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9 Tips to Spring Clean your Business

Oct 10, 2019

It’s time to spring clean your business by reviewing your goals for the future. Consider what impact it has on your budget and financial results.

Spring is in the air; the early flowering trees are putting on their beautiful display and the days are getting longer and warmer. In the natural world, spring is a time of new beginnings, deciduous trees come to life with green shoots and many animals give birth to their young.

Growing up in Canada, spring was a special time when the snow melted, the temperature climbed above freezing and it was time to get the bicycle out again. Spring felt like a release. both a release from winter and from school, even though I loved school. It meant freedom was around the corner, long summer days, bike riding on the prairies, and exploring the world around where we lived.

It was a truly magical time.

Whilst as an accountant I tend to work in financial years and quarters, I still do whatever I can to recapture that sense of freedom when spring...

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3 Tips to Ensure Accurate Reports when Dealing with Inventory

Oct 03, 2019

Dealing with inventory is the trickiest part of accounting. It is imperative that you match the sales revenue with the purchase costs that relate to those specific sales for your accounting reports to be accurate.

If you have an accounting system that handles inventory you’re well on the way to accurate reports, but I’ve found that many businesses don’t have this and as a result, their accounting reports are not showing their true gross profit and net profit.

My top 3 tips for dealing with inventory are:

1. DO A MONTHLY STOCKTAKE 

Add doing a stocktake to your end of month checklist and do it without fail. Create a list of your inventory items and manually count how many you have on your premises on the last day of the month. Ideally, create this in a spreadsheet so you can enter the inventory count. This will then automatically calculate the value of your inventory.

The reason for this is that if you’ve purchased stock in a...

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Don't Believe what you Read on Social Media

Aug 29, 2019

What you read on social media can be misleading and frustrating information. 

Benjamin Franklin is attributed to the quote “… nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes”. I’d add to that, changes in tax laws. 

It seems like every year; there’s another change in taxes that impact business owners. Big changes took place with the introduction of the GST and Superannuation Guarantee.

THEN THERE ARE THE SMALLER CHANGES THAT CREEP UP ON US, OFTEN WITHOUT MUCH FANFARE.

The recent implementation of Single Touch Payroll (STP) is one of those changes that has crept up stealthily upon us. Businesses employing 20 or more staff had to comply with this legislation on 1 July 2018. 

From 1 July 2019, employers with 5 – 19 employees are required to report under the Single Touch Payroll system. There is a transitional period to 30 September 2019 by which time you have to be reporting.

For employers with 1 – 4 employees, there...

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There's Money to be Found in the Differences

Jul 11, 2019

There’s money to be found in the unnecessary costs of your business.

Checking and reviewing your numbers is key to making decisions, but there are also benefits to looking at the numbers from the viewpoint of seeking out the differences.   

Differences can be found in several ways:

1. COMPARE THE LAST MONTHS’ PROFIT AND LOSS STATEMENT TO THE MONTH BEFORE.

What numbers look the same, and what numbers look different? For those that are different, do you know why they’re different? If you can provide an explanation, that’s great, but if not, delve deeper into the numbers to see what caused the difference.

THERE’S MONEY TO BE FOUND.

I was talking to the co-owner of several tourist accommodation properties, and she told me the story about when they’d bought a new property and got the first energy bill.

The energy bill was ten times the amount they were paying for another existing larger property they owned. Something was definitely...

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