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The Importance of Online Security

For some years now we have been told repeatedly that we must get online for just about everything, whether for software, apps, shopping, communication, data storage – you name it – we must do it online! It’s worrying then when there are regular headlines about the latest hack into someone’s data or whether someone has seen someone else’s data online accidentally. I’m still getting emails from scammers using clients’ Yahoo email addresses and emails even from someone using my email ...

What’s Good (and Bad) about Cloud Accounting

Fashion and clever advertising has a huge influence on our lives, especially where technology is involved. Sometimes this can be positive but often it’s bad for us e.g. you see folks out and about who don’t look like they have two pennies to rub together with the latest expensive smartphones or 60” surround-sound TV’s in houses that are unbelievably tatty. So is cloud accounting a fashion or is it here to stay?There’s no denying there’s loads of good stuff about cloud accounting:Back...

How to win with GST in New Zealand

Like all taxes, GST can be complicated, but for most business owners it can be pretty straightforward once you get to grips with the basics. To do so, it’s necessary to understand how GST works.Many business owners think GST costs them money, but in fact, as a GST registered entity, the typical business owner is merely acting as a paid (yes, paid!) tax collector of behalf of the IRD. This is because GST is only a cost to the final consumer, not to the GST registered business owner who can recl...

10 ways your accountant can help you increase your profit

If your business is not generating the amount of profit that you would like and deserve, then the first person you need to contact is your accountant.Let’s face it, accountants are the ultimate trusted advisor and the cornerstone of the financial world. Your accountant should be the first person you call to help you grow all aspects of your business, especially your profit.Often your accountant can see ways to improve your bottom line that you might miss because you are in the trenches ev...

Understanding ACC

Dealing with the Accident Compensation Corporation (ACC) is a major business cost, especially for those in trades or lines of business where accident rates are high, yet many business owners just pay ACC bills willy-nilly without checking their correctness or looking for the many ways to reduce ACC.Here are some pointers to get you thinking:Even the new simplified ACC bills are difficult to understand so get your accountant to check the bills before you pay them. Many ACC bills contain...

How to succeed with pricing

Getting your pricing right in business can be tricky, and it’s all too easy to get it wrong. More often than not, business owners under price and leave money on the table. This is because business owners typically worry more about prices than the customer does. The customer is normally more concerned about other factors like reliability, honesty, getting the job done right first time, punctuality, speed of service or response, and willingness to put things right if they go wrong. How do y...

How to become a millionaire retiree

How would you like to have a $1m nest-egg on retirement?  Think it’s not possible?  Well you can, and you can still spend 80% of your income!Assuming you're 37, can get interest of 5% per year and can save money, take a look at the table below....

How to learn more about your competitors

There are many reasons why you need to learn more about your competitors but my three favourites are:  To avoid their mistakes. Copy and build upon what they do right. Know their weak points when quoting against or taking their customers off them. Generally, benchmarking can be useful to find out about your competitors. Of course, benchmarking data does have its shortcomings. For example: it might be difficult to determine ideal sample sizes or find an exact business match, s...

5 benefits of cloud accounting

Cloud accounting has been around for quite a while now, but even still, the idea of taking our data to the cloud can be a little confronting for some. With these technological enhancements, there’s never been a better time to understand the opportunities to optimise and grow your business. If you’ve been meaning to brush up on the great benefits, this one’s for you.Read more about the benefits of cloud accounting here....

Income Tax - Lessening the Pain!

‘‘There are only two certainties in life – death and taxes!’       Although it is difficult to tamper with the sand flowing though the hour-glass of life, good habits can slow its pace.  Good taxation planning can ensure that taxes can be managed so there are no nasty surprises resulting in urgent phone calls to the bank manager a few days before due date or suffering unpleasant IRD penalties. What processes should business owners adopt to plan their regular inco...

How to avoid an IRD audit

Whilst statistically speaking the chances of being selected for an audit are slim, it nevertheless features  way up the rankings as being one of life’s most stressful and unpleasant experiences, and as such, like all nasty things in life, best avoided at all costs!These are the most common ways you can be selected for an audit and what you can do about it (or not as the case may be!):Using a dodgy accountant Use an honest accountant, one who will help you save tax but not tell you what y...

How to succeed with cash flow forecasts

Preparing an annual cash flow forecast can tell you a lot about your business. It can warn you with plenty of time to spare that you’re not going to have enough cash to survive the next year without getting additional working capital — which is vitally important to know. Or it could be the wake-up call you need to make some changes in your business. You might need to make a tweak or two, like increasing prices or shedding ineffective staff, or you could discover something more serio...

Protecting your business name

If, like many business owners, you’ve put a lot of thought and effort into your business name it makes sense to try and protect it from being copied, whether inadvertently (by someone who had never heard of you) or deliberately, by another, especially if you’ve linked this to a great domain name.Unfortunately, it’s not easy to protect your business name in New Zealand as unlike elsewhere in the world, there is no register of Business Names. Yes they have introduced Business Numbers in New ...

