Whether it is a new business you are setting up or one that has been trading for a while, you will need to work with, and understand, management accounts.

You may well ask exactly what management accounts are. In a large company, they tend to be a monthly snapshot of how the business has performed in the previous calendar month. They can be quite detailed for the biggest firms, because they need to understand how and where the profits (or losses) and costs are occurring or being created.

If you are a smaller venture, then you will more than likely not have an accountant producing reams and reams of figure and incomprehensible statistics. But, you will have management accounts, these will be in your head, or if you need to, put down quickly when you consider the last months business activity.

You will know what you have sold, what your costs are likely to be and as a consequence what the profit/loss is.

As part of this, you need to consider the ongoing fixed costs, including business insurance.

You may receive an annual quote from your appointed business insurance broker of, say £1,000. Divide by 10 or 12, depending on the instalment deal, and you can work out what your costs will be. This can be added together with your other fixed (premises, rental, power etc) costs.

But watch out for instalment charge, in 2010, you should not pay any more than 5% for your instalments. In most cases, you will get these free. Whilst a few per cent may not seem like much, depending on your actual insurance premium, a bit of shopping around to an interest free option, can save you money.

Think back ten years, and if you wanted to buy most products you had a couple of main choices.

The first one is that you would go to a shop, usually in a high street or a purpose built shopping centre, and browse or view the goods and eventually, if you liked the product you bought it.

There was a second choice, which was mail order. Everyone knew someone who was an agent for one of the big catlogue companies. You had a look throuhg their 900 page book and chose your trainers, tv or toaster. A couple of weeks later it was delivered and you paid for it on the never-never at a few pounds a week for most of the year. You did not mind paying that bit extra because they had the products you wanted and you got it on credit.

Whilst both these options still exist in 2010, there is an altogether more exciting, easilay accessible option – internet shopping. Whilst is will never fully replace the physical shopping experience, it is a growing trend. Anyone with a bit of stokc can set up a website, with a shopping cart facility, for £50 and away they go.

If you are one of those companies, you may find that it is a bit of a struggle to get yourself adequate internet retail insurance cover. Why? The reason is that some business insurance companies still think because you do not trade from a high street, traditional style, shop then you present a vastly different risk to them.

However, there are some insurers that are a bit more forward thinking and who offer suitable, competitively priced, products to suit your trade. The slight difficulty is actually finding one of these companies that does not charge too much.

There is an easy way of doing this though. Don’t bother searching for individual quotes yourself, speak to a business insurance broker. The broker will know which, of the hundreds of insurers that exist, is more likely to offer you the better cover at the best price. They will do all the searching work, very quickly, for you.

Save yourself an awful lot of time and effort and get them to find the most suitable product for you.

When looking for a business insurance quote, you have a few options as to who will actually provide this for you.

The two main ones are, to go to an intermediary or go direct to the insurer. We have spent a few years reading in the press and on the internet that by going direct, you can save money.

This really only applies to a physical product. For example, Tv’s, settees etc. But, when you are looking at a service, you can still receive a comparable, if not better quote, by using an intermediary.

This may appear to be confusing logic, but every intermediary earns either commission or a fee for products or services they sell. For example, a business insurance broker that sells you a policy for £1,000, will typically earn between 15 and 20% of that amount as comission.

So, they can afford to reduce their commission to make their price better than the market norm. In addition, whilst insurers do like to deal direct, they also prefer the fact that a broker does all of the selection and question answering work for them. Theoretically, the broker sorts the wheat from the chaff for the insurers and they are sometimes happier to offer better prices for this workload.

It is similar with travel agents, certainly you can get yourself a better deal by booking the flight, and the accommodation and the transfer separately. But, what happens if something goes wrong, or you need to make changes? It is when this happens (ie an insurance claim) that you want to have one main point of contact, your broker, to deal with everything on your behalf.

So, use a broker or go direct? Our advice now and for always is, use a broker. Get yourself some professional, first class advice from someone that is independent.