Business Tips Archives - Page 15 of 22 - First Class Accounts Ovens and Murray and Busy01 Consulting

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Leadership lessons: JUST FOR ME

Leadership Lessons

JUST FOR ME

There are thousands of books written about leadership. We’ve distilled some lessons from some of them into the acronym JUST FOR ME. Nine things within your control to help you become a more effective leader.

1. Just do it

So often we get in our own way of implementing our ideas. Stop limiting the business’s potential and prioritise your time to ensure the important things get done.

2. United vision and values

Your vision is where you want the business to be in the future; your values are the compass that drive your behaviour to get there. Clarify and articulate these ASAP.

3. Safety

It’s a leader’s job to ensure physical and emotional safety for their team at work. This goes beyond legal obligations; the safer employees feel at work, the more productive, innovative and loyal they’ll be.

4. Teamwork and Trust

Form a team of people who are smarter than you in different ways, using your collective expertise to achieve results impossible to achieve alone. Build a culture of trust so your team know they can rely on you and that the feeling is mutual.

5. Focus

Bring focus to each team member’s individual contribution towards achieving the business goals and vision. Provide clear key performance indicators to ensure everyone knows what to focus on.

6. Opportunity

Look for the opportunity in every mistake, challenge and difficult situation. These are key sources of learning.

7. Resilience and Resourcefulness

Resilience helps you recover quickly from difficult situations; resourcefulness helps you find quick and clever ways to overcome difficulties. Build resilience and resourcefulness in your team and yourself.

8. Mindset

This is the attitude you bring to your role as leader. Do you have an abundance mindset or scarcity mindset? Do you take ownership, accountability and responsibility for your actions? Your mindset has a huge impact on how you and your team feel about coming to work each day.

9. Empathy and Energy

Empathy is the ability to see things from another’s perspective. For example, instead of disciplining a team member for struggling, first seek to understand why they’re struggling, then offer support and training. Increased empathy increases energy across the team and the business and improves results.

Take these nine factors and make a plan for how you can develop your leadership skills. Which one will you focus on first? 

“Success is neither magical nor mysterious. Success is the natural consequence of consistently applying fundamentals.” - Jim Rohn

JobMaker scheme – key points

JobMaker Scheme - Key Points

The JobMaker hiring credit scheme is now open for registration.

Here’s a summary of some of the key points around the JobMaker scheme.

If you are considering applying for JobMaker, please take into consideration the administration of JobMaker can be quite complex, so we don't recommend attempting to manage this on your own. Talk to us about how we can assist.

For background, JobMaker was announced by the government in the October 2020 federal budget, and will operate until 6 October 2021.

Key points:

  • Key to the hiring credit scheme is that employers must have added additional employees and also have increased their payroll during the relevant JobMaker period, as compared to a baseline date.
  • The hiring credit is backdated to 7 October 2020 (applying to new employees from that date) and will provide eligible employers with the following payments for up to 12 months for new jobs created from that date.
  • Eligible employees must work an average of at least 20 hours per week over a JobMaker period for the employer to qualify for the payment in respect of that employee. They must have commenced employment between 7 October 2020 and 6 October 2021, were aged between 16 and 35 years at the time they commenced employment, and worked an average of 20 hours a week for each whole week the individual was employed by the qualifying employer during the JobMaker period.
  • The JobMaker payments for up to 12 months for new jobs created are:
    a) $200 a week for hiring a worker aged 16 to 29 on at least 20 hours a week during the JobMaker period and
    b) $100 a week for those aged 30 to 35 on at least 20 hours a week during the JobMaker period.
  • Employer eligibility criteria are broad. Some employers are specifically excluded. These include:
    • employers who are claiming JobKeeper
    • entities in liquidation or who have entered bankruptcy
    • commonwealth, state, and local government agencies (and entities wholly owned by these agencies)
    • employers subject to the major bank levy, and
    • sovereign entities (except those who are resident Australian entities owned by a sovereign entity).
  • Entitlement to a hiring credit payment is assessed in relation to three-month periods known as “JobMaker periods”. These periods are relevant for the purposes of the additionality criteria (refer first point).
  • Claims can only be made during the claim period. No exemptions or extensions are available. There are strict dates by which claims for a period must be reported by. The credit is paid every 3 months in arrears to employers.

