Are you Aware of the PPSR?
Issue 0051
As a small business operator, are you aware of the Personal Property Securities Register (PPSR)? Has your accountant/advisor talked to you on how you can minimise the risks under this register? Do you know that, in Australia, over $120M has been lost by small and large businesses in court cases involving the Personal Property Securities Act (PPSA)? Virtually in every one of those cases, the company or business had not registered on the PPSR. It’s rumoured that over $200M in addition has been lost by other businesses who haven’t registered on the PPSR, sought some legal advice and found that they had no case to be able to present. Therefore, they lost that money.
You could insure on the PPSR for under $5 for a 7-year period per transaction. Undoubtedly, this is the cheapest insurance in Australia.
ESS Small Business provides material to accountants and small/medium enterprises to help you review your business operations, to determine your risk areas. The risk areas cover virtually every asset in your business, except land and attachments to land.
The legislation applies to:
- debtors
- stock
- stock on consignment
- vehicles
- plant and equipment
- builder’s plant and equipment
- tradesmen’s plant and equipment
- Intellectual Property
- cattle
- horses
- thoroughbred horses (has been an infamous case in New Zealand with over $2M lost by the legitimate owners to a liquidator acting on behalf of a secured creditor)
- aeroplanes
- boats
- cars
Everything, except land and attachments to land, is caught up under this legislation.
The ESS Small Business and ESS BIZTOOLS’ system, produced to assist accountants/advisors and small/medium enterprises is the only one of its kind in Australia, to specifically assist businesses to alert on the areas where you’re subject to problems under this legislation.
For example, where did you store your stock last night? If you had stock stored in someone else’s premises and, in an unfortunate circumstance that a liquidator was appointed to that business, you will probably lose it.
The other big risk that businesses are running relates to preferential payment claims being received from liquidators. Have you already received one of those? I can assure you that thousands of businesses have. The vast majority of those businesses could’ve avoided all of the stress, the worry and the costs of the preferential payment claim if they had registered that particular debtor on the PPSR.
Do something about it. In the first instance, we invite you to visit www.esssmallbusiness.com.au and obtain the articles we’ve developed on the PPSR.
