Month: January 2021

As business owners, we strive to make our business better but when it comes to making change, we often don’t know where to begin. A recent article called 30 Behaviours that will Make you unstoppable in 2021 by Dr Benjamin Hardy gives some ideas and inspiration. Dr Benjamin Hardy is an Organisational Psychologist & best-selling author of “Willpower Doesn’t Work” & “Personality Isn’t Permanent”. 

We have picked 10 of the 30 Behaviours that we believe will help your business to become unstoppable in 2021. 

1. Write down your goals, every single morning 

2. Clearly prioritise your life 

3. Reduce ‘Avoidance-Behaviours’ 

4. Invest more in yourself 

5. Invest more in Organisations/Causes you believe in – such as your business

6. Focus on Progress over Time 

7. Focus on Purpose over Process 

8. Focus on Growth over Status 

9. Focus on learning over entertainment 

10. Focus on 90 day sprints over new years resolutions 

If you are interested in reading more about these Behaviours, click the following link. 

In many small businesses, when cash-flow is tight, Super Guarantee is forgotten about and not paid to employees superannuation accounts. The ATO are now focusing on Super Guarantee payments and will start to issue penalties for businesses that have unpaid Super Guarantee. 

The ATO disclosed in a recent notice that businesses that disclosed unpaid super & qualified for the Super Guarantee amnesty must pay outstanding amounts or set up a payment plan and meet each ongoing instalment. Businesses that are disqualified from the amnesty will be notified in writing of the quarter they are disqualified for & be charged an administrative fee of $20 per employee per disqualified quarter. 

Due to this, any small businesses with outstanding superannuation payments will start to receive penalties from the ATO. If you have any unpaid super we would advise you to pay it as soon as possible to avoid these penalties. If you need assistance checking whether you have any unpaid super, please get in contact with Sophie to organise a time. 

Also a reminder that tomorrow the 28th of January 2021 is the due date for Superannuation Guarantee payments for October to December 2020. Make sure this is paid by tomorrow to avoid penalties.

The first JobKeeper Extension Subsidy finished earlier this month with the last fortnight ending on Sunday the 3rd of January. Now is the time to look into whether you may be eligible for JobKeeper Extension 2 which commenced on the 4th of January 2021 and runs until the 28th of March 2021. 

To Qualify for JobKeeper Extension 2, you must have met the decline in turnover test by having over a 30% decline in turnover for your business (15% for non-for-profit) for the December 2020 Quarter compared to the December 2019 Quarter. 

You may still be eligible for JobKeeper Subsidy Extension 2, even if you did not meet the criteria for the Original JobKeeper Subsidy or the Jobkeeper Subsidy Extension 1. This means that just because you may have had a good quarter in September 2020, June 2020 or April 2020 compared to 2019, if you have since had a drop in revenue in December, you may find you are now eligible. 

Employees will remain split into Tier 1 (work 20+ hours per week) or Tier 2 (work less than 20 hours per week) and receive the payment accordingly. The rate for those in Tier 1 will be $1,000 per fortnight & the rate for employees in Tier 2 will be $650 per fortnight. These payments must be made to the employee within the relevant fortnight or you will not be eligible to claim on behalf of the employee for that fortnight. 

If you meet the JobKeeper Extension 2 criteria, you will have until the 31st of January to top-up your employees pay if they have earned less than the payment received for their tier. If you have qualified for Jobkeeper Extension 2, but were not part of JobKeeper Extension 1, you may need to add the tiers to your payroll. 

In last weeks Blog, we discussed the importance of setting resolutions for your Business to establish targets. This was to assist in finding what outcome we want to achieve. This week aims to follow on from the resolutions to assist in turning them into goals. 

As a trained Physiotherapist, Sophie spends a lot of time in her health role, setting goals with patients to establish a treatment plan whether they come in due to injury or just to better themselves. In the financial setting, we can always better our situation but we need to know what that means for us. 

When setting a goal, it is important to be SMART – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely. We must ensure the goal we set is specific to what we want to achieve. We must have a measure to know whether or not we have reached our goal. We must set something that is attainable, to prevent us giving up from the start. We must choose a relevant goal to enable us to focus. We must set a clear time-frame to prevent procrastination. 

The first resolution we set can easily be turned into a SMART goal. ‘We will achieve a net profit of $52,000 for January to December 2021.’ The specificity is Profit, the measure is $52,000, the attainability is hard to determine (as we don’t know the business situation), it is relevant to building a thriving business and the timeline is set for 12 months. It is important to set the target higher but not so high that it is not achievable as this will assist you to work hard to achieve it. 

The next step is to break this into manageable chunks. If you find these smaller steps are too difficult or easy, you will want to re-assess your goal. Breaking the goal down looks like:  
– Quarterly Target: $13,000 net Profit 
– Monthly Target: $4,500 net Profit 
– Weekly Target: $1,000 net Profit

5 simple tips to help you stay on track to achieve your goals: 

1. Be precise when setting timeframes and amounts – this will help determine whether you have achieved your goal

2. Set priorities and choose a main goal to focus on – this ensures you and your team are focussed on the same target

3. Write your goal down and put it somewhere you see it everyday – this helps to maintain your motivation to achieve your goal and reconfirm it every day 

4. Tell someone or the world (via facebook) as this puts your intention out and makes you more accountable to achieving it

5. Break it down – this will make it less daunting and give you steps to achieving it

We hope you have a wonderful time goal setting and if you have any questions or want assistance please contact Sophie or Graham to book in a time.

Happy New Year to all our amazing clients and friends! As with every new year comes new resolutions so have you set some New Year’s resolutions for your business to achieve this year? 

The new year is a great time to reflect, set goals and make a plan to achieve them. Below are a few tips and tricks on some example resolutions and how to set yourself up to start with goal setting. 

2021 Resolution List 

• Achieve a Profit of $— this calendar year
• Do a business health check 
• Redo your business plan 
• Work on the business (rather than in it) one day per month 

Why do we set goals? 

Without setting goals, we are flying blind, we don’t know what we are targeting and we lose motivation quickly. We have found in the past year with clear defined goals we are achieving a better business result as we have a target and work harder to get there. These goals give us motivation and drive as we know what we are trying to achieve. 

Where do we start? 

We would recommend starting out with a quick financial health check of your business. To begin with, look at your profit and loss for the last 2 years, break it down quarterly, monthly and weekly. Some questions to ask yourself?

• How often are you achieving a profit vs a loss? 
• What expenses are higher than you anticipated? 
• Is there a consistent trend in your profit or is it all over the place? 

This will help you see where you are at and start thinking about where you want to be. Whilst you are looking at this, it is also worth looking into what processes are currently in place and how can they be more streamlined, no process is ever 100% efficient, so there are always improvements that can be made, even if minor. 

If you need help with a business health check or setting financial goals for your business, please contact Graham or Sophie to schedule a time. 

We wish you all the best for 2021!