As mentioned at the start, this is a summary of some of the key points around JobMaker. There are many other requirements and a thorough understanding of those requirements are needed to ensure your JobMaker administration is correct. 

Talk to us if you need support in applying for or administering JobMaker.

Leveraging your technology


Leveraging your technology

The decisions you make in your business are only as good as the data you use to make them. The more accurate and up to date your data is, the better your decisions will be. Leveraging your technology will provide you with accurate real-time data to make more informed decisions in your business.

Processes and systems drive your business, so it’s important to ask yourself if all of yours are clearly documented and up to date? Some processes may be followed simply because they always have been. Although other processes may have evolved over time, your documentation might not necessarily reflect this.

Using technology to streamline your processes and systems increases efficiency in your business, saving time, money, and reducing stress. You’ll also prepare your business for the future, making it more sustainable, scalable, and saleable.

Leveraging your technology can help you to:

  1. Make your data accessible from the cloud, allowing you to view real-time data and make decisions on the go.
    Example: Xero.
  2. Reduce human error and increase productivity by automating repetitive tasks and workflows.
    Example: Asana for workflows.
  3. Track your expenses and load them directly to your accounting software simply by taking a photo.
    Example: ReceiptBank.
  4. Minimise double handling and increase efficiency by integrating your apps.
    Example: Xero Marketplace.
  5. Collaborate with your team regardless of where they are.
    Example: Slack and Microsoft Teams.
  6. Save the time and money needed to travel by using online meetings.
    Example: Zoom and Microsoft Teams.
  7. Induct new team members seamlessly with clearly documented processes.
    Example: Deputy.
  8. Monitor your inventory in real-time, reducing inventory days and freeing up cash.
    Example: Fishbowl and Unleashed.
  9. Store customer preferences to personalise customer experience, increasing customer satisfaction and retention.
    Example: Vend and Kounter.
  10. Make your business become scalable with systems in place to allow the business to grow without the wheels falling off. Talk to your business adviser. 

Using technology to its maximum advantage will help to improve your business. However, implementing these changes can often be overwhelming.

Talk to us about any of the above technology to improve efficiencies in your business.



Building a better business in 10 steps

Building a better business in 10 steps

There’s no magic bullet to building a better business; it’s about taking small steps every day to get a bit better than the day before - it all adds up!

Owning and running a business is not easy. And at times you might question why you’re even doing it, particularly after the impact Covid-19 and the associated lockdowns had on business.

But you’re here because you had a vision. You decided being in business was a better way to achieve that vision than working for someone else. And, you’re right; you just have to work on it.

It's likely that you're an expert at what you do. Maybe you’re a tradie and know plumbing or carpentry like the back of your hand. Or, maybe you’re a restaurant who can dish up delicious meals. This doesn’t mean you’re an expert at running your business though. It’s hard taking time out of working in your business to work on it. But doing this is essential for its success.

There’s no magical overnight solution to building a more successful business. It’s about taking small steps every day to get a bit better than the day before.

So, what should you do to build yourself a more successful business? We’ve broken it down into 10 essential steps

Ten steps to building a better business

  1. Get clear on exactly what it is that you want.
  2. Be open to change and new learning.
  3. Define where you are now (warts and all).
  4. Make a plan.
  5. Get your organisational structure right.
  6. Be a better leader.
  7. Be held accountable by someone independent.
  8. Build strong networks.
  9. Monitor your progress.
  10. Keep your well of happiness full.

These are the 10 most important things you should be working on to ensure you achieve your goals. Small, incremental changes can have a massive effect on your success.

We’re here to help you, every step of the way. Get in touch!

“Success isn’t overnight. It’s when every day you get a little better than the day before. It all adds up.”  Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson


Saving time and money with a bookkeeper

Saving time and money with a bookkeeper

Turning a profit will be high on your list of goals as a business owner. And if you want to generate the best margins, that means keeping an eye on the money that’s going out of the business, as well as what’s coming in.