Can’t pay your tax?

Business owners not being able to pay their tax is an all too often occurrence, but hey, it may not be as disastrous as you think. The worst thing you can do in these circumstances is to do nothing.  Yes, I know that getting credit from the IRD is all too easy, but it will cost you plenty because not only will the IRD charge you interest and hefty penalties as well that keep on coming like a steam train.  Over a longer period the addition of penalties and interest can ne...

Interim accounts: a vital business tool

Your annual financial statements have their uses, but by their very nature, they are far too historical to be of any use in managing or improving your business.The most valuable financial accounts you can get your hands on are interim accounts prepared periodically — monthly for larger businesses or quarterly or bi-monthly for smaller businesses in line with your GST return periods. There is a strong correlation between the availability of interim accounts and business survi...

7 ways you can use your annual financials to improve your business

The availability of your annual financials is a wonderful opportunity to review your business performance. You can discover how to improve your business as well as refresh your enthusiasm and drive in the business. Here are seven ways you can use your annual financials to improve your business.1. Sales Your sales figure is a veritable goldmine of information about your business. The increase or decrease over the previous year doesn’t tell you much, so drill down further and work out the reason...

Trade, Services & Professionals - Setting your Charge Out Rates

High, low or somewhere in the middle?  Where to pitch realistic charge-out rates is a common question facing trades, service and professional businesses. In fact it’s probably one of the most difficult areas of business. You have to be careful not to underprice as this will reduce profits, but at the same time, overpricing could turn customers away. Setting charge out rates is just as important as marketing and delivering a fantastic service.   You can do these two things excellently...

Cut Those Costs & Reduce Your Outgoings

Trying to reduce your outgoings can be a daunting prospect when you’re stressed by falling turnover and running out of cash. Hindsight being such a wonderful thing, you probably realise by now that you should have put the equivalent of three months overheads aside for that rainy day, arranged for the preparation of monthly financials and prepared a budget and cash flow forecast to predict your current predicament but what can you do now to alleviate the pressure? Follow these tips to alleviate...

7 Reasons to Trade as a Limited Company

It costs a few hundred dollars to form a limited company but despite that, many thousands of Kiwi’s continue to start businesses as sole traders or even worse, partnerships. In more than 30 years of looking after small businesses I’ve seen so many unfortunate and unnecessary situations and countless examples continue to crop up, so here are a few I’ve seen in the last year or so. Outstanding GSTIt’s a fact that the IRD in NZ are rubbish at collecting tax, so much so that many business ow...

6 Marketing Myths that can Derail your Business

Marketing is a vital business activity yet generally misunderstood by many business owners. You may be fantastic at what you do but unless you can market yourself or your business you’re unlikely to succeed as a business owner. Marketing is the same as advertisingFar from it – advertising is just one type of marketing, whereas marketing is the process by which companies create customer interest in products or services. Marketing generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, busines...

Keeping Your Sales Funnel Topped-Up

Whilst many businesses enjoy regular recurring income, many need to be proactively seeking new orders and new customers at all times. In good times you can just sit back and wait for the business to flood in, but not when economic conditions are difficult.Unfortunately, many business owners had gotten used to the good times and forgotten how to proactively drum up more sales. This year, more and more business owners seem to be acting sooner to ensure the funnel which is their sales pipeline is k...

Getting to Grips with Marketing

Other than mastering the complexities and tricks of the trade of your own trade or profession, there are really only two key business skills you need to master to get on in business, one being an understanding of finance/financial systems and the other, getting to grips with marketing. Marketing is certainly not advertising, as many business owners think, and it goes way beyond the dictionary definition. In a way everything you do in your business (assuming that you do it right) is a contributio...

Saving Money with Vehicle Financing

It’s tempting to put off replacing your work vehicle but there comes a point when reliability and maintenance become a nuisance and expensive which means the depreciation suffered on a newer model look more palatable. I don’t know about you but I think depreciation is downright nasty and more often than not, the most overlooked motoring cost. I recently met a Holden V8 owner who had paid $65K not quite 4 years ago who was complaining that his car was now worth under $20K – the deprecation ...

Take Control of your Finances Now

Unusually I was channel-surfing the other night and came across a repeat of that show where they try and sort out people who are still spending money like it’s going out of fashion despite already being deeply in debt. Fascinating in a terrifying sort of way, it should probably be compulsory viewing as a warning to the rest of us as to how finances can get horribly out of control. Running your finances wisely is vitally important whether you’re in business or not. Good Debt/Bad DebtWhilst th...

Simple Business Systems

I’ve said this before (and no doubt I’ll say it again) but I’m always surprised at the lack of simple systems utilised in owner-managed businesses. Using the word “systems” can be off-putting because people immediately think it’s going to be too complex, too costly or too time consuming but a system can be very, very simple. For example, it could be a referral system whereby: A new customer or client is always asked where they heard about the business and recorded on a register of re...