Small Business

Here we go again with an expenses story but this time it's not in the public sector: according to new research from specialist payment card specialist fuelGenie, almost one in 30 staff are on the fiddle in small businesses.

Financial service staff are the worst offenders with some 18.2% admitting to claiming falsely (and if 18.2% admit to it you can be certain there are more).

Let's face it, the government's reputation for investing in small businesses has never been great.

Today a group of MPs are taking the matter seriously and pointing fingers at the UK government's management of its venture capital funding plans for those small businesses with prospects for growth.

There's a new batch of computer malware out there and it's attacking banks of small businesses. It's exploiting the trend for social networking and underlines the need to keep all security software absolutely up to date.

The US has reported more than $120m worth of losses in the third quarter of last year, according to a Financial Times report. ID fraud overall is costing the country $700m per quarter.

JK Rowling is the most inspirational entrepreneurial female role-model for young women in the UK, new research carried out by The Co-operative Financial Services (CFS) has revealed.

The Harry Potter author came out top of the survey, ahead of other respected names such as Stella McCartney and TV's Dragon's Den star, and successful business-woman, Deborah Meaden.

Small business owners whose staff stayed off during the snow earlier this year lost approx. £13,800 as a result, says new research from IT consultancy Ramsac.

The silly thing is that most of it could have been avoided through good business planning.

The Welsh are most likely to tip in restaurants, while the English are least likely. Despite their dour reputation, Scots are most likely to tip all the time. Those shy Northern Irish are most reticent in asking who gets the tip.

Just some of the statistics from a government campaign launched to promote better transparency in tipping. Nearly four in five consumers (79%) tend to tip, according to figures from the Department for Business, Skills and Innovation (DBIS). But only a fifth of them ask what happens to their tip (21%), something the government is campaigning to change.

The second annual Nectar Small Business Awards, sponsored (surprise surprise) by the loyalty card giant, are open for entry for small businesses in the UK.

This is an exciting chance not only to win £2000 but to be evaluated by a panel of judges including Dragon's Den's James Caan, Office Depot's John O'Keefe, Nectar's Charlie Humphreys and...well...me.

OK, this one hasn't only just opened. But I promised I'd cover any approaches from people running business academies without some sort of celebrity status.

And here we are. Jonathan Jay set up Success Track in 2008 and it's worth knowing about now because of two seminars it's running at the end of this week and the beginning of next.

The cost of borrowing money should be falling, right? Given record low interest rates and dwindling savings rates. Not to mention all the government's efforts to keep money pumping around the financial system. Wrong. it's not falling. In fact, it's the reverse. Borrowing is getting more, not less expensive.

A fifth of small businesses have seen the cost of existing borrowing rise in the last two months, according to the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB). Of those, a minority (6%) say the cost has risen by as much as 15% or more. Considering that small businesses are reckoned to be the lifeblood of the economy, that is bad news.

This year's Fairtrade Fortnight celebration will see a variety of organisations take part in a 'big swap' in order to raise awareness of ethical issues and promote fair trading values.

As part of the company's involvement with the celebration, Gossypium is asking people to swap their old tea-towels for brand new ones made of fair-trade cotton which they'll get for half the normal retail price.

The Ghanian cocoa farmer-owned Fairtrade chocolate company Divine has bought the first ever "noble"-grade Fairtrade cocoa from Sierra Leone after helping locals improve cocoa quality and set up the farmers' co-operative.

This is getting to the heart of fair trade. Fair trade is not just about sticking a fancy marketing label on products, but about changing the lives of workers around the world. In this case they have got farmers to improve the quality of their cocoa so the finest chocolatiers can use it.

Leading fashion models Lisa Butcher, Genevieve Lake, Natalie Suliman, Tia Ward, Amber Rowan, Laura Bailey and Laura Haddock are backing a Fairtrade Foundation cotton as London Fashion Week ends.

The year-long campaign marks the start of the fifth anniversary of Fairtrade cotton and kicks off Fairtrade Fortnight that starts today and runs to 7 March. Daily Finance will be featuring Fairtrade at least once a day during the fortnight.

A leading group of accountants has damned the banking industry for failing to support start-up businesses. The comments come as Parliament's Public Accounts Committee announced that there would be a shortfall in promised loans.

This is serious because it refers particularly to the two part-nationalised institutions, the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) and Lloyds. They are obliged to have lent £39bn by the end of this month as a condition of their bail-out and haven't done so.

A survey from accounting software specialist Sage suggests that some 80% of small businesses are missing out on social media.

They aren't using it to promote their business and build their brand - and more surprisingly they're using Facebook rather than Twitter, LinkedIn or any of the other established social networks.