Is it time to call it quits?
Written by Taylor Geddes
Content Writer for Squarely Circle Solutions
“Is it time to call it quits?
It’s been a long day, after a long week, after a long year. What are you going to do to unwind, maybe that knitting project you started 6 months ago? Or perhaps you can finally get caught up on your guilty pleasure TV show?
HA! As if you’ve got time for that—you still need to sort out today’s stock, those tax forms stamped “urgent” twice just to make sure you don’t ignore them. Don’t forget the invoices you need to pay, which is tricky when your own invoices are still unpaid.
Just as you’re about to gulp down a bowl of cereal and collapse into bed, you still need to come up with something worthwhile to post on your socials for tomorrow.
After all that, giving up your dream business seems like the only option.
The passion and fire that made you start that business has been smothered by the cruel deluge of paperwork and admin tasks.
It is so easy to think it’ll never get better, and that it’ll never get sorted.
But what if you asked for some help?
I know, madness! But hear me out…
What if you got in touch, and we worked out what to do together? What if we understood that adding more tasks and more extravagant costs isn’t going to fix the problem? But the passion you have is what made your business, and lightening the load of admin work, lets your passion rekindle into a blaze.
We’re not here to sell you something you can’t afford, we aren’t looking to squeeze out the last of your money.
We want to hear about what your business does, what’s at the heart of it, and what we could offer that would actually make life easier for you.
We could help with admin, accounts & finance support, calendar management, invoicing, grant or funding applications, staff rota and shift planning, social media planning and creation, intellectual property, and lots more.
If you want to start small, sounds good to us!
Want to start big? Wonderful!
It’ll always be about you, your business, and what you’ll truly find helpful from us.
Is it time to call it quits? No, it’s time to call Squarly Circle
The “Too Small” Trap: Why Doing Your Own Bookkeeping is Costing You More Than You Think.
Written by Taylor Geddes
Content Writer for Squarely Circle Solutions
“My business is too small to hire a bookkeeper.”
If you are a sole trader or a growing SME owner, you have almost certainly uttered these words. In the early days, “DIY” is a badge of honour.
You wear all the hats: CEO, Marketer, Sales Rep, and (reluctantly) Accountant.
You handle the numbers yourself because it feels like the “budget-friendly” move. But there is a thin line between being frugal and being counter-productive.
The Hidden Cost of the DIY Mindset
It usually starts small. A missed receipt here, a slightly late invoice there. But eventually, the “manual” approach catches up.
Suddenly, you're staring at:
• Unreconciled bank accounts that don't match your reality.
• Duplicate transactions that skew your profit margins.
• “Best-guess” VAT returns that leave you sweating when tax season rolls around.
Trust me, no amount of coffee makes a messy balance sheet look better.
What started as a way to save money has become a source of profound stress and confusion.
Bookkeeping is More Than Data Entry
A common misconception is that bookkeeping is just typing numbers into a spreadsheet.
In reality, it's about navigating complex, ever-changing regulations.
When you don't have professional systems in place, small errors don't stay small.
They snowball into expensive penalties, overpaid taxes, or missed opportunities for deductions.
Professional bookkeeping isn't just about “fixing the past”. It's about providing the clear financial data you need to make decisions for the future.
The “Opportunity Cost” Calculation
Ask yourself: What is your hourly rate?
Now, calculate how many hours you spend every month struggling with spreadsheets, chasing invoices, and worrying about HMRC.
If you spent those same hours on billable work, networking, or refining your product, would you have earned more than the cost of a bookkeeper?
Usually, the answer is a resounding yes.
Beyond the money, there is the personal cost. The time you spend hunched over a laptop on a Sunday night is time you aren't spending with your family or simply recharging.
It's Okay to Ask for Help
We aren't here to judge. Every massive corporation started as a small idea, and almost all of them reached a point where the founder had to let go of the “numbers” to focus on the “vision”.
Investing in professional support isn't a sign that your business is failing, it's a sign that your business is maturing. It's a proactive step to prevent a financial headache before it begins.
A Moment for Reflection
If you're doing your own books right now, take a second to be honest with yourself:
Are you truly saving money, or are you just creating future problems?
At Squarely Circle, we believe bookkeeping should be easy, transparent, and (most importantly) not scary. No matter your size, you deserve financial clarity.
Let's get your books under control so you can get back to what you do best: running your business.
Are you ready to trade financial stress for peace of mind? Let's start a conversation, give us a message and we can talk further about how we can support you.
Google's AI told me not to use or trust Google. or "Live and let AI fry." 🍟
Written by Taylor Geddes
Content Writer for Squarely Circle Solutions
Yes, quite genuinely. And this is why you can’t trust AI to do your business work for you.
Story time: 📖
I was hunting the other day for a bargain on a new air fryer. My old one sadly went to the great kitchen in the sky after one too many aggressive nugget shakes. 👨🍳
So, like most people, I searched on Google for "air fryer deals” and let the search engine fates guide me to a money-saving solution.
