• Recovering from a natural disaster: what you need to know about tax – As Australia experiences another summer of unpredictable weather patterns, it’s essential to be prepared for the unexpected.
• Changes coming for buy now pay later services – If you’re one of the millions of Australians who use BNPL services, important changes are coming that will give you stronger consumer protections from 10 June 2025.
• ATO launches its small business focus areas for 2025 – The ATO has outlined specific areas of concern to help you avoid common pitfalls and manage your tax obligations effectively.
• ATO warns about GST refund fraud: check your arrangements – The ATO-led Serious Financial Crime Taskforce has issued a warning to businesses against trying to cheat the tax and super system by committing GST fraud.
• How tax works in Australia’s superannuation system – Australia’s super system plays a vital role in ensuring financial security for individuals in retirement.
• Super legacy pensions: regulations offer window to exit – Regulations that came into effect in December 2024 allow thousands of SMSF members to exit legacy income streams at any stage until 7 December 2029.

You can read the full Client Alert here 

The post Client Alert February appeared first on DFK Gray Perry Adelaide.

The next edition will be published in February 2025. We wish you all the best for the festive season and new year.

• Understanding the Australian Government’s plan for cash and cheques – As digital payments become increasingly prevalent, the government has announced it’s taking significant steps to modernise the nation’s payment system.
• Proposed changes to HELP loans could mean lower repayments in 2025 – If you’re one of the millions of Australians with a HELP debt, you might be wondering how the government’s proposed changes loans could affect you.
• Understanding the Medicare levy and Medicare levy surcharge – Navigating the Australian tax system can be challenging, especially when it comes to understanding the Medicare levy and the Medicare levy surcharge.
• FBT and tax considerations for end-of-year parties and gifts – As the end-of-year season approaches, it’s a great time to celebrate with your employees and show appreciation for their hard work throughout the year; however, it’s essential to understand the potential tax implications.
• Managing your business’s tax debts – Facing a tax bill is a common challenge for many Australian businesses, and the ATO has recently shifted to a more active approach to debt recovery.
• Spouse contribution splitting: a strategic approach to retirement planning – As retirement approaches, couples often discover a significant imbalance in their superannuation accounts. Addressing it proactively can be beneficial for various retirement strategies.
• Super, KiwiSaver and the Trans-Tasman Retirement Savings Portability Scheme – If you’re thinking of making a permanent move between New Zealand and Australia, what do you do about your superannuation fund or KiwiSaver scheme?

You can read the full Client Alert Here.

The post Client Alert – December appeared first on DFK Gray Perry Adelaide.

• Do you rent out your holiday home? – If your holiday home is rented out, the rental income you receive is taxable, and you can claim expenses for the property to the extent they’re incurred in earning that rental income.
• Is your business BAS-ready? – Now is a great time to make sure your business is ready to meet upcoming business activity statement due dates.
• ATO data-matching: “lifestyle” assets and your business – The ATO has announced or extended a number of data-matching programs recently, including the lifestyle asset data-matching program.
• Superannuation on paid parental leave from 1 July 2025 – Super payment on paid parental leave aims to reduce the impact that career breaks to care for young children have on super balances, and to improve equity in the super system. The relevant legislation has now been passed.
• Salary sacrifice and your super – Salary sacrificing to make additional contributions to your super fund can help grow your super balance for a better financial position at retirement.
• Exploring compassionate early release of super – Superannuation is designed to provide for your retirement, but there are limited circumstances where you can access your super early on compassionate grounds.

You can read the full Client Alert November 2024 here

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When you look at the wider marketplace, you’ll see that there are businesses out there that may well compliment your offering. And by working together (rather than against each other) it’s possible to become valued strategic partners, collaborating to serve your joint customers, improve brand awareness and, ultimately, expand your target market.

If this sounds like a positive strategy, now’s the time to do your homework and start hunting down the best strategic partners for your business.