So, how can your bookkeeper help with this?

The days where your bookkeeper just did the bookkeeping, compiled your accounts and filed your BAS are well and truly over. Modern bookkeeping firms are far more interested in helping you with your financial performance, your business strategy and offering flexible value-add services that put you in better control of your finances.

If you partner with the right bookkeeper, we can actually save you money – in both the short, medium and long-term. And that’s good news for the growth of your business.

Key ways your bookkeeper can save you time and enhance your financial health

The less expenditure you have as a company, the bigger your profit margin. It sounds incredibly simple, doesn’t it?

The smaller your costs, the larger your profit. But if you’re not fully in control of your financial management, it’s very difficult to know WHERE you’re spending money, and WHY you’re not achieving your profit targets.

This is where working with a bookkeeper adds a huge amount of value. Your bookkeeper helps put you back in the driving seat of your finances. And that’s never been more needed than in the current economic climate.

So, what specific things can your bookkeeper do and what will the impact be on the future of your business?

Cashflow management and advice

‘Cash is King’ may be a cliche, but it’s true. Unless you can balance the cash inflows and outflows from your business, you’ll never have the liquid cash to pay your bills, cover your payroll costs or cover your operational expenses. We’ll show you where money is going out, and coming in, so you achieve the ideal positive cashflow position.

Cost control and spend management

To improve your cashflow, you need to reduce your cash outflows. An important way to do this is to focus on cost control and spend management, reducing your expenditure, removing unnecessary costs and negotiating better deals with your suppliers. The more you cut costs back, the better your cashflow will be and the easier it will be to thrive, grow and become more profitable.

Forecasting and financial modelling

When we understand the key financial drivers in your business, we can build you a full financial model. This allows us to change the variables, run different scenarios and forecast the various future paths of your business. Being able to project these numbers forward gives you a clearer view of the path ahead. And that’s invaluable in the challenging economic times that we all face at present.

Better management reporting and information

Your decision-making stands or falls on the information you have available to you. We provide detailed management accounts, breakdowns of key metrics and forecasts of your cashflow, spending, aged debt and revenue – all of which helps you to save money, make sound decisions and keep the revenues flowing into your business.

There are a number of Apps that create efficiencies with cashflow management and forecasting to help you save time and money, and have a life.

Rather than spending your life working in your business and trying to do everything yourself, you'll be saving time and money with a bookkeeper. We’ll help you optimise the most profitable parts of the business and increase your overall return on investment.

Let’s talk about how we can work together to support your ongoing business profitability.

Safeguard your business

Safeguard your business

Small business is all about relationships. But when these go wrong, it is devastating.

Ensure you have the systems in place to routinely look at where your money’s going in order to safeguard your business and your relationships.

Being able to trust your team is gold standard but introducing a few simple processes ensures that is much harder for someone to abuse your trust.

Think about these tips to safeguard your business and keep your trusted relationships strong.

Housekeeping

Good systems make it easy to understand and hard to hide things. If you have a system, make sure it’s documented. They don’t have to be complicated. For instance, when you refund a customer, make sure it’s signed off by a manager or yourself and recorded somewhere central. Checklists can make a system easier for staff to understand and work with too.

Have systems in place to routinely look at where your money’s going or that require you to sign off on key transactions.

Monitoring

Do you have regular reporting? Things to look for are unusual customer refunds or credits, a spike in new suppliers or payments to existing ones. Do your sales look right? Is there a dip in cash sales?

Know what benchmarks other businesses in your industry are hitting. Compare your profit to overhead ratios with theirs and question inconsistencies.

Risk Assessment

Conduct an annual risk assessment of your business to make sure your systems and monitoring are still relevant and in place. 

Talk to us about setting up or reviewing the systems you have in place.

strategic alliances

Strategic alliances: the benefits of working together

Strategic Alliances: the benefits of working together

Your business may compete head-to-head with a number of other companies, but this doesn’t mean you have to treat ALL other businesses as if they are the competition. In fact, there are real benefits in creating strategic alliances with other like-minded organisations.

