Blog
Our aim from the beginning has been to make At The Yard the best software around for running your livery yard. We make it super quick and easy for your liveries to order services and products from wherever they are in the world, let you manage your stock from your mobile phone and make invoicing your customers a walk in the park (in some cases literally, try doing your invoicing from your local park sometime!).
In 2018 there is a breadth of cloud based products available to support and enhance the day to day running of your business. From web hosting and advertising platforms through to payment processors and accounting packages. These companies are all working in their own area, aiming to each bring their best in class solution to the world.
It’s when multiple of these products are brought together that the true magic of the cloud can be unlocked. Much like cloud based software is available to you from wherever you are, they can be made available to each other through integrations. This means you can connect the different solutions that you use to one another, allowing information to flow seamlessly between them. This creates an overall solution which is truly greater than the sum of it’s parts!
Up until this time At The Yard has not supported any integrations. However I’m happy to announce that our first integration is going to be with www.xero.com a cloud based accounting package. This past Thursday (the 21st of June) I had the pleasure of attending the Xero Developer Roadshow in London. Not only did I get to meet some of the fantastic people from their team but was excited for their continued vision of building out their platform to allow for a broad range of integrations.
The work to build the integration for At The Yard to Xero is nearly complete. We’re preparing to work with their team to move through their certification program so we can open this up to all At The Yard customers who use Xero. As part of this we will be going through a BETA program with Xero in which we will be testing the implementation and taking onboard feedback to make the integration as easy to use and as streamlined as possible.
So if you’re a customer of Xero we’d love to hear from you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a current subscriber of At The Yard or not, get in touch on xerousers@attheyard.co.uk. We can help get you setup in your existing At The Yard account or set you up with a free (special extended as a thank you for your help) trial of At The Yard to test the integration.
We look forward to hearing from you and getting this feature rolled out to a wider audience. Also let us know what other cloud products you use which you’d like to see At The Yard integrate with in the future.
Thank you,
Ashley Griffiths
Managing Director of With A Dot Ltd - Makers of At The Yard
Recently an interesting thread was posted on the horse and hounds forum. It raised the question to yard owners of "Do you know which vets your liveries are registered with?"
There were a mix of replies some saying yes, some saying no (and some not sure why they would). In our experience, as we talk to yard owners whilst we're demonstrating At The Yard, it is Yes. The majority of yard owners keep records on which Vet their liveries are registered with and the contact details for them. Personally we think this is essential in the case of an emergency (especially when the owner cannot be contacted).
On top of simply collecting this information when a livery arrives, we think it's essential that this information is kept up to date (when was the last time you asked all your liveries to check the information was still correct?)
To help livery yard owners (and their customers) who use At The Yard keep track of this information, update it when it changes and to help them access it when they need it we built it into At The Yard.
With At The Yard Setting and updating this information can be done from anywhere as soon as your livery finds out it has changed. More importantly when you need to ring someone like the vet it is at your finger tips, right there on your phone!
Last year in November the Office Of Tax Simplification published a report (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachmentdata/file/657213/Valueaddedtaxroutestosimplification_web.pdf) which reviewed various possible changes to the current VAT system.
Whilst just a report one area that was reviewed was a “significant changes to the threshold” including lowering the VAT threshold. Of course this has led to discussion, since publication, of the implications to businesses around the UK.
The report states that “reducing the threshold from £85,000 to £43,000 (for example) would impact between 400,000 and 600,000 businesses.” and that “it would increase compliance costs for a large number of businesses”.
If a significant reduction to the threshold was made it could have a material effect on livery yards. As stated it would result in increased compliance costs which could impact on a livery yard in terms of both fixed and variable costs.
When any business is faced with possible new costs for compliance and control we believe it’s a good time to review the tools, technologies and techniques being used. The right changes, implemented correctly, can be used to mitigate some of the associated costs.
(It’s at this point we’ll add a disclaimer that we’re not accountants and that you should always take the advice of a professional on these matters)
Typically livery yards use a yard diary to arrange any extra assistance needed. Then they keep track of the regular services they provide for liveries somewhere else (or often just in the owner/manager’s/staff’s heads).
When it comes to invoicing these multiple sources have to be collected and collated to allow invoices to be sent to the liveries. This can already be time consuming and error prone at the best of times. However, if a livery yard is required to comply with VAT regulations the effects are compounded.
Lets consider the various different VAT rate assignments a yard might have:
At The Yard helps you manage your VAT compliance by allowing you to assign different VAT rates to services and products. As you and your liveries use At The Yard, charges will be automatically generated with the correct VAT codes and amount. No more manual collection and collation needed!
This means that when it comes to invoicing everything can be done automatically. This includes showing the correct VAT amount for each line item and an automatic VAT breakdown for all the different VAT codes (see the example below). All this data can be exported to a common file format and subsequently imported into whatever accounting package you (or your accountant) use.
Overall, once setup, it means that keeping track of VAT from a billing point of view is no more complicated for you than not tracking VAT at all. Saving you time and money, allowing you get back to running your livery yard.
Going forward with possible future changes to the VAT system combined with other initiatives like “Making Tax Digital” (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/making-tax-digital/overview-of-making-tax-digital) it’ll be more important than ever to have a structured, and where possible automated, system for keeping track of billing on your livery yard. At The Yard offers a solution that is bespoke for the equine industry helping you meet your obligations with a solution tried and tested by fellow livery yard owners in the equine community.
Please visit our contact page and get in touch and take a look at our features page https://www.attheyard.co.uk/features/ to see all the other ways that At The Yard can help save you time and money.
In this video we take a look at how quick and easy it is to order services in At The Yard as a livery of a yard using the system.
We also show how as a member of yard staff it's easy to keep track of what's going on.
When I first came up with the idea for At The Yard it was to scratch my own itch. I wanted to be able to book the sand school at the yard where we kept our mare. At the time we were at a tiny DIY yard with only a small handful of fellow horses. However, as I am sure many of you (and your liveries) will have experienced, even when the school is free 90% of the time, sometimes you need to guarantee it’ll be available (Lessons, Demonstrations etc..). And so At The Yard was born!
Since then At The Yard has grown significantly. You can now manage your invoices, your assisted services, track product sales, stock control and much much more. Each feature working to improve the experience for our customers and their liveries.
We love talking to our customers and hearing the stories of how they use At The Yard. How it saves them time and lets them offer new conveniences to their liveries. We continue to use this feedback to grow and improve the product.
However we’re very aware that as a Livery yard money is important. There are some of you who would love to use At The Yard, but for whom the price is a barrier. With that in mind, we have some good news. As of Wednesday 18/04/18 we have reduced the price of all three of our packages by £20 PCM. This means on our best value package it works out to less than 8p per horse per day!
We want to be regarded as the best package for livery yard management out there, and we know that being competitive on price is a part of that. That’s why we’re excited to bring this announcement to the equine community and hope it lets us work with even more of you!
If you have any questions please feel free to get in touch on our contact page www.attheyard.co.uk/contact. I look forward to speaking to you and for more of you to start benefiting from At The Yard
Ashley Griffiths
Managing Director of With A Dot Ltd
Makers of At The Yard