We’ve helped many business owners around Mandurah with getting the bookwork upto date, and even helped them avoid LATE FEES issued by the ATO, so if you are late with lodging your Business Activity Statements, then what options are available to you?

We’ve listed ten options for those small business owners around Mandurah that have failed to lodge your BAS for the reporting period 1 April 2011 – 30 June 2011:

1) Take the easy option and ignore it, hoping that the problem will go away

2) Have a panic attack and wonder what to do now you’ve missed the deadline

3) Do what most people do, and just accept that you’ll have to pay a penalty for late BAS lodgement

4) Have sleepless nights wondering how to complete the BAS even though it’s going to be a late lodgement

5) Call the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) and tell them that the canary grabbed the BAS form and has shredded it to make a nest

6) Fossic through your paperwork in the glovebox of your car along with all your other unopened mail, and see if you can even find the Business Activity Statement whilst making a mental note that it should have been lodged by the end of July

7) Call your accountant and ask him / her what you should do next

8.) Do nothing, and just accept that fact that you’ll be fined for a late lodgment, and look forward to receiving fan mail from the ATO

9) Grab a cold one from the fridge, sit in your favorite chair and see what’s on the idiot box

10) Contact us (quickly) because we may be able to get an extension for you, as well as getting all your documentation sorted out to help you ensure that you’re not going to be paying ms Julia more than you need, since she’s shown us all how good she is at spending all that money

We’re a mobile book-keeping service helping small busineses around Dudley Park, Coodanup, Greenfields, Erskine, Pinjarra and Meadow Springs, Australia with their Business Activity Statements

Your MYOB Bookkeeping and BAS problems can be over with one quick phone call – just as many small business owners in and Mandurah, Dudley Park, Coodanup, Greenfields, Erskine, Pinjarra and Meadow Springs, Australia, have discovered.

If the lodgement of your Business Activity Statement BAS is becoming a pain in the Ass, then call us today

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) requires you to keep business records:

• for five years after they are prepared, obtained or the transactions completed (whichever occurs later), and
• in English, or in a form that the ATO can access and understand in order to determine your tax liability.

You should keep records for a longer period if you use information from those records in a later tax return (for example, claiming a loss carried forward from a business activity in an earlier year). The records should be kept until the end of any period of review for that later return.

Records relating to assets for capital gains tax purposes may also need to be kept for a longer period. You can issue and store records in either paper or electronic form.

There are penalties for not maintaining the required records and for not keeping them for five years. Keeping good records will help you avoid these penalties.

Keeping good Business Records Makes for Good Business
By having an organised set of records, you’ll find it so much easier to:

• complete your Business Activity Statements (BAS) and prepare your annual tax returns

• monitor the health of your business
• make sound business decisions, for example, by keeping track of debtors and creditors to ensure your cash flow is adequate
• demonstrate your financial position to banks and other lenders, and also to prospective buyers of your business, and
• make best use of your tax adviser.

Rather than paying an accountant or tax agent to sort through a shoebox of paperwork, outsource a freelance mobile bookkeeping service, or have professional bookkeepers come into your premises to generate well prepared records. That way you can present all the necessary information to your accountant or tax agent who can then advise you accordingly

As bookkeepers we continually see the importance of monitoring the progress of your business. By having good records you can quickly see where your business is improving, or what parts of your business may need some changes. Your bookkeeper is an essential part of your business, and therefore should be regarded as a necessary investment not an unnecessary expense

Identifying sources of your receipts
Most businesses have money coming in from a number of sources, and you’ll be spending money on both personal and business items. You need to identify and differentiate your business and personal expenses, so that your bookkeeping accurately reflects the costs incurred in running your business

Accurate Financial Statements
Your bookkeeper should be able to quickly prepare accurate financial statenments when called upon so to do. These may include balance sheets and income(profit and loss) statements. The P & L shows your income and expenses for a given time frame. The balance sheet shows your assets, liabilities and equities for a specific date

Legitimate Expenses
The ATO recognise that there are legitimate expenses incurred in running your business. Any claims that you make for deductions need to be substantiated. By keeping your bookwork in order, having your bookkeeper file all the relevant documentation in order will be important when the Tax office conducts an audit in your business.