Working to serve a shared customer base

Strategic partnerships are all about finding the common ground between you and your intended partner – and this means finding the best ways to combine your efforts. If you can share the same customer audience, and create a complimentary way of meeting their needs, that creates a broader, more connected way of growing both companies.

Finding a company that’s interested in forming a strategic alliance

Find partners in complementary sectors – if you’re an accounting firm, like us, it makes sense to partner with solicitors, lawyers and other professional services providers who can help your clients. If you’re a maker of shoes it makes sense to partner with a clothing manufacturer that shares your same sense of style and purpose. The key here is to find a shared audience or customer need, and to create some real synergy between your two businesses.

Take part in business networking and events – to get a wider understanding of your local, or industry specific, business network, it’s worth taking part in plenty of online and offline business events. You’ll meet new people, hear about new brands and will find it easier to find your ideal strategic partner. The wider your business network, the more choices you have for an alliance.

Look at crossover between your target audiences – once you’ve found a potential strategic partner, it’s important to take a detailed look at the crossover between your partner’s audience and your audience. Do they shop through the same channels? Do they fit a certain age group or social demographic? Are these customers local, or are they part of a national or global online customer base? How large is their database?

Cross-reference your customer databases – by sharing and comparing your client relationship management (CRM) data, you can cross-reference both sets of customer data and see where there’s overlap, or where you may already share some of the same customers. The better you understand each other’s customers, the more likely it is that you’ll find some common ground for shared marketing and promotion.

Run joint events and promotions – presenting joint webinars with your strategic partner, or running joint promotions. By finding a common theme, you bring both audiences together and reinforce the alliance between your two brands. You also reduce the expenditure by sharing the costs and reach a wider audience.

Combine your R&D efforts – to move your alliance forward, you can also try combining your research and development (R&D) activity, to find new products, new services and new ways of keeping your joint customers happy. By sharing the time, costs and effort of developing new offerings, both companies will benefit – and you keep your businesses at the cutting edge of their respective sectors or specialisms.

The post Strategic business partnerships: the benefits of working together appeared first on DFK Gray Perry Adelaide.

• Tax consequences of sharing your home – Rental and some sharing situations will affect your assessable income and what expenses you can claim at tax time.
• Unlocking value: subdividing your family home’s land – For retirees living on larger properties, subdividing and selling unused land can be a potential retirement funding strategy.
• Employee overpayments: what to do – Unintended overpayments to employees sometimes come to light. If this happens for your business, it’s important to consider all parties’ rights and obligations when deciding what to do next.
• Payday super: policy design released – A newly released fact sheet sets out some key elements of the government’s “payday super” policy.
• “Super saver” scheme now more flexible for first home buyers – Changes taking effect from 15 September 2024 will improve the process of accessing certain voluntary super contributions to assist with purchasing or constructing a first home.
• Accessing super from age 60 to 65 – From 1 July 2024, the rules for accessing superannuation became somewhat simplified: the preservation age to begin accessing benefits is now effectively 60 years.

To read the full article, please visit here.

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Productivity is a term associated with strong economies, robust businesses and the efficiency gains of clever staff. If only businesses were efficient, then we would have fewer of them failing, more employment and better incomes for owners and workers alike.

In Australia, according to the Xero Small Business Insights special report, Small business productivity: Industry and Regional Trends 2023, the most productive Australian industry in 2023 was wholesale trade ($214.20/hour), while hospitality lagged at $40.20/hour.While a decline in productivity was experienced across all industries, 10 sectors, including manufacturing, agriculture and construction, surpassed the national productivity average ($100.30).Western Australia emerged as the most productive state ($102.50/hour), with average productivity 15% higher than Tasmania ($89.00/hour), the least productive state.

Unfortunately, not all businesses get to the heady heights of maximum productivity. Not for lack of will, it’s hard to take a step back from the day to day pressures of running a business to look objectively at what can be done better. Or as the common saying says …”When you are up to your ass in alligators it’s difficult to remember that your initial objective was to drain the swamp”.