When you look at the wider marketplace, you’ll see that there are businesses out there that may well compliment your offering. And by working together (rather than against each other) it’s possible to become valued strategic partners. Collaborating to serve your joint customers, improve brand awareness and, ultimately, expand your target market.

If this sounds like a positive strategy, now’s the time to do your homework and start hunting down the best strategic partners for your business.

Working to serve a shared customer base

Strategic alliances are all about finding the common ground between you and your intended partner. This means finding the best ways to combine your efforts.

If you can share the same customer audience, and create a complementary way of meeting their needs, that creates a broader, more connected way of growing both companies.

Finding a company that’s interested in forming a strategic alliance

Find partners in complementary sectors

If you’re an professional services business, like us, it makes sense to partner with solicitors, lawyers, accountants, marketers, and other professional services providers who can help your clients.

If you're a manufacturer, find a shared audience or customer need, and to create some real synergy between your two businesses. For example, if you're a maker of shoes it makes sense to partner with a clothing manufacturer that shares your same sense of style and purpose. 

Take part in business networking and events

To get a wider understanding of your local, or industry specific, business network, it’s worth taking part in plenty of online and offline business events. You’ll meet new people, hear about new brands and will find it easier to find your ideal strategic partner. The wider your business network, the more choices you have for an alliance.

Look at crossover between your target audiences

Once you’ve found a potential strategic partner, it’s important to take a detailed look at the crossover between your partner’s audience and your audience. Do they shop through the same channels? Do they fit a certain age group or social demographic? Are these customers local? Or are they part of a national or global online customer base? How large is their database?

Cross-reference your customer databases

By sharing and comparing your client relationship management (CRM) data, you can cross-reference both sets of customer data. Then see where there’s overlap, or where you may already share some of the same customers. The better you understand each other’s customers, the more likely it is that you’ll find some common ground for shared marketing and promotion.

Run joint events and promotions

Present joint webinars with your strategic partner, or run joint promotions. By finding a common theme, you bring both audiences together and reinforce the alliance between your two brands. You also reduce the expenditure by sharing the costs and reach a wider audience.

Combine your R&D efforts

To move your alliance forward, you can also try combining your research and development (R&D) activity. Find new products, new services and new ways of keeping your joint customers happy. By sharing the time, costs and effort of developing new offerings, both companies will benefit. And you keep your businesses at the cutting edge of their respective sectors or specialisms.

Strategic alliances are all about finding the common ground. If you share the same customer audience and create a complementary way of meeting their needs, you can significantly expand your target market.

Setting Sales Targets

Setting Sales Targets

Setting Sales Targets

Setting sales targets for your business is standard practice for any aspirational, growing company. If you’re going to stretch the sales and marketing teams, it’s important to have clear, unambiguous targets for them to aim for.

Setting sales targets in uncertain times

In uncertain times it’s more than likely that your established sales targets will effectively become unrealistic and impractical for your teams to use.

So, how do you set sales targets when the world has changed? 

And how can you ensure these targets are meaningful, accurate and workable for your business goals?

Understanding your strategy and sales numbers

Knowledge is power, especially when it comes to defining your business strategy during uncertain times. The better you understand your position, the easier it will be to agree on the right strategy and to set sales targets that support these aims.

With a plan in place and targets to meet, everyone knows what they need to achieve. A list of key tasks to do at each point along the sales journey adds real value. Even if you don't end up gaining new business, you’ve made every effort to solve the customer's needs.

Important steps for setting sales targets:

Understand your turnover and profit goals.

Do you know how many sales to make if you’re going to break even, or want to actually make money? 

Understanding your gross margin, your break-even point and your desired profit margin helps you calculate how many sales will be needed to achieve this profit goal.

Bear in mind, of course, that your sales will, most likely, be down during uncertain times. And work this into your figures and targets.

Make your targets SMART

If you set sales targets then these numbers have to be Smart (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Timely).

Break them down into achievable goals, such as weekly or monthly targets, and track your actual sales over time. That way you can see how you’re performing against your sales target. 

Look at regular performance reports and make these part of your regular management meetings. Discuss how you’re tracking and what action you can take if you’re not hitting your desired targets.

