Sheffield Tony
Ghost of the disenchanted
My business is not in woodwork, but still. I went on a number of courses (offered by Business link, IIRC) before we (2 man band) set up. One bit of advice from the guy I found most helpful was this - for anything of a business nature, incorporate. With a limited company, any liabilities are the company's, not yours. So in the worst case, you lose your business, not your house. More importantly, you have more scope to manipulate how you extract money from the company. You can pay share dividends out of profit, on which you pay corporation tax. For a small business particularly this can be significantly less than employer's NI + employee's NI + income tax.
Forming a limited company is easy ! Quick Formations or similar will set you up a "generic" company online for small money. It is by no means impossible to do the accounts you need for companies house and HMRC without paying an accountant - you will need to know how to keep proper accounts, or use someone who can, whatever type of business you run or you are headed for trouble !
Just to toss in a different opinion ...
Forming a limited company is easy ! Quick Formations or similar will set you up a "generic" company online for small money. It is by no means impossible to do the accounts you need for companies house and HMRC without paying an accountant - you will need to know how to keep proper accounts, or use someone who can, whatever type of business you run or you are headed for trouble !
Just to toss in a different opinion ...
