[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="600"] Source Brandignity[/caption]

According to this, more than 90% of e-commerce executives in Spain have declared they expect an increase in sales, with 51% saying sales would grow by up to 10% and 40% looking for an even bigger gain in 2014.

"According to data from Foro de Economía Digital and marketing agency Kanlli, only 3% of respondents expect sales to decline. While the number of digital buyers is growing all the time, healthier sales will also come from higher spending by existing buyers. The same research unveils that 57% believe their average order value would climb by more than 10% in 2014."

"Results also point out that strong sales prospects are encouraging higher marketing spend. Almost three-quarters of retail e-commerce executives in Spain have planned to raise their digital marketing budget in 2014. Of those, 37% have declared that the increase would be up to 10%, while 35% expect extra investment of more than 10%. One-quarter have mentioned they would maintain the same budget for digital marketing in 2014 and 3% are looking to cut back."

"Findings reveal that online merchants in Spain will increasingly cater for mobile shopping and buying. Only 53% of e-commerce representatives have stated that their websites are currently mobile-optimized, but all of the remaining 47% plan to adapt their websites. A further 4% already have a mobile application up and running."

"Research also identifies two key trends shaping the market: showrooming and multichannel sales. Most executives are looking for a rise in multichannel sales in 2014, with 71% saying these would increase. Of that group, 24% believe most sales involving multiple channels would be completed online. "

According to this, E-commerce spending increases nearly 17% in 2013, and 16% in the fourth quarter of last year, in the U.S. .

"Online shoppers in the United States spent $69.2 billion in the fourth quarter of 2013, up 16.1% from approximately $59.6 billion for the fourth quarter of 2012, according to figures released today by the U.S. Commerce Department. Total retail sales, meanwhile, increased 3.8% year over year."

"E-commerce sales accounted for 6.0% of total retail sales in the fourth quarter, compared with 5.4% for the same period on 2012, according to the Commerce Department."

"For the full year 2013, e-commerce sales reached $262.51 billion, up 16.9% from the previous year, according to the department’s seasonally adjusted figures. By comparison, total retail sales increased 4.2% year over year in 2013."

"On an unadjusted basis, the Commerce Department says e-retail sales, excluding foodservice, during the fourth quarter totaled nearly $83.57 billion, up 16.0% from the same period a year ago. It says e-commerce accounted for approximately 7.0% of the quarter’s unadjusted total retail sales of $1.201 trillion. Following the same method outlined above, Internet Retailer calculates e-commerce accounted for 7.7% of unadjusted retail sales of items consumers often purchase online. "

According to this, the turnover of Chinese mobile payment industry reached 317.56% year-over-year to USD 1.59 trillion in 2013, while the number of orders reached 212.86% year-on-year (YOY) to 1.67 billion.

"According to the data released by Chinese central bank-People’s Bank of China, e-payment business recorded 25.78 billion orders and a turnover of CNY 1,075 trillion in 2013, up 27.40% and 29.46% respectively from a year earlier. E-payment includes three categories of payment services of online payment, phone payment and mobile payment. In addition to mobile payment, the turnover of online payment business climbed 28.89% YOY to CNY 1,061 trillion and that for phone payment declined 8.92% YOY to CNY 4.74 trillion in the same period."

"The report added that China recorded a turnover of CNY 1,608 trillion from 50.16 billion non-cash settlements last year, up 21.92% and 24.7%, respectively."

Since being established as a social enterprise in 2001 we have been proud to announce when we have made a profit. One of the big problems with working as a social enterprise is that if you tell people you want to make money, they think that you are demonic and that for some reason, wanting to make money negates your social values.

BUT to the contrary you need to make a profit to stay in business. If you want to help people and develop social programmes the only way to do this and be sustainable is to be good at the business side of what you do. How many organisations do we know that are great at working with people but who struggle to balance the books.

So with this in mind we did all the right things we registered for VAT, we have paid corporation tax on any profits we have made, we run PAYE schemes and pay Income Tax and NI. In my mind just like any normal business, so it came as a bit of a surprise to hear from HMRC VAT that we did not operate as a business because we received grants. Then came the big problem, because we were not a “real” business we could not reclaim the VAT on any money we had received as grants and with the letter came with a demand to pay back £12K in back VAT for the period 2008 to 2012

I am thinking hay what’s happened to the BIG Society? Small local companies and organisations taking over the running of the country? We argued the case for 2 years but (as you can guess) in the end after nearly going out of business to find the money, we paid the “debt” back to HMRC before we got taken to court.

So we have started to ask around if anyone else is in the same position? Please let me know if you have been subjected to a similar backdated claim.