plan, get some writing done and build your network."

Sadly, unlike for individuals, the government doesn't issue Winter Fuel Payments or Cold Weather Payments to small businesses. (Now wouldn't it be great if they did.)

Nor are there any specific tax perks for working from home.

So in summary, the cold weather means extra tax complications as well as all the other problems it causes.

Batten down the hatches and hope the worst is over!

Jonathan is an excellent programmer, well known for his attention to detail and meticulous approach to design and development. He's also been a keen FreeAgent user for some time, so he's itching to get his hands on the code base and start ramping up our development activity.

We're really excited about 2010 here. 2009 was in many ways a breakthrough year for us. It saw the company going from the small team of founders working remotely to a centralised team of 6/7 working from new premises in Edinburgh. 2010 will see us continue that growth and bringing in great developers like Jonathan is phase 1 of that.

Look out for more big news in the coming weeks.

If the lodger pays you rent (which they're almost certainly doing, otherwise why let the room out), then it's possible you may have some tax to pay on that extra income.

BUT... if the rent is less than £4,250 a year then you can claim "rent-a-room relief" and not put that income on your tax return.

Claiming rent-a-room relief is straightforward. There's a box on the Property page of the tax return which you tick to say you're claiming the relief and Hey Presto you've claimed it.

How is the relief worked out?

The relief is worked out in total for the tax year. So if, for example, you let the room out to a language exchange student who pays you £1,000 per term, and the room stands empty during the university holidays, then you're receiving £3,000 during the year, and you qualify for the exemption.

The £4,250 limit doesn't just cover rent paid, though. It has to cover any other services you provide in connection with the rented room. So if your lodger is paying extra for meals, laundry, etc. then you have to add all that up and make sure the total is under £4,250 a year.

And, if you live with a spouse or partner, the £4,250 is divided between you. So you each get £2,125 of relief.

When does the relief apply?

The relief only applies if you're letting out the room as furnished residential accommodation. You can't claim it if you're letting out a room in your home as office accommodation. The Revenue are wise to that trick - don't try it. But they do realise that lodgers will sometimes work in their rooms (e.g. bringing some papers home from work to read) and they won't refuse you the relief because of that.

The relief also only applies to your only or main home, which can be a caravan or houseboat as well as a bricks-and-mortar property if that's "where friends and correspondents might expect to find you" (HM Revenue's website). So rent from a holiday home or second home doesn't qualify for the relief.

And, if you run a business that involves letting rooms out (e.g. you run a guesthouse, or a B&B) then that counts as a trade and you'll pay tax on the profits of that trade as normal. You can't claim rent-a-room relief in this case.

Rent-a-room relief is available whether you own your home or rent it. Just make sure that the terms of your mortgage or tenancy agreement allow you to rent out a room.

What happens if my rent is over £4,250 a year?

In that case, you can choose to either:

• Method A: Work out the receipts less any expenses you incurred letting the room (e.g. newspaper ads, laundry, food) and pay tax on the difference, ignoring the £4,250, or
• Method B: Pay tax on the amount of the total receipts less £4,250, ignoring the expenses.

Method A is the default. If you want to use Method B then you have to tell your tax office. There are some examples here on HM Revenue's website about which method might suit you better.

Do I have to claim the relief?

You can, though, choose not to claim the relief. Why on earth would you do that? Not claim a relief from Mr Darling, are you joking?

If working out your figures under Method A above would actually give you a loss, then you could choose to do that.

But that loss can only be set against profits you make from letting other properties, or carried forward and put against a future profit from letting the room (or other properties) out. You can't set it against any other income, like your salary, or profit from a non-rental business.

Time to... clear away the champagne corks that have somehow ended up in the flowerpots after your New Year's Eve party, try and vacuum up the crisps that have been ground into your brand new carpet... and change your business's VAT rate.

On 1st December 2008 the standard VAT rate went down to 15%, and it's just about to go back to 17.5%, so how will that affect your business?

In simple terms, if you're registered for VAT and issue invoices to your customers, then you need to charge 17.5% VAT instead of 15% for any sales you make on or after 1st January 2010.

And when you receive VAT invoices from your suppliers, they should have 17.5% of VAT on them instead of 15%, and that's the amount you can claim as input VAT (subject to the normal rules for claiming back VAT - so sorry but you still can't claim back the VAT if it's for business entertaining).

But this is VAT we're talking about here and VAT is never that simple. There are "special rules" and "anti-avoidance provisions" in the equation too! And what if you're on the cash accounting scheme, or the flat rate scheme?

Let's look at the "special rules" first.

Special rules

Briefly, these say that in some circumstances you can choose whether to apply the 17.5% or 15% rate of VAT to your sales.

