Cashflow tip – Ways to Manage Cash Flow in small Business – Understand Cash Flow

Here are some great tips from a great resource for managing cash flow in a small business, at the Queensland Govt site at:

http://www.business.qld.gov.au/business and under the Running a Business then – Finances cash Flow

Managing Cashflow –

Cash flow is the money you have coming in from revenue and going out for expenses. If you have good cash flow management it will ensure you always have money available for paying your expenses when they are due.

Even a profitable business can fail if cash flow is not managed properly. If you don't have enough money available to pay your lenders or suppliers, banks may foreclose and suppliers could cut supplies.

There will be many areas in your business that can impact on your cash flow. It is important to understand how customer payment terms, supplier payment terms, loan payments, future spending decisions and other items can affect your cash flow.

Here are some ways to help you to manage your cash flow and understand how to use cash flow analysis to inform business decisions.

Plan and Monitor Cashflow

Planning and monitoring your cash flow is one of the most important things you can do when running your business. This should also include how you will address cash shortfalls or surpluses if they occur.

Forecast cash inflows against cash outflows

A cash flow statement will help you forecast your money coming in and going out. Forecasting your cash flow is usually done annually and broken down into monthly amounts. Always record the amount in the month it is expected to be spent or received. For example, electricity is usually paid quarterly so should be recorded in the month it is due.

You can use a cash flow template to forecast your annual cash flow. You will need to estimate and record the following amounts for each month:

• Total monthly cash inflow - includes sales, sales of assets, capital injections from borrowings or owners funds, interest revenue and any other sources;
• Total monthly cash outflow - includes items such as purchases, loan payments, supplies, telephone, electricity, wages and any other bills;
• Net cash flow - take the total outflows from the total inflows to see if there is more money in or out;
• Opening balance - record your cash available at the beginning of the month;
• Closing balance - calculate your funds available at the end of the month by adding the net cash flow to the opening balance. This will become your opening balance for the next month. Note: If your net cash flow is negative, this amount will be reduced.

Include GST when inserting amounts for some cash inflows (particularly sales) and many cash outflows (particularly purchases). Calculate the difference between total GST inflows and total GST outflows and insert this as GST payments.

Different businesses are subject to differing GST requirements, so you should seek specific advice from your tax adviser. Learn more about working with business advisers.

Monitor actual inflows against outflows

As each month passes it is important to record your actual cash flow. This can be compared against your forecast to see if you are tracking as planned. You may find you need to review and adjust your forecast as amounts change over the year. Always make sure your payments received match invoices issued, and receipts and payments match.

Invest surplus cash or arrange loans

If you forecast excess cash for some months, it can be worth putting it in short-term investments to maximise your income. If you anticipate any shortfalls in cash, you may want to plan to use this invested excess, or seek for an appropriate loan to temporarily cover your costs. Don't forget to include these extra payments or receipts in your cash flow forecast.

What are your thoughts? Call for FREE 30min advice / strategy session today! 0407 361 596 Aust

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MYOB – Tax Tables for 2019-2020 – to v19 (Classic MYOB)

The current ATO tax tables have been updated for salary or wage payments you make to employees between 1 July 2019 and 30 June 2020. 
The new Year 19-20 tax tables include considerable changes to all Student Loans. Repayments now commence at a lower annual gross and the maximum rate has increased to 10%. All other rates and thresholds remain as they were from 1 July 2018. – (see the ATO website for more details.)
Does your MYOB software have out of date tax tables, or you know you need them by experience every year.

(To find what you have, in MYOB, click Set Up then General Payroll Information. In about the middle is the table date at the start of that tax year it applies to

Tax tables become out of date nearly each year if tax rates and/or Medicare and HECS thresholds are changed by the Tax Office (ATO).

MYOB only supply new tax tables via a full software annual subscription. You can no-longer buy the latest tax tables separately as many years ago. Users must upgrade to a new version or take out Cover under their support program to receive the latest tables or ‘pay2myob.bin’ file for earlier versions (MYOB), to keep payroll compliant.

(If you want assistance to upgrade to the latest MYOB call Paul - 0407 361 596 or email us – This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. ).

The special tax file (eg ‘pay2myob.bin’) has been specially formatted so that it disallows any manual edit it. Additionally, each version is formatted specially, so you can’t use a tax file formatted for MYOB Version 19 with say Version 16. For the Mac version (AccountEdge®) the tax table file is called “MYOB Tax Tables” or in v9 to 9.6 has a “.tax” extension. Everything else though is the same and all the comments here apply equally to the Mac version, and Quickbooks.

Note third-party tax tables cannot be used in “live / cloud” MYOB 2011 onwards – you MUST have a subscription or upgrade. Contact the software supplier.

If you have older “Classic MYOB” desktop versions, there is a solution up to MYOB v19.13 and Account Edge 15.5 – Third party updated tax tables available for $86 provide a substitute, have been tested by ourselves and clients and work with many prior versions v6. They are for those who want to continue to use their current versions of MYOB® without the need to upgrade.

Note that there is nothing in your license agreement that prevents you using 3rd party tax tables.

Details about options for v19.4 and 19.5 are on the link near the top of the writing on the page the links above send you to.

