I’ve noticed that a lot of financial information is geared towards those in full-time employment. Advice to set aside savings straight from your salary each month, make use of employee benefits and budget your cash flow where possible. But this isn’t always helpful advice for those who are self-employed. Short and long-term projects combined with financial inconsistency make it hard to calculate how to optimise financial management, because you don’t always have the same amount entering your account each month.

So here are my top three tips if you’re self-employed!

Get an accountant

As soon as I became self-employed, I hired an accountant. Because, in my opinion, a good accountant is worth their weight in gold. Not only do they take accounts off your hands (and out of your headspace!) but they make sure that all the details on your accounts are both accurate and operating as they should. Plus, when it comes to a mortgage application, it also makes things easier, as your accountant can provide your mortgage broker with all the information and documents they require. This is especially helpful with certain lenders who will only consider mortgage applications that have been signed off by a certified accountant.

Think ahead and work backwards

Being self-employed, you always have to think ahead. While legitimate business expenses can bring down your declared profit margin (and your taxes!) down, they can also have an impact on the amount that you can borrow. If you can, it might be best to hold off on any big business expenses in the years running up to your mortgage application so that you can demonstrate higher levels of profitability on your mortgage application.

Open up communication

It can be frightening to lay your financial cards on the table, but you should always speak honestly and openly to your broker. A good broker is not there to judge you, just to help and analyse your application so that they can present it to a lender in the best possible way. Therefore, you should never try and hide, actively or by omission, any details that you feel may negatively affect the loan. This is the worst thing to do as it always gets discovered in the process, and your broker is operating in your best interests, so they’ll need to know your situation in order to best help you. So being honest about your situation builds trust, and saves time having to fix any mistakes down the line.