Here's an example.

If you start work on a job before 1st January 2010 and don't invoice for it until after that date, then strictly speaking, under the tax point rules, you'd be charging 17.5% VAT on all of that sale.

But the "special rule" says that if you choose, you can apportion the service between the work you carried out before 1st January 2010 and the work you did after that date (using a fair method, such as your daily or hourly rate), and then add 15% VAT on the pre-2010 amount and 17.5% VAT on the rest.

You may want to do this particularly if your customer can't claim back any or all of the VAT you charge them, e.g. you're a jobbing gardener pruning winter trees for a member of the public.

But do make sure the method you use to apportion your service is fair and that you could explain it to a VAT inspector if you are visited, because if your customer can't claim back all the VAT and you only charge them 15%, that represents a loss to HM Revenue and they have said they would pursue this. And trust me, you don't want HM Revenue after you.

They have, however, said that they will use a "light touch" approach to correcting errors if there's no loss to them, e.g. if you charge a customer 15% and that customer can claim back the VAT in full.

What happens if I do make a mistake and charge the wrong amount of VAT? How do I correct it?

In that case, HM Revenue say you should issue a credit note in full for the invoice with the wrong amount of VAT and issue a new invoice with the correct VAT on it.

What happens if I need to issue a credit note for an invoice that I issued before the rate change?

The invoice would have had 15% VAT on it so the credit note should also have 15% VAT, even if the credit note is issued after the rate changes.

What if I'm cash accounting for VAT, I issue an invoice with 15% VAT on it and I'm paid after 1st January 2010?

You'd still pay over the 15% VAT only, because that was what was on the invoice.

What if I'm using the VAT flat rate scheme? Will the rates change?

UPDATE:  Yes they will.  HM Revenue have now issued a .pdf document to say what the new rates are.

We've already updated FreeAgent to be ready for this change.

Will FreeAgent implement all these changes for me?

We certainly will.

You can already use 15% or 17.5% VAT on your FreeAgent invoices, credit notes, bills, expenses, etc. So you'll be able to record these correctly.

And we'll make sure that we program in the new VAT flat rates in good time. UPDATE: We have now programmed in the new VAT flat rates.

HM Revenue have provided both summary and detailed guidance on their website, both of which are in plain English.

Good luck with the new rate - and let's hope the Chancellor chooses a more small-business friendly way of kick-starting the economy next time :-)

What are the tax consequences of having a Christmas party? When does the government put on Scrooge's nightcap and hold its hand out for a share?

There's three different areas to think about when you're giving a Christmas entertainment. The first is employees, and the second is anyone who's not an employee (which includes subcontractors). The third is what happens to the cost of your own meal as the business owner.

Employees

If you give an annual Christmas party to which all your business's employees are invited, then check how much that party cost per head (for everyone who came, including employees' guests).

If the party cost less than £150 per head, you may not have to pay anything extra for the employees.

So let's say your business has 5 employees on its payroll (and remember that includes you if you're a director of a limited company).

All employees were invited to the annual Christmas dinner at the local gastropub. Everyone came and they each brought a partner, so there were 10 people there.

The total cost of the meal, drinks and taxis home (you have to include these if the company paid for them) came to £900 including VAT.

That's £90 per head - so within the £150 limit. You don't have to report that party on forms P11D or pay any extra tax and National Insurance. Breathe a sigh of relief and put the cost of the party to staff entertaining in your accounts.

But if the party cost more than £150 per head, if you've already used up the £150 per head on another annual event such as a summer barbecue, if the party is not an annual event (e.g. to celebrate a big contract), or you don't invite all your employees (e.g. it's just for directors or managers), then the whole cost of the party counts as a taxable benefit. You can't deduct the £150 per head and just look at the excess - it's the whole cost.

You'll have to report it on forms P11D and pay class 1A National Insurance on it. Ouch!

More info on HM Revenue's website here.

Non-employees

But many home-based businesses don't have employees. We work with subcontractors, outworkers, and other businesses.

So what then if you decide to host a Christmas entertainment for these people, your customers, and anyone else?

There's no issue with forms P11D if the people concerned aren't your employees.

But you can't claim tax relief on the cost of entertaining anyone who isn't an employee or the guest of an employee. So in your accounts the cost of entertaining subcontractors has to go as business entertaining and it doesn't reduce the amount of corporation tax (if a company) or income tax (if not) that your business pays.

If there's a mixed group of people at the party (some employees, some employees' partners, and some subcontractors), the cost of entertaining the subcontractors goes to business entertaining, and the cost of entertaining the employees and their guests goes to staff entertaining.