Preparation of Tax Returns
Just as you need to support claims for legitimate expenses, your bookkeeper needs to record the income coming into your business. By having an efficient tax system in place, you’ll be able to track all income, expenses, and credits for your tax returns.

Keeping separate records for each business
It can be tempting to record all of your business activities in the same set of accounts. However, what happens if you decide to sell one of your businesses? How do you show which business is generating what income.

The type of business you operate affects the type of records you need to keep for ATO purposes. You should set up your books using an accounting method that clearly shows your income for your selected tax year. You may choose to use an accounting software package such as MYOB or Quickbooks. Contact our team of mobile freelance professional bookkeepers for more information.

Bookeeping is an important part of any small business

Bookeeping is an important part of any small business – whilst it is historical, in recording past transactions of money coming into and going out of your business, book-keeping can also help with managing the cash flow of your business

Whilst world leaders have a money-tree policy to create cash, the average small business owner has limited opportunities when cash flow gets very tight, as in the present economy.

Contractors in the building industry can quickly run up large accounts with builders and developers, and forget that even large companies can fall over in a recession.

On Australia’s Gold Coast a large property developer has collapsed with millions of dollars debt, and often the sole tradesman or small business owner is at the bottom of the food chain, even though they are the ones that need the cash the most, not the Banks or Finance Companies

Our bookkeeping team of mobile freelance bookkeeprs have put together ten tips to help you manage your cash flow:

1. As bookkeepers, we’re amazed by businesses that issue invoices with no specific payment date or credit terms. There’s nothing wrong in specifying the date on which you expect payment – after all, don’t the utility companies do just that on the invoices they send you?

2. Why not issue the invoice the day that you provide the goods / services, rather than waiting until the end of the week, fortnight, or month? Some business owners choose to issue their invoices monthly, knowing their creditors only issue payments monthly

3. There’s been a recent trend, again with utility companies, to offer an incentive to pay early, such as giving a discount. Notice that in reality they are adding a penalty for late payment rather than a discount

4. Ask your customer for a deposit in advance, particularly if they are requesting a high ticket item that you have to purchase from your supplier before receiving payment from your customer

5. If you find that you have customers that are regularly late in payment, offer them a discount if they pay by credit card

6. Control the stock in hand. We’ve all seen carpet retailers making outrageous claims that they’ve ordered too much stock and just HAVE to sell it quickly this week at ridiculously marked down prices. It may be an effective marketing ploy for them, but if they really ran their business by constantly over-stocking, how long would they really survive?

7. Small business owners can find it beneficial to make part payments regularly on larger invoices, rather than waiting to pay a huge account in one large lump sum. By managing your invoices can you keep a tighter control on your cash flow

8. Ensure that you bank your cheques/ cash regularly rather than doing the banking once a fortnight/monthly – By ensuring you have regularly payments coming in to your business, you’ll be better able to pay bills as they come in

9. When cash flow gets tight in the business, have a look at how much money you really need to be drawing out as wages for yourself

10. Have a review of your expenses in running your business and see where you can make savings straight away. We’re seeing this with department stores that have seen in a drop in sales, yet they’ve managed to maintain their profits. How are they doing that? Cutting staff levels and making the remaining staff work more efficiently

Larger companies paying experts huge consultancy fees to examine ways to reduce overheads and increase profits are using many of these tips. You can follow what they are doing and implement many of those practices in your own business.

When you see a change in behaviour and/ or management of the departments stores and utility companies, just pause to think for a moment how you apply those same changes in the operation of your business

If you have no cash-flow strategy in place, then contact us now, so we can get together and help you