Hawkesbury Bookkeeping

Affordable Bookkeeping Solutions for your Small Business

Record Keeping

NSW Small Business Month

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October is NSW Small Business Month – a month dedicated to promoting and celebrating the success of small businesses and recognising the important role they play in the NSW economy and their local communities.

The state’s small business sector employs an estimated 1.65 million people across NSW and makes up almost 44% of the private sector workforce. As the home to 765,000 small businesses, NSW is building an ecosystem to support growth.

Visit the businessmonth.nsw.gov.au website to see and take part in all of the events to assist small business. There are free forums, webinars and workshops to attend on a range of topics such as Business Basics, Starting a Business, Marketing and Social Media and more.

Information sourced from: https://www.businessmonth.nsw.gov.au/about-us/

Changes to AusKey and Business Portal Access

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The Australian Government is developing new digital services to transform the way Australians interact with government. These services are:

  • myGovID – an authentication service that allows you to prove who you are online
  • Relationship Authorisation Manager (RAM) – an authorisation service that allows you to link your myGovID to an ABN and manage who can act on behalf of your business online.

From March 2020, myGovID and RAM are scheduled to replace AUSkey. They provide secure, simple and flexible access to government online services.

To find out more about myGovID, click here for more information.

Want to know more about Superannuation Guarantee?

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Are you confused about Superannuation Guarantee or want to make sure you are getting it right for your employees?

The ATO website has loads of information plus the products and tools to help you understand what you need to do for super as an employer.

They have recently published a free online course on Super Guarantee Employer Obligations. It is designed to help employers understand their obligations to pay super for eligible employees.

The course is free and is available on the ATO website. The course takes around 2 hours to complete and will result in the following learning outcomes. You will understand:

  • the importance of paying super guarantee
  • the circumstances in which it is payable
  • the steps to setting up super for your employees
  • how to calculate super guarantee
  • how to lodge and pay super guarantee
  • what to do when a super guarantee payment is late or missing
  • your record-keeping requirements.

Click here to access the free ATO web course.

You can also find out more about Super for Employers by clicking here.

Don’t want to pay for STP Software?

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If you run a small business and manage your payroll manually, you’re not alone but Single Touch Payroll is now here and it’s time to look at managing your payroll utilising software.

Manually managing your payroll may feel like a low-cost solution however it’s probably costing your business much more than you think. If you’re worried about spending money on a software system, there are affordable software solutions available and you will also find that these systems save you so much time and money.

Here are three reasons why:

Payroll is time consuming

It takes time to process employee hours and errors may occur. An online accounting solution gives you the option to have your employees enter their hours into an ap.

Time saving!

Single Touch Payroll is here

STP requires business owners to be reporting their payroll activity every time a pay run is processed. This requires an approved software solution.

Single Touch Payroll reports wages and salaries, PAYG withholding and superannuation directly to the ATO. Your employees can then access their payroll data via the my.gov.au website.

You need to comply.

Save yourself some money

An online accounting solution will save you a lot of time and our packages start at just $19 a week. Whilst you may think you’re saving some money without software in place, you will probably find that it’s actually costing your business money.

Affordable!

Book a Chat with us today or Contact Us to see how affordable and easy it is to have a software system in place.

Big Business is costing Small Business Billions

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A recent report issued by Xero suggests that a staggering $115 billion is paid late each year by big business to small business and the average payment is 23 days late.

What can Small Businesses do to help themselves get paid faster?

Set shorter payment terms

The report by Xero also suggests that on average, customers pay invoices about a week late. Small business should factor this in when setting payment terms.

Use automated payment reminders

Something else to implement is the use of automated invoice reminders in Xero. Set friendly email reminders that are sent when a bill becomes a day late. Or even better, send an automated email a day or two before the invoice is due.

Add a payment service to your invoice

Add PayPal or Stripe to your customer invoices allowing them to make their payment online as soon as the invoice is received. Xero suggests that invoices with an attached payment service were paid an average 55% sooner than invoices without.

See the full report by Xero

Access the full report compiled by Xero by clicking here or by visiting Xero Small Business Insights.

How Xero can help your Small Business?

Hawkesbury Bookkeeping is a Xero Certified Advisor and can help you setup Xero and get paid faster. Book a Chat and get online with Xero today.

Xero Certified Advisor