Business owner

And finally, what about you, the business owner?

If you're the director of a limited company, you're an employee.

If you're a sole trader, or a partner in a partnership, you're not an employee. BUT in that case the cost of your own meal, drinks, taxi home, etc. is not business entertaining, because legally you are the business and you can't entertain yourself!

Instead, it would have to be part of the money you take out of the business, i.e. drawings.

Who said it was easy to host a Christmas party... and that's before we even think about the Rudolph slippers you really don't want to get in the Secret Santa.

Here are some useful tips to help you with some of the more common figures as you put them on your tax return.

Bank interest

If you have any bank or building society accounts that are held jointly with your spouse or partner, don't forget to only include a half-share of the interest and tax on that account(s) on your tax return. The other half is your partner's.

Also, if you receive any bank interest free of tax, such as interest on an ISA, don't put that on your tax return at all.

Dividend income

If you receive dividends on shares you own in a company, that company will give you vouchers showing the amount of dividend paid.

Dividends go on to a tax return depending on when they're paid - not when they were declared. So if a company declared a dividend on 1st April 2009 but then didn't pay it out until 1st May 2009 - that dividend goes on your 2009/10 tax return, not 2008/09. For more information about tax years, please see our last article about filing your tax return.

Donations you make to charity

If you make donations to charity under Gift Aid, and pay higher rate tax (which you almost certainly will do if your income is over £40,835 in 2008/09) then you can claim tax relief on the donations. That means you get back the difference between the higher rate of tax (40%) and the basic rate of tax (20%) on the donation.

So if you're a higher-rate taxpayer, it pays to keep a list of your Gift Aid donations and put the total on your tax return.

Click here for more information from HM Revenue about claiming tax relief on Gift Aided donations to charity.

Pension contributions paid

You could also get tax relief on contributions to a pension.

But that doesn't apply to contributions you make directly from your salary, because you'll already have had relief on those.

Add up how much you've actually paid in the year and put that figure on to your tax return.

These are just a few examples of some of the little wrinkles you need to bear in mind when you're filling in your tax return.

If you get stuck - check out HM Revenue's guide here or ask your accountant for help (that is if your accountant doesn't complete your tax return on your behalf).

What on earth are those? How are they worked out, and when are they due?

What they are

Briefly, they're payments towards your next year's income tax.

So on 31st January 2010 and 31st July 2010, you may be told to make payments on account towards the tax you're going to have to pay on your income for the tax year 2009/10.

How they're worked out

Half the previous year's tax bill for each payment.

So if your tax bill for 2008/09 was £1,500 (you only have to make payments on account if your tax bill is over £1,000 now - that used to be £500 but for 2008/09 and later years it's £1,000), then each payment on account would be £750.

When they are due

31st January during the tax year, and 31st July soon after its end.

What if I pay too much on account?

HM Revenue will give you the difference back. They'll either do this by cheque or bank transfer, or by deducting the difference from your next tax bill.

If you know in advance that you're going to pay too much on account because you know your tax bill will be lower next year, perhaps because you're winding down your business and your income will drop, or you're passing retirement age and no longer have to pay class 4 National Insurance, then you can apply to HM Revenue to reduce your payments on account.

Click here to find the form to do this.

Be warned though, if you reduce your payments on account too far HM Revenue will charge you interest and penalties for underpaying your tax.

What if I don't pay enough on account? I haven't reduced them

So taking the above example, you've paid £1,500 on account for 2009/10.

Let's say when you come to do your tax return, you find you're actually due to pay £1,700.

Don't worry, all you'd do is to pay the difference to HM Revenue by the following 31st January, so that would be a payment of £200 by 31st January 2011. HM Revenue call this a "balancing payment".

Then of course you'd have to make your payments on account for 2010/11 - half of £1,700 each, so £850 each on 31st January 2011 and 31st July 2011.

So you'd pay a total of £1,050 on 31st January 2011.

When they're really nasty

The first year you have to pay them.

This may either be your first year of trading, or the first time your tax bill has gone over £1,000 in a tax year. But then, you'll be paying effectively 1 and a half year's worth of tax on 31st January.

So let's say you began trading in 2008/09 and have a tax bill of £1,400 for that year, and didn't have any tax deducted at source.

That tax bill'd be due for payment on 31st January 2010.

BUT... on 31st January 2010, because your tax bill is over £1,000 you'd also have to make your first payment on account for 2009/10. That's half the prior year's tax bill - £700.

So on 31st January 2010, instead of £1,400, you'll be paying £2,100! Ouch!!

This is one reason why it's a good idea to do your tax return as early as possible so you have time to put money aside!