So, what actually is productivity?

Productivity measures how efficiently a business turns inputs into outputs. The more productive you are, the better you are at turning resources like labour, capital or materials into products (or services) you can sell.

Three general areas of productivity:

People productivity: How much work it takes to deliver products or services to customers. It’s commonly expressed as hours worked/dollars earned.

Financial productivity: How good a business is at monetising its investments in assets such as machinery. It will often be measured as the return on capital invested.

Materials productivity: How much a business spends on materials in order to generate sales. Materials can include things like inventory or energy.

Why productivity matters

Businesses with increased productivity get more from less. As a result, they have more potential to turn a profit, deal with inflation or slowdowns, and absorb price competition. After decades of continuous improvements, productivity gains are getting harder to come by. Small businesses have typically been thought to lag behind big businesses in productivity, but with the advent of many digital tools – access to productivity insights, tools and processes are now also available to smaller businesses.

How to increase productivity.

There are four commonly accepted ways to become more productive:

1. Better tools
2. Smarter methods
3. Skilled workers
4. Entrepreneurship mindset

1. Better work tools (capital)

Tools are made specifically to amplify the efforts of their users. So find the tools that’ll amplify your work.

Sometimes it might be as simple as a piece of software that cuts down the double-handling of information, like a booking system that schedules a job straight into your calendar or software that integrates with payment systems or point of sale.

Why you haven’t got better work tools yet.Of course it costs money to upgrade work tools. Professor Marc Cowling of Oxford Brookes University has investigated why small business owners don’t (or can’t) make that investment. Here are his top five reasons:

Businesses aren’t sure how to prioritise: Small businesses have about six capital investment opportunities in mind at any one time, but they can’t back them all and don’t know how to choose.

It’s hard for them to see the value: Relatively few small businesses run a financial analysis to estimate the return on investment, so they struggle to justify making moves.

They’re risk averse: Most small businesses will only consider a capital investment if they guesstimate it’ll pay for itself within a couple of years. As a result, they tend to shy away from bigger projects that might have bigger impacts.

They can’t get loans: Cowling found that roughly a quarter of businesses have been denied a loan application. After receiving a knockback, it takes them up to four years to bother applying again. They need help building confident financial cases for investments.

Technology feels hard: Many business owners assume new equipment will be hard to learn, will chew up training budgets, and will clash with existing systems. They don’t have a solid ROI number in their head to counter these perceived hurdles.

2. Smarter methods (innovation)__

Lots of businesses develop a certain way of doing things then never really think about it again. In the meantime, plenty of other things change and the original processes and procedures become less and less effective (if they were effective in the first place). It’s a good idea to review and revamp the way you work.

Here’s how:

Check your work actually matters

Check you’re focusing effort on things that customers actually care about. You don’t want to invest time and energy into things that simply don’t move the dial for your business. Try out some surveys or even just some good old fashioned conversations with your customers. If aspects of your offerings aren’t resonating, consider investing less into them.

Write down your processes

Record the steps you follow to complete jobs. Put a little time aside each week and get staff to help as their perspective will be hugely valuable.Use templated documents to ensure you’re capturing the same information for all the jobs. This will help everyone understand what to do, when to do it, and how. Plus the simple act of writing it down will begin to highlight inefficiencies and missing information.

Look for blockers

Run through your freshly documented process looking for bottlenecks and roadblocks. Again, your employees will have great insights on this so empower them to be honest with you. It may help to map your workflows visually as that can be a more intuitive way to see it.You might find a few of these common things in your audit:

• Double handling: jobs being handed back and forth a lot, or repeated.
• Momentum loss: jobs getting parked at a certain point every time.
• Sequence: things getting done in a weird order.
• Quality control: the same mistakes or customer complaints keep happening.
• Distraction: skilled workers are being distracted by low-value tasks.

