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Taking Care of Small Business: How to Take Control of Your Small Business
Von Debra Anderson
Buchaktionen
Mit Lesen beginnenLänge: 234 Seiten6 Stunden
- Herausgeber:
- BookBaby
- Freigegeben:
- Jun 24, 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780994563569
- Format:
- Buch
Beschreibung
Do you dread doing your bookkeeping? Are you missing out on tax deductions because you don’t have good systems in place? Would you like more time each month to spend with your friends and family instead of doing your accounts?
With the right business structure, solid foundations and utilising cloud accounting you can easily reclaim 10 to 20 hours of your life per month by setting up systems that do the boring, time-consuming work for you.
Taking Care of Small Business gives you simple, practical tools and advice that will make a huge difference to you, your business and your cash flow. From choosing the right business structure to setting up your accounting system, from bookkeeping through to taxation, this book covers them all.
With the right business structure, solid foundations and utilising cloud accounting you can easily reclaim 10 to 20 hours of your life per month by setting up systems that do the boring, time-consuming work for you.
Taking Care of Small Business gives you simple, practical tools and advice that will make a huge difference to you, your business and your cash flow. From choosing the right business structure to setting up your accounting system, from bookkeeping through to taxation, this book covers them all.
Informationen über das Buch
Taking Care of Small Business: How to Take Control of Your Small Business
Von Debra Anderson
Länge: 234 Seiten6 Stunden
Beschreibung
Do you dread doing your bookkeeping? Are you missing out on tax deductions because you don’t have good systems in place? Would you like more time each month to spend with your friends and family instead of doing your accounts?
With the right business structure, solid foundations and utilising cloud accounting you can easily reclaim 10 to 20 hours of your life per month by setting up systems that do the boring, time-consuming work for you.
Taking Care of Small Business gives you simple, practical tools and advice that will make a huge difference to you, your business and your cash flow. From choosing the right business structure to setting up your accounting system, from bookkeeping through to taxation, this book covers them all.
With the right business structure, solid foundations and utilising cloud accounting you can easily reclaim 10 to 20 hours of your life per month by setting up systems that do the boring, time-consuming work for you.
Taking Care of Small Business gives you simple, practical tools and advice that will make a huge difference to you, your business and your cash flow. From choosing the right business structure to setting up your accounting system, from bookkeeping through to taxation, this book covers them all.
- Herausgeber:
- BookBaby
- Freigegeben:
- Jun 24, 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780994563569
- Format:
- Buch
Über den Autor
Bezogen auf Taking Care of Small Business
Buchvorschau
Taking Care of Small Business - Debra Anderson
CEO
INTRODUCTION
A DREAM COME TRUE
Starting a business is an exciting time. There’s never-ending, ridiculously fabulous ideas, grand plans of market domination, and dreams of success and wealth. Often businesses are conceived ‘on the side’ while we are still working for someone else, which means lots of late nights and weekends as we devote hours, days, even weeks to coming up with the perfect name for our dream business, tossing around ideas, and researching our products/ services and our target market so we can start marketing and selling as soon as possible.
When we make that landmark first sale, the French Champagne that has been sitting in the cupboard just waiting for a special occasion is chilled and the cork is finally popped to celebrate this huge milestone – starting our very own business. It’s a dream come true – our very own business. No more working for someone else. No more making someone else rich with our ideas and hard work.
It’s a big thing. It’s a huge leap of faith, not just in your product or service but in yourself too. It’s not a decision that any of us make lightly. I mean, it’s huge, right? It’s life changing on so many levels – and yet so many of us just ‘wing it’. We Google how to do things, do most of it ourselves, call on friends for advice, and call in favours because we’re trying to keep our costs down until the sales start rolling in and we can afford to do it properly.
The problem is, though, that by the time the money does start flowing in we’re so busy trying to keep up with business – and getting more business – that we never go back to the beginning and get the basics right. Instead of being money poor we become time poor, so we put in halfbaked systems just to get us past today’s issues, which by default then become ‘our system’.
I think it’s fair to say most people don’t go into business because they enjoy paperwork, accounting systems or compliance, but unfortunately these are necessary evils required to ensure that market domination, infinite success and bottomless pots of money are not just achievable but sustainable. Every day I work with the most incredibly inspiring business people who have a kick-arse product or service but they’re struggling. They’re struggling because they love what they do but they don’t love the paperwork or compliance side of business. They’re struggling because they focused wholly on getting an amazing product or service out to market and ignored getting the financial side of their business in order first. They’re struggling because they’ve put their head in the sand for too long and ignored the books until they no longer even resemble the state of the business anymore. They’re struggling because they’re stressed, have no money in the bank, and this dream of owning their own business is slowly becoming a nightmare, keeping them up at night, and they don’t know where to turn for help.
This is why I wrote this book. I get it. Like you, I started my business because I love what I do. But unlike you I love paperwork and compliance, and it breaks my heart to see such wonderfully talented and passionate small business people doing the best you can (and you’re doing great work, by the way) but you’re struggling with the paperwork and the compliance is killing you. This is what keeps me up at night. Each day as I help another small business, my drive, my passion, my desire to help small businesses just increases. I have reached out to the likes of the Australian Taxation Office and MYOB to offer my day-to-day experiences with each of you to help them simplify the systems you have to deal with every single day. It’s a long, slow battle, but for those of you who know me you know I just keep pushing until eventually someone listens and things start to change. This book is the culmination of all of those efforts, but it’s also my ultimate effort to help as many small businesses as I can. This is my effort to reach out and help those of you who can’t afford to have me come into your business and give you one-on-one help and those of you who maybe don’t even realise you could be doing things better, easier and quicker.
I sincerely hope that by reading this book you will get some ideas that you can implement in your business. Please keep your mind open, and I dare you to try something new. You don’t have to change everything at once: test strategies with one client, then another client, and see what works and what doesn’t. Tweak the suggestions to see how they can work for your business.
In the wise words of Henry Ford:
‘If you always do what you’ve always done,
you’ll always get what you’ve always got.’
WHO IS THIS BOOK FOR?
If you’re about to start a new business, well done for recognising the importance of these issues early. In years to come you will be grateful you did, and you will also avoid many of the headaches small business people usually have as they start to grow because you’ll have your foundations right.
If you’ve been in business for a number of years and you are struggling with some of this stuff, please know you’re not alone, and the good news is it’s never too late to get your house in order. I promise you the information in these pages will help you do just that.
So what exactly am I going to cover in this book?
Firstly, I am going to go through getting the foundations of your business right, foundations being both your business structure and business systems, because they need to be solid in order to grow and thrive.
But I can assure you I cover a whole lot more in this book.
I also go through actually doing business: doing it better, quicker, smarter, what’s important, what’s not, and who to go to for help when you need it. I spend a lot of time going through one of the biggest pain points of all – cash flow – and give you some insight into how to understand and manage it better, as well as explaining how to have the best possible relationship with the Australian Taxation Office, because – even if you haven’t realised it yet – when you started your business you entered into a lifelong relationship with the ATO.
I show you how to work out your break-even point, and tell you what reports you should be running and when, and more importantly I explain what they mean.
Throughout the book I make no assumptions. I explain everything from what Pty means through to GST and P&L. You may have been in business for 20 years but I know that doesn’t mean you understand what everything is, so I’ll go over the basics to make sure you have a solid understanding.
If you’re new to business you may read this book from front to back, and that’s great. But for those of you already in business I expect you will go to the parts that you need help with now, and use this book as a practical reference to improve and refine how you are doing business.
So, I think that’s enough introduction. Now it’s time to get into it. Let’s go and help you to take care of your small business.
PART I
LAYING THE FOUNDATIONS
I KNOW FOR most of you just the thought of reading about business foundations is enough to make you want to vacuum the house, mow the lawn or – worse still – do the ironing. It is the least exciting part of business, but it’s also the part that can, and will, have the biggest impact on you financially. This is the part that will determine how much tax you will have to pay, not just every quarter or every year, but also if you sell your business down the track.
All too often I see businesses paying more tax than they should just because they have the wrong legal business structure, or getting a nasty surprise at BAS time because they don’t have the right system in place that helps them see and understand what is coming up. Getting these essential foundations right can save you tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars – or potentially millions of dollars – during the lifetime of your business.
So let’s get stuck into it, and remember if you need to change something in your foundations, it’s not too late – but please, please get some professional advice about your specific individual needs, as this advice is of a general nature and there may be other circumstances in your life and business that need to be taken into consideration. Do not go making changes on your own.
1
THE FOUNDATIONS
I LIKE TO use the analogy that starting a business is like building a house. When you start building a house you don’t just start laying bricks down on the bare ground because you know it wouldn’t be a matter of if the house fell over, it would be a matter of when. But let’s assume you do just start laying bricks and the house stays up, but a few years down the track you have a couple of kids and decide you want to extend the house and add another level. You’d be crazy, right? Crazy because the foundations, or lack thereof, of the house are not going to support another level. If you don’t have a solid foundation, it just isn’t going to be stable enough to support the expansion.
It is exactly the same with a business: if you don’t set it up correctly from the beginning, when it comes time to expand it will be exponentially trickier, more stressful and definitely more expensive than it would have otherwise been. And even if you have no plans for expansion, as you will see you may end up paying too much tax, struggle with cash flow, or just simply overcomplicate your life unnecessarily…and no-one needs a more complicated life.
IT’S A BIT LIKE BUILDING A HOUSE
So, let’s start by thinking about building a house. What would be your first steps when building a house?
In big-picture terms it would go something like this:
Research, viability and costing
1.I’ve got a block of land and I want to build a house on it
2.I’ll engage an architect and talk about what I have in mind: size, style, materials and so on, considering the limiting factors such as budget and block size and shape
3.The architect designs a blueprint of the house, costs it out, and we discuss and tweak as required
Preparation
1.Apply to council for approval
2.Engage a builder who prepares the site and lays the foundation
3.Put up framework and build the house to lock-up stage, using licensed electricians to do the electrical work, licensed plumbers to do the plumbing, and so on
4.Once at lock-up stage, fittings, appliances and so on are installed
The new house
1.Hand-over
2.Minor defects fixed
3.Move in
4.Landscape
5.Purchase of furniture
Down the track
1.Maintain property
2.Renovate and/or extend
When building a house, do you just wing it? Do you just Google it and do it yourself? Do you draw up the plans yourself? Do you let the architect lay the foundation? Do you decide to save a few dollars and ask your mates to come around and help put up the framework or lay bricks?
I bet you’re shaking your head, laughing and thinking, ‘No, of course not’, because you’re not a builder. And you know even if you were the world’s best handyman, if you don’t do it properly the doors might not close, the shower could leak, or – even worse – the house could fall down from suspect carpentry or burn down from dodgy electrical work. You know that if you muck it up the cost of fixing the mess you’ve made is going to far outweigh the cost of getting it done right from the beginning.
Even if you were a licensed and highly experienced builder, would you draw up the plans yourself? No, of course you wouldn’t. You’re a builder, not an architect, so you would get an architect to do it because you know that if the basics – for example, the roof line – aren’t right then the rest of the plan isn’t going to work either.
So, we agree that any reasonable person wouldn’t just ‘wing it’ when building a house – yet most reasonable and highly intelligent people just ‘wing it’ when they start a business…
NOW WHAT ABOUT STARTING A BUSINESS…
So, what are the comparable steps when you decide to start a business?
Research, viability and costing
1.I’ve got an idea for a product or service and want to start a business
2.I’ll engage an accountant and/or business advisor and talk about what I have in mind and what my wants and needs are considering factors such as budget, market, economy and business structure
3.The advisor advises about a suitable structure for the business, costs it out and we discuss and adjust if required
Preparation
1.Set up the business and obtain relevant registrations and licences, domain name, bank accounts, and so on
2.Advisor recommends and sets up an accounting system and assists with processes to support the business’s requirements and budget before marketing commences, so it’s all ready to go when needed
3.Additional systems researched and implemented, such as CRM, email and social media
4.Logo, website and business cards designed
The business
1.Advertising and marketing
2.First sale done – crack open another bottle or three of French Champagne and celebrate
Down the track
1.Tweaking of products/services and pricing according to market feedback
2.Implement additional systems, such as CRM or other processes, as the volume and complexity of the business changes and we need to manage things better
3.Day-to-day running of the business
4.Expand business – hire staff
You can see from the above the complexity involved in starting a business, the different skills and knowledge required across a wide range of areas, and the huge potential for problems if you don’t do this correctly. Think about it like this:
•If you have the incorrect business structure to begin with you could be paying more tax than you should be. And changing the structure later will be time consuming, complex and costly, as well as
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