This book has been on my reading list for some time and, while it isn’t a business book, there are certainly some great lessons that translate well for the business world. It’s rather timely that I finished it at the beginning of the Sydney lockdown. I think we could all do with a bit of resilience right now.

Owning a company comes with its own set of rules to get money out, once it starts making a profit. It is essential to have a plan on how to pay yourself to avoid the Problem with leaving profits in your company. Not having a plan can also lead to surprise tax bills (and not in a good way). Here are five ways to pay yourself from your company.

One of the really attractive things about companies is that profits are taxed at 26% if they meet certain conditions (if the company is trading and aggregated earnings are less than $50m per year they will qualify). It gets better still on 1 July 2021 where the rate drops to 25%. That’s a massive 22% saving in tax (and Medicare Levy) if you are in the highest marginal tax bracket. Once you earn more than $45,000 a year, where the marginal tax rate changes to 32.5%, there’s a real incentive to keep your money tucked up in your company so you don’t lose a big chunk to the taxman.

There is a degree of flexibility around how payments out of a company are made when you are the one responsible for making the decisions (ie the director). Three common forms of payments from a company are dividends, bonuses and directors’ fees. But first, what's the difference between them?

As with any industry, we get our fair share of questions. With so many other areas of business being easy to manage yourself, accounting tends to look quite daunting. Our best advice for new entrepreneurs who want to get started with a solid foundation is to work with your accountant. You don’t need to figure it out by trial and error on your own, this can lead to some expensive learning curves! Your accountant is there to work alongside you so that you understand your business’s finances and feel empowered to make the right decisions. Here are some of the most common questions we are asked.

Crawling towards the finish line at the end of 2020, I was working 4.5 days a week but mostly 4, indulging in a little self care on a Friday. The year 2020, certainly took a heavy emotional toll. Now that we are well into the start of 2021 I am finding that my energy levels are still quite low and I am finding it difficult to get back into the rhythm of actively seeking to grow my business, keeping on the bad habits of 2020. I have the words of a former business partner ringing in my ears, “businesses aren’t built nine to five Monday to Friday” and feel that I need a little push along to get my mojo back. In a lot of respects I know what I need to do, but I need to remove the block that is stopping me from doing it. It is time for me to pick up my all time favourite business book again, David Maister’s Strategy and the Fat Smoker.

We all make mistakes - the small, itty bitty ones have no real impact on our lives but other mistakes can be life changing. With many businesses still reeling from COVID, there are mistakes people made in the past 12 months that will continue to have a ripple effect long past the pandemic. If you want to avoid these mistakes and how to recognise you are making them, read on.

Xero is much more than a piece of software your bookkeeper and accountant use to magically produce financial statements, tax returns and BAS. Many business owners see this powerful software as a glorified bookkeeper. Here is a deeper look at some of the cool features in Xero that will change the way you run your business.

Leaving your job to start your own business can be scary when you no longer have the security of a regular income to support household expenses. Making sales, turning a profit and getting cash in the door fast are now your top priorities. It may come as a shock to those just starting out in business that you don’t start earning the same income from day one that you did when employed. It does take time to build a business. There’s a reason only 20% of businesses make it to 5 years – the owner doesn’t have enough cash left over for them to live off! You need to go from start-up to revved up fast, if being in business long term is your goal. I started my own business a few years ago and have learnt a few things along the way.

Adrienne owns a small architecture firm and spent the 2018-19 Christmas break reading Mike Michalowicz’s book, Profit First. She was so excited by the read and wanted to implement it in her business straight away. I was a little sceptical as being an accountant I know that being in business is about cashflow first. Curious, I decided to have a read. I wasn’t long into the book before I realised it’s about a methodology to manage cashflow. I settled in and enjoyed the read.

Being in business reveals a lot about us – all our flaws, weaknesses and strengths. Through the process of building a business, there are often many peaks and valleys that can make or break us. Sometimes, we are confronted with a decision about whether to stick at it or move on. Staying or going in business is one of the most important decisions in business you’ll ever make.

There are hundreds and thousands of apps out there that can potentially help your small business, but narrowing that down to just the essential few is really time consuming and at times confusing. We have tried to take the hard work out of the decision on which apps you need to successfully run and grow your business in our top ten app countdown.

Inspired by tidying queen, Marie Kondo, in our last blog post, we looked at the basic benefits of spring cleaning your business . Now you’ve let go of what you don’t need, and created some order around what you’re keeping, let’s go deeper into organising the business-specific categories. To recap, in her book, Kondo suggests a specific order to sorting your categories, from easy, low value items, through to rare or high value items that evoke an emotional response. Sorting your items this way makes it easier and less painful, so you’re more likely to commit to completing the task. With that in mind, I’ve devised the following order to help simplify sorting your business categories…

With spring finally here, you may be thinking of spring-cleaning your home. I certainly am – there’s something about the warmer weather that almost compels me to clean away winter’s dull energy. This got me thinking about the benefits of spring cleaning your business. And who better to draw inspiration from than the Queen of Tidying, Marie Kondo?

Have you noticed over the past few years that when you ask someone how they are, the standard response is “busy.” Busy seems to be our new normal state of being. Most people are okay with short bursts of busy, but when busy is our usual state it grinds us down to a tired, depleted state of being overwhelmed where we feel that life is running out of control.