As happens now, the top of the search results was a scrollable carousel of “Google Shopping" offerings, displaying glossy product pictures and prices. One in particular caught my eye. A known-brand two-drawer 11L beast that could propel my dinnertime into mountainous realms of crispy food 🍟. And the best part, it was so cheap. In fact, the listing on Google had it at around 77% off the recommended retail price.
My goodness, too good to be true? Yes, obviously. ⚠️
Like the Bat-phone when a large order is placed at the eccentric spandex fabric shop, my alarm bells were ringing. ☎️
Now, I’m not looking for a prize in detective work for spotting this obvious scam. I think most people would have steered clear easily, particularly when the web address was a long, jumbled, autogenerated, free Shopify shopfront URL. But what intrigued me was how prominently it was displayed at the top of my Google search. It was the SECOND listing!
So, being a prize-winning detective 🕵️♂️ (wait, what do you mean I didn’t get one? I assumed they’d insist), I decided to investigate. I went to Google’s own AI mode and asked it, “What the hell?” Or to be more precise, I first asked it if the site was a scam, giving the absurd URL.
Unsurprisingly, it could tell straight away that it was a scam. The price, the web address, the general aura around it, all of it was screaming 'scam'. 🥸
So then I asked why Google featured such an obvious scam at the top of its search results. I mean, if it could so quickly understand that the site was dodgy and warn me not to give them any money, why would it want to place it prominently on its site where so many people are going to click on it?
Well, its answer was simple but very telling, they paid to be there, so Google didn’t care.
I’ll paste the full answer below, but the general gist was that the site has paid for a Google Shopping ad, then combined with the low price, that got it to the top end of the search results.
But fear not, it gave me some invaluable advice:
“How to Protect Yourself in the Future Ignore the 'Sponsored' Carousel: The absolute top row of results on Google is paid ad real estate. Scroll down to the organic, unpaid search results to find trusted retailers.” (GOOGLE AI, 2026)
How wonderful! "Don't bother with our flashy carousel, it’s full of paid, untrustworthy ads. Scroll right past that rubbish and concentrate on real results.” At least this time AI seems to have got it right. Although it does leave a big question, why should you bother taking out a Google ad when the site itself is telling you to ignore them?
It strikes me as odd that it doesn’t occur to one of the most powerful companies in the world to, I don’t know, maybe run the ads that people are trying to buy through some sort of constantly learning software that would give a rudimentary glance over the web address and the offering to flag up potentially untrustworthy listings in order to protect its customers and users, giving them the best overall experience.
But, I don’t want to reward your diligent reading by leaving you on this sour note, and this story does have a happy ending. I did indeed get a new air fryer hold for excited applause 🥳. It even has a rotisserie feature, so now my food can spin like Google AI's head as it works out if it just gave the middle finger to companies buying ad space. 🍗
Here’s the full Ai response to the scam question;
It is highly frustrating to see obvious scams appear at the top of Google Shopping, but they appear there because Google Shopping operates primarily as a paid advertising platform, not a curated safe directory. Scammers have figured out how to weaponise automated advertising systems to cheat the search results.
Fraudulent sites exploit several gaps in Google's infrastructure to achieve high visibility:
1. Completely Automated Ad Approvals - Google processes billions of ad submissions daily using fully automated algorithms. As long as a scammer sets up a new Shopify account, uploads a product feed, and provides a valid stolen or prepaid payment card, Google's system automatically pushes the ad live within minutes. A human eye does not manually review these listings before they display on your screen.
2. Cloaking and "Bait-and-Switch" Code - Advanced scammers hide from safety filters using a technique called cloaking. When Google's automated web-crawlers inspect the website, the site's code displays a perfectly normal, full-priced store to look compliant. However, when a real human user clicks on the link from a specific location, the website switches and reveals the fake £49.99 pricing trap.
3. Exploiting the "Lowest Price" Algorithm - Google Shopping's sorting system aggressively highlights the cheapest options to help users find bargains. Scammers exploit this by scraping legitimate product images and descriptions from actual retailers, and listing them for an impossibly low flat rate. Google's algorithm mistakenly registers this as an incredible deal and pushes it straight to the top carousel to catch consumer attention.
4. Continuous Domain "Whack-A-Mole" - Google does eventually remove these sites, but only after multiple victims have been scammed and file manual reports. Because setting up an unbranded URL on a platform like Shopify takes less than five minutes, the moment Google bans qxyfjz-9p.myshopify.com, the exact same criminals instantly deploy an identical site under a new random string of letters.
How to Protect Yourself in the Future
· Ignore the "Sponsored" Carousel: The absolute top row of results on Google is paid ad real estate. Scroll down to the organic, unpaid search results to find trusted retailers.
· Watch for Flat-Rate Pricing: A shop selling entirely different brands of vacuum cleaners, air fryers, and power tools for the exact same price (e.g., all £49.99) is always a automated scam template.
Would you like me to guide you through how to safely use Google's built-in reporting tools to flag this specific link so it gets removed faster? AI responses may include mistakes. Learn more.
