So you’ve had a great idea, set up your business and you’ve made it through that difficult first year – congratulations! The good news is that you’ve achieved success where many other businesses fail. The bad news is, however, that it only gets tougher from here on in.

‘What?’ I hear you cry, ‘Tougher?’ You thought that you’d done the hard part. In fact, scaling a successful business can be a much more difficult task.

Think of it this way. The first year of business, or however long it took you to get to a point where you counted your business as successful, was all about establishing your place in the market and finding people to sell your products or services to.

No one is suggesting that doing so is easy, but you had the room there to grow. When you’ve reached a point where you’re busy and working at full capacity, it can feel like you have nowhere else to go. How can you scale your business from that point onwards?

The fact is that, once you are filling your hours, working as hard as you can, and charging as much as you can charge, you have to look at different ways of scaling your business.

This could mean taking on more staff for expansion. Either take on staff (for example, in admin or sales) to free up some of your time so that you can work more on providing the core business service, or train staff to provide that service alongside you.

Another way to expand is to turn the service that you offer into a product. For example, a website designer could develop templates to be sold again and again. For the same amount of time spent on developing one website you have infinite chances to sell the template.

A good example of scaling a business could be a hairdresser who a) trains new staff to become a hairdressing business, b) expands to other salons to establish a salon brand and c) develops and sells her own product line. All require office supplies to help them run their business.

Scaling your business when you hit your individual capacity for work can be difficult. Expanding and diversifying can be challenging, but it’s the only way to grow your successful business to fulfill its maximum potential.

From 1 April 2012 HM Revenue and Customs brought in the requirement that virtually all VAT-registered businesses must now submit their VAT returns online.

There’s no need to worry about this being an additional end of tax year chore. Submitting VAT returns online is relatively straightforward. Use the HMRC VAT online service and you can submit your returns for free and with a minimum of hassle. Alternatively, your accountant can access the service and submit the return on your behalf.

As a first time online user of this service you need to register and enrol using the following pieces of information:

1 – Your VAT registration number.

2 – The postcode of your main place of business.

3 – Your EDT (effective date of registration) for VAT.

4 – The final month of your last VAT return submitted.

5 – The ‘box 5’ figure from the last VAT return submitted.

The first three pieces of information can be found on the VAT4 certificate of registration or letter from HRMC notifying of the requirement to submit online. The final two items can be found on your last submitted VAT return.

Newly registered for VAT businesses will need to enter n/a for point four and 0.00 for point five.

If you’re already registered with HMRC’s online services – PAYE or self-assessment for example – simply log on with you existing User ID and password, add VAT under the ‘services you can add section’ and enter in the five facts above.

Once enrolled you can access the service and submit VAT returns online immediately. However, to use other features of the VAT online returns service, such as updating your details or submitting an EC sales list, you need to wait for your activation code through the post.

It’s easy to submit your VAT returns online – find more information and links to the services at http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/online/new.htm.