CPD Trainings courses

CPD Trainings courses

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Hi,

I have looked at Mercia, Lexis Nexis and have attended some courses run by my Institute.

What courses do you think are the best value, and offer the best knowledge for a sole trader?

Thanks,

Murphy

Replies (5)

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Giraffe
By Luke
24th Feb 2011 16:56

ICAEW

I have been on some excellent Merica courses, and if I wasn't paying for them myself I would happily continue to do so.

But, I am paying for them myself now and prefer something slightly cheaper so I find the ICAEW local society courses to be excellent value for money.  They tend to be about £50 for a half day and about £100 for a full day + VAT.  A couple of half days and the full day annual tax update seem to meet most of my needs.

The ICAEW national courses never seem to be such good value but local society ones are excellent and with top speakers too, not just a local member who stands up and tries!  If you are an ICAEW member you can search for suitable courses online, I'm not sure whether they are open to non members or not, I think some at least are.

 

 

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Giraffe
By Luke
26th Feb 2011 10:22

Following on...

I have just received a brochure from Mercia offering all CPD courses booked by 30th April at £47.50+VAT per place, which is their usual rate if you book more than 10 courses I think.  Have a look online, I'm not sure if the same offer is going but I'm going to attend a couple at that price.

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By EW110
26th Feb 2011 18:34

Smart Training

I would recommend Smart Training - reasonably priced (usually less than £60 plus VAT for 3 hour course), good range of courses and well-known speakers.  Not sure where you are as the venues are mainly in North West but also do some courses in York, Birmingham & Cardiff.

I haven't tried their online courses yet.

www.smarttraining.co.uk

 

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By StuartWarner
02nd Mar 2011 01:03

Online CPD

Hi Murphy

Some of the other replies are great suggestions for a sole trader and for what appear to be very reasonable rates.

I've delivered CPD training for the major players over the last decade and the rates quoted here for local society courses appear to be very reasonable, versus the major training providers.

The other key advantage of the local society events, besides the cost, is the networking opportunity. As a sole trader promoting your practice and business is essential and you'll get some super contacts from these events. 

As suggested by some of the others - online CPD training is also worth considering. Not only is it cheaper per CPD hour, you save travelling and abstraction costs - in that you can meet your CPD requirements from your home or office when convenient for you. You'll be aware that sometimes missing a day from the office can take 2 days to catch up! You can also complete online training in a piecemeal basis, an hour here or there.

I've been involved in online training for the last 5 years alongside traditional training and have seen it grow exponentially. 

My personal view is that a blended mix of both face-to-face courses and also online courses is the best.

Please have a look at our online CPD courses which are priced competitively with the rest. One of our courses which you may find relevant is on promoting your professional practice (http://www.financial-fluency.co.uk/online-learning/business-skills-cours...) which looks at  practical marketing advice to enable you to achieve maximum results for your efforts. 

I hope this helps and please let me know if you have any further questions.

Stuart

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By Ken Howard
02nd Mar 2011 11:24

Another vote for Smart Training

Smart do courses from Cheshire up to Cumbria and across to York, so basically the north of England only.  Not only do they get some of the best indepndent speakers  (Tim Good, Giles Mooney, Robert Jamieson etc), but the courses are aimed at the small practitioner.  Having been a member of Mercia for several years, I did tire of seeing their same in-house lecturers and having to listen to irrelevant information aimed at far larger businesses than my typical client.  

I have also found that the Smart lecturers are more open about giving away their "pet" tax saving tricks - rather than saying "there's a way to do xyz", they'd say "this is the way to do xyz" - nothing more annoying than going on a course when the speaker tells you there's a surefire way to save tax but doesn't tell you what it is!

I also have quite a gripe at one of Mercia's tax lecturers who always seemed to side with HMRC as he would often recommend paying proper market salaries for directors instead of the low salary/high dividend route on the grounds that sooner or later they'd bring in something to stop the perceived abuse.  I got the distinct impression he wanted everyone else to stop doing it so HMRC wouldn't see it as a big problem - perhaps he wanted to keep the "trick" for himself and his own clients?  Who knows, but he was never "balanced" in his arguments about the low salary approach at all.

Smart are comparable in price to Mercia.  What I've found good with Smart is that they are open to new ideas and often put on new and different courses and mix the speakers, whereas with Mercia, it was very much the "same old" year after year - i.e. virtually the same course titles with the same speakers, so after you've gone to them for a couple of years, it gets quite repetitive.

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