Redesign your workflow:

Step through your list of inefficiencies and work out the kinks. You can often make big steps simply by clearing up roles and responsibilities, resequencing jobs, and improving communication between certain functions. Make sure people know where to find the information they need to perform tasks or deal with customers.

Look for opportunities to outsource jobs that you’re just not very good at, or excited by. An external resource will charge fees, of course, but it may be money well spent if it makes your business more focused, efficient, and happy.

Consider digital adoption

Software can be a massive boost to business efficiency. It can be used to request and track jobs, centralise information, speed up communication, and automate unloved tasks. Yes, you have to go through a learning curve but on the other side of it you’re free to focus on the things you do best. There’s software for all sorts of things from invoicing to paying bills, managing inventory to managing staff, and bookkeeping to reporting.

Asana: For tracking tasks and projects.Zapier: Automates repetitive tasks.

3. Skilled workers (capabilities)

Big business can afford to hire specialists who are super-efficient at specific jobs.Small businesses tend to hire generalists and give them multiple hats to wear. But you can still set them up to succeed.

Onboarding and training.Properly training and resourcing your people is a critical step to increasing productivity. Make sure each employee has a job description with clear roles and responsibilities. Explain how the job should be done and provide supporting documents that reinforce the in-person instruction.Give your employees careful training so they know how to use all the tools (including software) they need to. If they can’t use those tools, then the capital investment is wasted. And regularly share the values and priorities of the business. When people understand the big picture, they’re better equipped to make the right decisions for the business.

Giving and receiving feedback.Feedback is vitally important to productivity, and it’s a two-way street. When something’s not done quite right, take the time to explain the problem and the solution. Otherwise you’ll get stuck in a habit of redoing work and you don’t want that. You want to delegate with confidence. Similarly, listen to what your employees say. They’ll have a different perspective and expertise that can really help you optimise the way work gets done.

Use these steps for getting and giving feedback:Ask employees what they did well, how, and why. Add to the positives by telling them what went well, with examples. Ask for their ideas on how to speed up or refine the work.Workshop those ideas with them and, if appropriate, set new goals.

4. Entrepreneurship mindset (optimisation)

Entrepreneurship is not just the act of launching a successful business, it’s the process of optimising it. Entrepreneurs unlock productivity by better combining the resources at hand. It generally involves a bit of risk-taking but the rewards can be great.

Harness your inner entrepreneur to boost productivity. Scale up: Increasing output often lowers the marginal cost of each product or service you produce.

Acquire another business: Buying or merging with another business can deliver scale or efficiencies, such as complementary workflows, consolidated operations, or logistics.

Specialisation: Doubling down on a narrower niche can drive speed, expertise and quality to improve productivity. So think about cutting out services that don’t earn much money.

Rethink supply chains: You could increase productivity by switching to suppliers that supply superior goods, or provide complementary services.Hire and empower entrepreneurial people: Foster a culture of innovation in your business.

Increase productivity checklist

To recap, here are some productivity-boosting steps to take in your business:

Better tools.

List investments that would improve productivity. Price each solution. Calculate the expected return on each investment. Make the move that offers the best mix of affordability and impact (consult with your accountant or bookkeeper for greater certainty).

Smarter methods

Write down (and map out) your work processes. Circle all the friction points (eg, double handling, do-overs).Brainstorm solutions and focus on clarifying roles and responsibilities, resequencing workflow, fixing communication breakdowns.Consider software for repetitive admin tasks that distract you and your people from high-value work (consider outsourcing, too).Audit your process against customer preferences to ensure you’re investing time and effort wisely.

Here are some apps that can help you and your team work smarter:

Trello: Great for project management and keeping your team on track.

Slack: Enhances communication within your team.

Skilled workers.

Ensure there’s an accurate job description for each role. Explain how each part of the job gets done (in person and writing).Provide comprehensive training on the tools. Give them the big vision of what the business stands for. Meet regularly to give and receive feedback.

Entrepreneurship mindset.

