Posted: 17 July 2020

Management Accounting And Government Grants Can Contribute To Business Success!

Empowering SMEs (Issue 067)

Greetings from ESS Small Business – the challenges for business operators continues with the ever changing circumstances of COVID-19 coronavirus.

The ever changing situation in Victoria and now New South Wales with Queensland imposing selective border restrictions targeting Victorians and Metropolitan Sydney is all highlighting a significant degree of nervousness for the business community.

The next week will be a big week for Federal government announcements culminating in the Economic Statement to be released by the Federal Treasurer, Josh Frydenberg on Thursday 23rd July.

The government has started this process with an announcement on 16th July that the government will pledge $1.5 billion to subsidise the jobs of an extra 100,000 apprentices and under a deal with the States to reform the vocational education sector with $500 million to train or reskill 340,000 school leavers and unemployed persons.

The States and Territories will contribute $500 million more to that vocational education initiative taking the total new commitment towards jobs to $2.5 billion.

The Apprenticeship Package Scheme, that commenced with the first COVID-19 Stimulus Package and was due to expire in September, will now run until March 2021 and will be expanded to include medium-sized businesses which have been defined as having fewer than 200 employees. The current system pays 50% of the apprentices' wages up to a cap of $7,000 per quarter, calculated over a nine-month period, making the total payment available per apprentice as being $21,000.

In next COVID-19 Survival Panel webinar for SMEs to be presented on Wednesday 22nd July 2020 will feature Renee Chilton, Acting Regional Manager, AusIndustry, North Queensland, who will present an overview of “Federal Government Grants for SMEs". This is your opportunity to gain an update on the current range of grants that are available from the Federal government for SMEs.

The other presenter in this webinar will be Kevin Thiele, Working Better, who will present “What Can Management Accounting Do For Your Business”? The key items to be covered by Kevin will include:

Difference of focus between financial accounting and management accounting.
Measuring performance.
How to cost a product or service.
Which products are profitable, which aren’t?
Relationship between inventory, purchasing practices and cashflow.
Budgeting and forecasting.

In the last webinar presentation on 15th July 2020, Trent Butler, Trent Butler Consulting Pty Ltd gave a very interesting overview on the uses of social media with a business’ website to be able to promote messages to potential customers. When you consider the current problems that most businesses are encountering, this is a very important video for business operators to be viewing.

Arthur Acker, Operations Manager, Equitise (a Crowd Sourced Funding Intermediary) summarised the performance of the Australian Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising Industry and indicated that, because of the current economic problems that have been caused by COVID-19 coronavirus and the expectation that banks will not see SME loans is a high priority from October onwards, there is an expectation that there will be significant interest from small businesses and medium-sized enterprises in raising capital via Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising during 2020/21. Arthur indicated that businesses interested in this method of fund raising for their business activities should start their preparations now. To view the PowerPoint slides used by Arthur in his presentation please click here.

You can view the recording of our most recent webinar, targeted at small businesses and medium-sized enterprises by clicking here.

We would like to invite you to visit the ESS Small Business website -> Survival in Difficult Times -> Learn More where you will find details of the products ESS Small Business has developed to assist small businesses and medium-sized enterprises to gain a better understanding of strategies which will assist you to survive in your business during 2020/21.

If you would like to have a discussion with us relative to the implementation of strategic planning strategies for your business and possibly getting investment ready to be able to raise capital, why not contact us and we can arrange for a free Zoom webinar presentation to be made to you to give you a better understanding of how this process works. If you are interested in accepting our invitation or wish to obtain any further information about the services that ESS Small Business or our affiliated accountants offer, please send an email to: