Thinking of starting a business whilst at University?

University can be a great time to get ideas for a business venture you might want to start up. Some people have these ideas and never act on them whereas other people have the ideas and want to start working on them straight away.

Most successful entrepreneurs say that one of the reasons for their success was that when they had an idea they got to work at it straight away. There’s no reason to put your business idea off whilst you’re studying. Lots of students run small businesses at the same time as studying for a qualification.

If you do decide to take the plunge and start a business, make sure that you don’t forget about some of the essential things you need in order to get your company off the ground successfully. Here are a few of the essentials you need to think about.

Public Liability Insurance

When you start a business you need to get insured. It’s not a difficult thing to do. If you look online you will see that there are plenty of places you can get a Public Liability Insurance quote from.

Public Liability Insurance is there to cover you if in the course of your businesses activities you injure or damage another person or their property. You might find a compensation claim made against you which could be fairly substantial which without business insurance might cause serious problems for your company financially.

You might need different insurance cover for different insurance types. For example if you had a lettings business in which you owned the properties you would need Landlord Insurance cover. If you run a consultancy business you would need Professional Indemnity Insurance because you would be giving advice to people and if that advice were proved to have caused someone else to suffer a financial loss you might be liable to pay a compensation claim.

Get the Company Structure Right

It’s important to get the legal structure of your company right. You might want to form a Limited company or just start your business as a Sole Trader. As a Sole Trader it’s a very simple set up but you do carry more risk because your businesses finances aren’t kept separate from your own finances.

A limited company limits your personal liability so if your business were to go into debt your company finances would be held apart from your personal finances.

Plan Your Business

It’s always a good idea to plan ahead, and running a business is no exception. If you’re going to be serious about your business you’ll need to have a plan. You might want to take on a partner in the future or an investor. If you have a business plan an investor will be able to see where you think your business is going and get a picture if it’s financially viable for them to invest.

If you’re studying as well as setting up and running a company, making a business plan will help you focus because it could be easy to lose that focus with so many things going on.

Keep on Top Of Your Accounts

Make sure that you keep track of your accounts. It’s often a good idea to hire an accountant because they know the correct legal procedures when it comes to tax and managing your money in the right way. It might feel like an annoying expense at first but you might find that you’d be lost without your accountant in the long run.

Studying and running a business at the same time is probably not going to be easy. If you can get the essentials sorted out right at the beginning you will have a good grounding for growing your business smoothly.

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