Look for opportunities to scale up aspects of your work. Stay alert to acquisition opportunities. Consider going harder on a niche opportunity. Keep interrogating your supply chain. Surround yourself with entrepreneurial people.

Boosting productivity is an attitude__

Small businesses have huge potential to improve productivity. Make it part of your mindset by continually examining and refining your processes, improving your work tools, and watching for inefficiencies that creep in. You’ll need to invest in your team and technologies but when done smartly, the benefits add up.As a bonus, efficient businesses are less likely to suffer delays, confusion, breakdowns in communication, distractions and waste. And that means there’s a good chance increased productivity will go hand in hand with increased satisfaction and profit.

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• Claiming the tax-free threshold: getting it right – If you’re an Australian resident for tax purposes, you don’t have to pay income tax on the first $18,200 you earn each year.
• Withholding for foreign residents: an ATO focus area – Does your business make payments of interest, dividends or royalties to any foreign residents? You may be required to withhold tax.
• Small business restructure roll-over: tax relief for genuine business restructures – A structured path is available for businesses to reorganise operations, allowing them to better meet financial challenges without prejudicing creditors or engaging in unethical practices.
• Super guarantee a focus area for ATO business debt collection – The ATO offers a timely reminder for businesses to ensure they’re meeting their SG obligations.
• New “bring-forward” contribution thresholds for 2024–2025 – The increased annual cap on non-concessional super contributions is great news for those who want to maximise their retirement savings.

You can read the full client alert here.

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The Right to Disconnect legislation grants employees the right to ignore unreasonable contact outside of work hours. Importantly, the legislation does not prohibit all after-hours communication but rather sets a framework for what constitutes unreasonable contact. This framework emphasises reasonableness, which is not explicitly defined but is guided by general principles.

Defining Reasonableness

The term “reasonableness” lacks a precise definition and can vary depending on several factors, including:

• Reason for contact
• Employee Compensation: is the employee on call/being paid overtime or does their contract have a provision for reasonable overtime?
• Role and Responsibility: The expectations for an IT Manager facing a security breach will differ from those for a receptionist.
• Industry Norms: What is deemed reasonable in an accounting firm may differ from a construction site or retail store.
• Personal Circumstances: Employees’ family and caring responsibilities must be considered.

Definitions and considerations are being added to Awards to provide industry-specific guidance. As issues arise and case law evolves, these definitions may be updated.

Implementing Workplace Policies

It is essential to have a clear policy on after-hours contact. Some considerations could include:

• Communication Rules: Establish guidelines such as “emails can be addressed the following workday, but urgent calls or texts are more critical.”
• Managerial Practices: Managers should review and adjust their communication habits to align with the new legislation. Avoid contacting team members outside regular hours unless absolutely necessary.

Your staff should understand that the legislation aims to separate reasonable from unreasonable after-hours contact, it does not state that there can’t be ANY after-hours contact.

Below are some questions you may wish to consider when designing your workplace policy.

• Do you have an underpinning Award?
• What are your normal business hours and what is the likelihood you need to contact staff outside of these?
• Do you have busy periods?
• What are the contract arrangements for clients/staff in different time zones?
• Do your Managers/Senior Team/Leaders have less right to disconnect based on their role?
• Will it differ between departments?
• Setting expectations
• What messaging should go to staff?
• What is your complaints process?
• What will you do if you receive lots of “refusals”
• How do your employment contracts account for this?

The Right to Disconnect legislation brings a new dimension to workplace communication norms. By proactively addressing these considerations and implementing clear policies, organisations can navigate these changes effectively, ensuring a balanced approach to after-hours contact that respects both business needs and employee rights.

