Plan your growth
Start by checking that your business is ready to grow and choosing how to do it. Each way of growing brings new costs, and some bring legal duties that start at a set point.
Plan your business's growth
Check you are ready, choose how to grow, and see what changes when you take on staff or pass the VAT threshold.
Get help to grow your business
Free advice from your nation's business support service, management training, mentoring and trade bodies.
Fund your growth
Growth usually costs money before it brings money in. Decide whether to use profits, borrow, or sell a share of the business.
Raise equity investment
How selling shares to investors works, and what you give up in return.
Business funding and grants
Grants, loans and other finance for growing businesses.
Build your team
Taking on staff brings duties around payroll, pensions, contracts and insurance.
Register as an employer
What you must do before you pay your first employee.
Expand to new places
You can grow by opening your own new sites, or by letting others open sites under your brand.
Open a second premises
The planning, licences, registrations, business rates and safety checks each new site needs.
Franchise your business
Decide whether your business can be franchised, protect your brand and set up franchise agreements.
Sell overseas
Choose how to reach customers in other countries.
Work with other businesses and build your reputation
Partners can get you into markets faster, and a strong reputation helps you win customers as you grow.
Joint ventures and strategic partnerships
Find a partner, choose a structure and stay within competition law.
Manage your business's reputation
Reviews, testimonials, complaints, press, certification and awards.
Stay compliant as you grow
More rules apply as your turnover, headcount and company size increase. Plan for each one before you reach it.
If you propose to make 20 or more employees redundant at one establishment within 90 days, you must consult their representatives first: at least 30 days before the first dismissal, or 45 days if 100 or more are involved.
Once you employ at least 50 people in the UK, your employees can ask you to set up arrangements to inform and consult them about the business.
An employer with 250 or more employees on 5 April must publish its gender pay gap figures within 12 months of that date.
A business that supplies goods or services and carries on business in the UK, with a total turnover of £36 million or more must publish a slavery and human trafficking statement for each financial year.
A company's size decides which accounts it files and whether it needs an audit. A company is small if it meets two or more of these: turnover of no more than £15 million, a balance sheet total of no more than £7.5 million, and no more than 50 employees. The limits for a medium-sized company are £54 million, £27 million and 250 employees.
Consult on collective redundancies
When collective consultation applies, who you consult and how long it takes.
Information and consultation requirements (ICE)
What happens when employees ask for information and consultation arrangements.
Gender pay gap reporting
Who must report, the figures to publish and the deadlines.
Modern Slavery Act compliance for businesses
What a slavery and human trafficking statement must cover and where to publish it.
File your company accounts with Companies House
Which accounts your company size lets you file, and the deadlines.
Check if you need to register for VAT
When you must register, and how.
Protect your intellectual property
Register trade marks, patents and designs as your brand grows.
Claim R&D tax relief
Tax relief on the cost of research and development.