Business Improvement Services Explained!

The start of a new decade!

2020 heralds the start of a new decade – “The Decade of Change”.  Many people expect this decade to introduce significant changes to the accountancy profession – some observers believe that 80% of the current work been undertaken by accountants will have disappeared by the end of this decade!

Your opportunity to offer a broader range of professional services:

Whilst software and technology developments are taking over many of the traditional roles performed by accountants there are still tremendous opportunities for accountants in public practice to offer a broader range of “Business Improvement Services” to assist your clients to run better businesses.

Clients looking for assistance in operating their business:

Many small and medium sized enterprises are seeking a “Chief Financial Officer” type service to assist them to add value to their business.

Business Improvement Services will assist:

ESS BIZTOOLS has been developing products to assist accountants to offer a broad range of Business Improvement Services to clients for the last twenty years.  I trust that these notes will give you some more information on services “beyond taxation” that you might care to explore and then possibly to introduce for your clients.  If you have any questions, comments or criticisms of any of the articles that we produce, please do not hesitate to contact me –  

Business survival:

There are no doubts that many small and medium sized enterprises and some accounting firms are suffering around Australia at present because of the effects of bushfires, floods, cyclones and the COVID19 (Coronavirus).

How do you go about assisting your clients with the challenges that many of them have?

In the first instance I suggest that you make contact with your clients to see what assistance they need at this stage.  This could include assisting them in lodging government grant applications for a range of disaster relief packages that the Australian and various State Governments are offering, preparing updates of Budgets and Cash Flow Forecasts so that negotiations can be held with banks and other lenders, landlords and suppliers and potentially for some of your clients with the Australian Taxation Office.

The industries that are affected are quite numerous including:

• Tourism – accommodation – restaurants and cafés – bars – nightclubs – transport – tourism activities
• Farming – fruit and vegetables – beef cattle – lambs – pigs – dairy cattle/milk – fishing
• Education providers – student accommodation – food outlets and bars near student accommodation
• Pharmaceutical supplies
• The ESS BIZTOOLS “Survival in Difficult Times” Product Package is currently being updated to reflect the current position and will be available for subscription next week. You can obtain a summary of the contents and a sample of some of the material included in the product package by clicking here

Some directors and senior managers are very happy!

The Directors and Managers of sixty-eight companies situated all round Australia are very happy because they have been able to raise a total of $45.1 million from over 38,000 investors by utilising the Australian Government’s legislation introduced as part of the “Innovation Package” announced by the then Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull in December 2015.

Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising assists private companies to be able to raise up to $5 million in a twelve month period and then repeat a further capital raise up to $5 million the following year and future years if the company wishes to do so and obviously if the market supports the company in its capital raising endeavours.

The amendments to the Corporations Act which enabled Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising introduced the concept of Crowd Sourced Funding Intermediaries.  These are businesses with Australian Financial Services Licenses who have been appointed by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to act as “gatekeepers” to ensure that the legislation has been fully complied with and as “promoters” because each of the Intermediaries has attracted thousands of people who indicated that they might be interested in investing in a company that was eligible to raise capital as a Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising Company.

Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising Scorecard gives you an insight into this new opportunity:

ESS BIZTOOLS produces a Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising Scorecard on the capital  raised with assistance by the individual intermediaries.  You can view the Scorecard for the two year period up to 31 January 2020 by clicking here.

If you are interested in gaining a more detailed understanding of how Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising operates and gaining knowledge on how your accountancy firm could be assisting clients/prospects to raise capital, why not visit our Crowd Sourced Funding Learn More by clicking here

Young companies with new technologies can now raise capital with benefits for investors!

For companies that have developed a new product, process, service, organisational or management methodology and the company is under three years of age and income is under $200,000 for the previous twelve months and expenditure is under $1 million for the previous twelve months and the company has not listed on a stock exchange anywhere in the world and the company passes some other tests there is the opportunity to be able to raise capital as an “Early-Stage Innovation Company”.

The legislation for an “Early-Stage Innovation Company” was introduced by amendments to the Taxation Act.  These amendments provide inducements to investors to invest in companies that comply with the requirements to be deemed to be an “Early-Stage Innovation Company.”  The inducements for investors are:

• A tax rebate of 20% of the original shareholding in the company owned by the investors but not including the founders of the company up to a maximum rebate of $200,000 for a sophisticated investor and $10,000 for a retail investor.
• The potential avoidance of Capital Gains Tax if the original shareholder owns the shares for longer than twelve months and less than ten years there is no capital gains tax and if the shares are held beyond ten years the company is revalued at the end of ten years and the cost price of the shares is adjusted to reflect the company’s current valuation.

Interested in knowing more about the “Early-Stage Innovation Company” process and how ESS BIZTOOLS can assist you to offer these services to your clients who are operating businesses that might comply and also for those of your clients who might be interested in investing in young Australian entrepreneurial companies why not click on to our “Early-Stage Innovation Companies Learn More” click here

If you have any questions on any aspect of any of the products that we have mentioned or any other aspect of the services provided by ESS BIZTOOLS or our associated entity ESS BIZGRANTS, please do not hesitate to contact us – .

Have a great day!