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• Regulations coming for “buy now, pay later” market – A Bill currently before Parliament aims to extend the application of the Credit Code to BNPL contracts and establish low cost credit contracts as a new category of regulated credit.
• Deducting gifts and donations: getting it right at tax time – Not all gifts and donations are tax deductible, and special rules apply in some cases. Make sure you know the rules this tax time.
• Motor vehicle expenses: which method should my business use? – If your business owns or leases a vehicle that’s used for business purposes, it’s essential to keep proper records to ensure you’re entitled to the maximum deduction for your vehicle expenses.
• Time for a superannuation check-up – Your super could be one of the biggest assets you ever have – getting into the habit of checking in regularly can help you stay on top of it and make better choices for your future.
• New SMSF expense rules: what you need to know – New rules focus on “non-arm’s length general expenses” – services provided to your SMSF at below-market prices or for free – and the tax impact could be significant.

You can read the full Client Alert here

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But before we get our 6 reasons, let’s talk very quickly about which reports to look at. At a bare minimum, and depending on the complexity of your business, you should be looking at the following:

• The Statement of Financial Performance – also known as the Profit and Loss report (P&L) or the Income Statement – tells you, as the name suggests, how your business is performing over a period of time, such as a month or a financial year. In broad terms it shows the revenue that your business has generated, less the expenses for that same period. In other words, it shows how profitable your business is.
• The Statement of Financial Position – also known as the Balance Sheet shows the value of the business’s Assets, Liabilities and Equity.
  • Assets include things like money in bank accounts, Plant and Equipment, Accounts Receivable balances
  • Liabilities include things like Bank loans and credit cards, Accounts Payable, and Hire Purchase balances
  • Equity is the difference between your Assets and your Liabilities and includes Retained Earnings and Owner Funds Introduced
• Accounts Receivable Ageing report (Aged Receivables) – this shows how much money is still owed to the business as at a certain date in time, and is usually segmented as to how overdue they are, or sometimes by how far past the invoice date they are. Generally, you will have Current, 30, 60 and 90 days columns.
• Accounts Payable Ageing Report (Aged Payables) – this report shows who the business owes money to as at a certain date in time and, like the Accounts Receivable Ageing report, is usually segmented by overdue period.

So why bother?

1. Understand your business better – by looking at your Profit and Loss report monthly you will get a good picture of how your business is performing month by month and it gives you a better understanding of what makes up your profit. It can be helpful to compare periods, or to look at a month by month P&L, so you can clearly see on one page the revenue and expenses month by month. This also helps identify trends in your data and many also help to highlight anomalies in coding/categorising or unusual expenses or earnings.
2. Accurate information for lending purposes – If you are applying for a loan or an overdraft, the bank or financial institution will look closely at both your Profit and Loss report and the Balance Sheet as a lot can be learned about a business by looking at these reports together. If you are unsure what some of your balances are in your accounts, get in touch and we can explain them further.
3. Get paid quicker and reduce bad debts – by looking at your Accounts Receivable Aged Summary each month you can follow up with overdue accounts promptly which often results in getting paid quicker. The longer an overdue amount is left unpaid the higher the risk of it not being paid at all, so it is important to keep on top of this.
4. Better relationships with your suppliers – Assuming you are entering your supplier bills into your accounting software (recommended for most businesses to get an accurate profitability figure) your Aged Payables report will alert you to any unpaid or overdue amounts. Supplier relationships are an important aspect of your business and paying on time is crucial to maintaining those relationships.
5. Better cashflow – having an accurate understanding of how much money the business is owed, and how much money the business owes, can help with cashflow planning to ensure that there is enough money when needed. Additionally, understanding the trends of your business, its profitability drivers, its expenses, etc., can help to plan sales and marketing campaigns so that the revenue keeps coming in.
6. Better business decision making – Your financial reports tell the story of your business and it’s important that you understand the story that they are telling you. The better you understand what’s going on in your business the stronger position you will be in to make better business decisions that affect the profitability of your business and its financial viability.

If you would like to know which reports are relevant to your business, and you want to better understand what’s going on in your business, then get in touch so we can make a time to go through them with you.

Your business success is important to us and we are here to help you.

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