Posted: 28 September 2020

JobKeeper Has Reduced - Have You Got Research & Development Activities - Do You Want To Improve Your Targeted Marketing?"

Empowering SMEs (Issue 074)

Greetings from ESS Small Business – We hope you're starting to see some light at the end of the tunnel.

Do you need an insight into research and development?

The feedback that we're receiving is that many small business and medium-sized business operators have been using the work from home restrictions during COVID-19 to commence research and development activities on better ways to undertake business activities within their businesses.

In our next COVID-19 Survival Panel webinar for SMEs on Wednesday, 30th September 2020, Peter Towers, Managing Director, ESS BIZTOOLS and ESS Small Business, will give an overview of the research and development incentives that are available from the Australian government via the Taxation Act to assist small businesses and medium-sized enterprises to undertake research and development activities.

The basic rules that apply include:

To claim the Research and Development Incentive Offset the business has to be a company.
Companies must have spent $20,000 on eligible research and development expenditure to be able to utilise Research and Development Incentives Offset.
For companies with turnovers under $20 million the Research and Development Offset is calculated at 43.5% of the eligible research and development expenditure.
If the company, with a turnover under $20 million per annum, is trading at a loss, the Australian Taxation Office will pay the Research and Development Incentive Offset calculation direct to the company within 30 days of the company’s income tax return having been lodged with the Taxation Office.

The practical effect of this is as follows: if the company has incurred $130,000 in legitimate research and development expenditure during the financial year and the company has a tax loss for the year of $160,000 the Taxation Office will pay to the company $56,550 within 30 days of the company’s tax return having been lodged ($130,000 x 43.5% = $56,550). The company’s carried forward losses will be adjusted accordingly.

In the webinar presentation Peter Towers will give an overview of the key requirements of the Research and Development Incentive Rules to assist businesses.

The other speaker in the webinar on 30th September is Trent Butler, Director, Trent Butler Consulting. Trent is a Chartered Accountant and is also an expert in the development of marketing/promotional strategies for businesses, especially professional businesses, wishing to target potential clients.

Trent will give an overview of the types of systems that need to be put in place if a business is going to maximise the opportunity of utilising social media, the business' website and CRM (Customer Relationship Management System) to adequately promote the business' activities to the targeted businesses with which you might like to deal.

Click here to register for this free webinar on Wednesday 30th September 2020 at 12-noon AEST.

In the last COVID-19 Survival Panel webinar for SMEs, presented on 16th September 2020, Matt Vitale, Joint Founder and Managing Director, Birchal (a Crowd Sourced Funding Intermediary, appointed by Australian Securities & Investments Commission) gave a very interesting overview of the emergence of Crowd Sourced Funding in Australia and a similar product referred to as Enterprise Sourced Funding (ESF) in the United Kingdom. Matt's presentation was titled “Equity Crowdfunding Getting Investment Ready".

Matt indicated that Crowd Sourced Funding was for early-stage businesses which have traditionally found that it is very difficult to raise funding in Australia.

Matt indicated that, in Australia, there are 900,000 businesses with a turnover of $200,000 – $5 million which historically have been seeking funding which has been time-consuming and expensive. The Australian government made amendments to the Corporations Act to enable Crowd Sourced Funding to be launched in Australia in 2018. There was some hesitancy at first and a change in the rules by the government, but the market has now settled down and the Crowd Sourced Funding Intermediaries have a high expectation that 2020/21 will be a record year for the raising of capital by small companies utilising Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising.

Birchal has organised 51 successful capital raisings with a total amount of $31 million having been raised. This involved over 21,000 individual investors.

The other speaker in the last webinar presentation was Andrew Geddes, Former Chair of Greencross Ltd and a very experienced Consultant and Mentor to a large number of accounting and other professional businesses in Australia over the last 30 years.

Andrew’s presentation was titled “Challenges Facing SMEs in the Post COVID-19 Environment". Andrew indicated that consumer attitudes are changing.

The government is bringing in different regulations and businesses need to be aware of these changed regulations. He indicated that businesses need to improve their operations in certain core areas if they are going to be able to survive the challenges now being presented in the marketplace.

Andrew stressed the necessity for businesses to appoint a senior leadership team and, in very small businesses, this will probably be the entire team. It’s important to allocate portfolio responsibilities to individual people to make them feel part of the business, but also to develop their skills and to free up the CEO/owner so that he/she can attend to other important activities relative to the business.

Andrew asked a series of questions and made comments:

Does your “value proposition” deliver what consumers have a heightened need for?
Do your customers know that you're still in business? He said it’s important to keep marketing and let your customers know you're here and appreciate them. Spend more than your competitors or make more “noise” online by really using social media.
Try and anticipate the next “normal” by testing different scenarios with customers and asking them what they think.
Andrew indicated that business operators need to be more flexible in your thinking. He gave the warning “don’t be a slave to traditional thinking”.

You can view the video recording from our last webinar featuring Matt Vitale and Andrew Geddes by clicking here.

If you are interested in learning more about research and development activities and how to improve your targeted marketing, please contact me for a short discussion: