Do You Feel Like Saying... “Help Me Run A Better Business”

Recently a business operator wrote an article in “Accountant’s Daily” that pleaded with his accountant to provide a broader range of professional services not just taxation services.

The small business person wrote “the truth is that while I’ve been patiently waiting for you to escape the compliance cubicle, I cannot hang around much longer.”

“Over the years, I’ve sat through meeting after meeting with you about my tax returns. To be honest, I do this under sufferance – tax does not light me up!”

“It is time to spell it out….Help me run a better business!”

The writer then asked his accountant to meet with him quarterly with appointments set twelve months in advance – “know that I’ll look forward to our meetings and be interested in what you have to say.”

Do you feel the same way?  Is there a range of business services that you would like to receive from your accountant that you are not receiving?

If you have not prepared a list of the services that you would like to receive I would like to make the following suggestions to you and if you agree I would suggest that you have a conversation with your accountant and agree on a range of Business Improvement Services for your accountant to provide to you.

The letter writer had identified arguably one of the most important issues – regular periodic meetings being held quarterly or monthly because this is a great way for you to discuss a range of “business matters” not just taxation issues - at least four times per annum and obviously more often if you are going to meet monthly.

If you are contemplating “scaling up your business” these meetings will be very valuable to you to assist in the planning of the “scaling up process” because as businesses “scale up” there is a requirement for more and more cash to be invested in the business to fund increasing investments in inventory, work in progress, debtors, research and development, perhaps new plant and equipment and factory alterations.

Your accountant should prepare a standard Agenda covering matters to be discussed at these meetings but obviously you can add items to the Agenda if you wish.

Accountability is very important in this meeting process and therefore Minutes of the meeting should be prepared and an Action Plan summarising work to be undertaken prior to the next meeting should be distributed to the persons who are responsible for the preparation of follow-up reports on those items.

If your  business has a number of different income producing activities it is very important that the income amounts are segregated for each separate business activity and that the direct expenditure for materials, labour, labour on costs and any direct purchases are allocated to those separate business activities, so that you can review the gross profit that has been contributed by each of those separate business activities and not have everything lumped together under one “income” item in the Profit and Loss Account.  This is appropriate treatment for income tax purposes but it does not assist you in the management of your business.

Key Performance Indicators can then be calculated for each individual business activity so that real management information is available for the entire leadership team relating to the performance of the individual business activities.

This will give you far more control over your business operations.

These meetings could consider virtually every aspect of your business that you require a financial input on including:

• Customer analysis – new customers, lost customers, average sales
• Effectiveness of communications – results of newsletters, videos, webinars, social media
• Sundry Debtors – debtors’ days outstanding, debtors’ aged analysis, problem debtors – utilisation of registrations on the Personal Property Securities Register to protect the business
• Inventory – stock turn rates on individual product lines or departments
• Team – new engagements, resignations, results of exit interviews, team training, sales income per individual team member
• Business Financing – discussions on bank support, should capital raising be considered e.g. Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising?
• Grants – what grants could the business be eligible to apply for?
• Risk Management Issues – insurance covers, Personal Property Securities Register relating to any of your assets in another business’ possession, possibility of liquidator preferential payment claims – consideration of what the effect would be on your business
• Systems Review – do you need changes to be made to any of your systems?
• “What if” questions – do you have a range of questions that probably arise on a daily basis that you would like to get a financial input on? Why not email these questions to your accountant?

Whilst not every accountant wants to broaden their experience by offering a broader range of commercial services – many do wish to provide a broader range of “value adding” services for the benefit of their clients.

We are going to discuss these questions in a special free webinar that we are presenting for the operators of small businesses and medium sized enterprises on Thursday, 5 September 2019 at 12:30pm AEST.  To register for the free webinar please click here.

If you are interested in obtaining articles relating to the types of services other than taxation that your accountant could provide, you are invited to visit our special website for small business and medium-sized enterprises – www.esssmallbusiness.com.au

Whilst on our website you are invited to review our “40% Discount Promotion” for the month of August 2019 on Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising articles and other articles to assist in running a business and you could register for a free copy of our White Paper on Crowd Sourced Funding Equity raising.

If you have any questions, please send an email to peter@essbiztools.com.au or telephone Peter on 1800 232 088.