Track other sales elements

It’s also worth considering what other elements of the sales process you can measure, to get a handle on how you’re doing as a business. Track things like calls/enquiries, visits to your home page, trials, bookings or customer demos.

Analyse what drove these enquiries or visits, so you understand where things worked well and can do more of the same.

Run forecasts and scenarios

Use your tracking data to project your sales position forward in time. Base your projections on the historic information you have available and the other drivers you’ve identified. 

Run different scenarios. For example, 75% sales based on prior year numbers, 50% sales and 25% sales. And see how you’d need to tweak your sales targets to account for these drops in sales activity.

Fill the information gaps

Are there any gaps you could fill to get a better understanding of the market and your customers?

A proactive effort to make more follow-up calls with existing customers can be incredibly informative.

Running a customer feedback survey can also help to gauge where the sales process works well, where you could do better and what their future buying intentions might be over the coming months of the crisis.

Talk to us about your sales targeting process.

contractor or employee

Contractor or Employee

Contractor or Employee 

What You Need to Know

Should your staff be contractors or employees?

There are many factors to assess and, as a business owner, it’s your responsibility to get it right.

So, what is the difference between a contractor and an employee?

An employee

  • works in the business and is integral to that business
  • has rights and entitlements under the Fair Work Act 2009
  • has a reasonable expectation of ongoing work, agreed hours and duties
  • is covered by the employer’s workers compensation insurance
  • is paid superannuation guarantee.

A contractor

  • is actively running and advertising their own business
  • is responsible for their own insurance, equipment, licenses and tax
  • has a high level of independence, discretion and control as to how and when the work is performed
  • is able to delegate work
  • is liable to fix mistakes at their own cost
  • may or may not be paid super depending on the nature of the work engagement.

It is the business owner’s legal responsibility to determine the nature of the work and the correct basis of engagement. We can help you get it right.

Multi Factor Test

There are many factors involved in deciding whether a worker is an employee or contractor. And the guidelines must be applied individually to each working relationship.

There is no single overriding factor, rather, the totality of the working relationship and nature of the work being done is taken into consideration.

Sole Trader as a Contractor May Not be Right

When sole traders are engaged as contractors, the business owner needs to check whether they really meet the criteria for being engaged as a contractor. Many sole traders engaged as contractors are not actively carrying on a business, and do not have the level of independence that a contractor should have. This is even if they have their own ABN. 

Sole traders are often engaged for their own services and labour. However they are not free to delegate the work to someone else and must work under the direction of the employing business. In this case, they should be engaged as an employee and not a contractor.

Factors to Consider

This is not an exhaustive list but some of the main factors to assess.

  • Is the worker engaged to achieve a specific result or are they engaged for their labour?
  • Are they able to delegate their contract to another worker within their own business?
  • How much choice do they have in where, when and how the work is performed?
  • Is the service integral to the business?
  • Do they advertise services and accept work from other businesses?
  • Who is liable to fix damages or mistakes?

Contractor or Casual Employee?

If you are not sure whether a worker is an employee or a contractor, check the ATO Employee or Contractor information first.

It’s okay to engage a worker as a contractor initially and to reassess the engagement three to six months later if the situation is unclear.

However, at that point, if the worker does not meet the contractor definition and you don’t need a permanent employee, put them on as a casual employee. This is often the best solution for both parties.  It means the employer is compliant with tax, super and employment laws. Plus the worker retains some flexibility while being paid super and having tax taken care of.

The ATO and the Fair Work Ombudsman are particularly concerned with the validity of sole traders treated as contractors. This is because they are the workers most frequently disadvantaged by being classified incorrectly as a contractor when they in fact meet the test for being an employee.

Get it Right to Avoid Penalties

A business that should have engaged a worker as an employee will be liable for back-payment of entitlements (such as leave, overtime and allowances), and superannuation.

Some situations are straightforward to work out. But many contractor or employee decisions are not so easy with so many factors to consider.

Let us help you get it right and sort out the tax and superannuation obligations for all your workers whether contractors or employees.

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