Installation is simple. The tables are supplied with easy to follow video and instructions and instantly downloaded after secure credit card  payment in most instances, or will be emailed to you. You also receive a PDF copy of the applicable Aust Tax Office Weekly Tax Table for you to check the accuracy of the calculations. After-sales email support is available for any installation or setup issues you may encounter.

If you would like Account Keeping Plus to install for you, we can do by remote desktop – Teamviewer (free software). For $50+GST. Call or email for instructions.

Note - NO changes are made to the software. The only changes made are to the tax rates in your company data file that the software calls upon to calculate PAYG Withholding in a pay, when processing payroll. The changes made are not permanent and can be reversed by reloading the tax tables from your current tax table file, simply moving a file in the software folder

These third-party tables are available, which Account Keeping Plus have tested in the software and tested against the ATO tables and work perfectly for us and our clients. To get more details and purchase for your MYOB – CLICK HERE

For the latest tax tables, to download the PDF and keep a copy, or use the Tax Withheld Calculator go to  ATO Tax Tables – PDF’s

Need help? Not sure? Call for FREE 30min advice / strategy session today!

Email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or call 0407 361 596 Australia
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Business Tips – How to find your ideal client – Tips on how to define them

Like most small business owners, we offer our service or product usually for anyone and everyone, as we need to make sales and ANY sales! But as time passes the value of focusing on a niche area and an ideal client should become your strategy – why? Let me ask – is it better to be “Jack of all trades and Master of none?” – Being an expert  means becoming a specialist – only 3-4 products or services, or having staff who are  expert in 1-2 products each which allows you to widen your offer, but still maintain expertise – no-one knows it ALL!

Consider the thoughts of Sandy McDonald in How to know your ideal client. It’s so much more than demographics.

Your ideal client
Embracing the process by which you get to know your ideal client is just so much more than demographics; their age, gender and location. Yes, who are they but what do they most need, what are their problems, how would they solve them without you, how could you better solve them, how can you better serve them?

Fostering that attitude earlier would have been a great lesson for older me. Not that my business wasn’t successful, but riding on the coat tails of an era in which business owners needed my expertise more than I needed their business made the next era a difficult one to navigate…..

Up until then, I’d been asked to do work, I’d done the work and been paid. When my client’s wanted more work, they came back, I didn’t seek them out.

Now we did business in a culture where to know your client, care for and nurture them had become the very essence of a successful business.

The trouble is it’s not innate. You can say ‘know your clients’, but what does that really mean? When I talk to most business owners, they have a generic picture of their clients. They can rarely describe their perfect client. They are vague about the value that a particular client represents in their business.

Sandy goes on to give 5 steps to work toward finding your ideal client and how you would serve them. Read More.

At Entrepreneur, Stephen Sheinbaum presents an interesting approach to find your ideal client is to begin with a study of yourself –

How many times have you said, “My business could get really big if I could just find the right clients”? If you have, you’re not alone: There’s not an entrepreneur that I know who hasn’t had that thought, at least once.

The good news is that there are many ways to find the right clients. Here are five strategies that can be universally adopted to help you find them:

1.     Know who you are – a clear simple elevator pitch that invites interest;

2.     Know your competitors – sometimes you can discover a gap in the market;

3.     Do your homework – read and listen to what the industry is dealing with;

4.     Ask – survey all the time, customers, potential clients, formal surveys;

5.     Be seen – join networking events and chambers, speak when given the chance.

Read More.

At Duct Tape Marketing, John Jantsch has 5 steps for business owners who want to grow –

The 5 steps below can put you on the path to discovering your ideal target customer.

1) Start with the Smallest Market Possible – This may feel counterintuitive to many just starting a business, but you have to find a group of customers that think what you have to offer is special. When you’re just getting started you may have very little to offer and in many cases very few resources with which to make sufficient noise in a market for generic solutions….

2) Create an Initial Value Hypothesis – In the step above I mentioned the idea of finding a narrow group that finds what you have to offer special. Of course, this implies that you do indeed have something to offer that is special.

You must create a “why us” value proposition and use that as you hypothesis for why us. If this is starting to sound a little like science that’s because it is. You must always stay in test and refine mode in order to move forward….

3) Get reality in Discovery Test Sessions – Established, thriving businesses have the ability to learn a great deal every day from customer interaction. Since start-ups don’t have any customer interaction they have to create ways to test their theories initially and on the fly.

The key to both making and affirming your initial assumptions is to set-up what I call Discovery Test Sessions with prospects that might easily fit into your initial smallest market group. These are essentially staged one on one meetings….

4) Draw an Ideal Customer Sketch – Once you’ve trotted out your hypothesis and tested it with your narrow group, you’ve got to go to work on discovering and defining everything you can about your ideal target group.

that is making this easier to do than ever.

5) Add Strategy Model Components – the final step is to apply this new ideal customer approach to other elements of your strategy.

Read the full article HERE

Have you struggled with an ideal client?

I certainly have – and when calls come in I have to decide if they are core to my specialty, or do I know a trusted colleague who has the expertise they need if it is not mine.

What is YOUR experience?

Need help? Not sure? Call for FREE 30min advice / strategy session today!

Call 0407 361 596 Aust and also get FREE “Avoid these GST mistakes” – There’s 18 that the Tax Office see regularly – Get them right!\
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