Business Audits
Why should I conduct business/legal audits?
Every business should try and conduct audits of some sort to check whether they are legally compliant. It is best to identify legal problems at an early stage to prevent fatal issues (and costs) spiraling out of control. For example, many businesses use standard terms and trading conditions especially where the goods and customers being dealt with are broadly similar. Imagine there is a problem with your terms. Even a small business with customer numbers in the hundreds could face dozens of legal claims.
How much do audits cost?
If you use our free checklists and questionnaires, nothing! We will be updating these resources on a frequent basis.
What type of audits can I conduct?
We can break this down into three categories: business compliance, employment law compliance and intellectual property compliance.
What comes under business compliance?
- Company law compliance
- Business start up compliance
- Preparing businesses for sale – tax considerations, how to structure a sale
- Product liability – guarantees, exclusion clauses
- Shareholder rights – shareholder agreements, disputes
- Consumer law compliance – Sale of Goods Act, Unfair Contract Terms Act
- Terms and conditions of trading
- Business lease reviews/renewals
What comes under employment law compliance?
- Equality Act 2010 – discrimination of all types based on gender, race, age, disabilities and sexual orientation
- Recruitment – compliance with discrimination laws, proper hiring procedures
- Health and safety law compliance
- Employment contracts – compliance with statutory laws regarding pay, notice, proper drafting of terms
- Workplace policies
- Procedures – complaints, firing, dealing with grievances
- Absence/sickness procedures
- Redundancy
What comes under intellectual property compliance?
- Data protection law compliance
- Confidentiality
- E-Commerce law compliance – The E-commerce Regulations 2002
- Brand Protection – registered/unregistered trademarks
- Distance selling regulations