Posted: 16 June 2020

Now Is The Time!

Accountant's Minute 236

Welcome!

Good news last week for your clients in the building and construction industries and some tradies.

The Australian government’s Stimulus Package Number 4 will bring some joy to the building industry, including tradies operating in the house building and renovations industries.

In this week’s COVID-19 Survival Panel webinar Peter Towers, Managing Director of ESS BIZTOOLS, will comment on the opportunity that is available for accountants to offer a 'Chief Financial Officer' service to assist your clients to meet post COVID-19 challenges including:

Business Review Meetings - a monthly or quarterly meeting with members of the leadership team to review all aspects of the business' operations with the accountant providing a 'project management' service to ensure that the meeting is properly organised, minutes prepared, action plan prepared, follow-up to ensure that the required reports are prepared and distributed to the leadership team prior to the next meeting.
Cashflow advice relative to - debtors' management and debtors' days outstanding – investment in inventory.
Development of appropriate internal accounting systems relative to inventory, stock allocation to jobs, job costing systems and key performance indicators.
Verification of the selling prices whether for retail shops, wholesale businesses, professional firms, trades businesses or manufacturing firms to ensure that the selling prices/charge out rates used have been determined to ensure that the targeted profit, as contained within the Budgets, will be achieved or that adjustments can be made.

This approach is 'real accounting work' that the accountancy profession has been able to deliver for the last three months relative to COVID-19 and many SMEs will want this higher level of service – virtual 'Chief Financial Officer' services delivered from now on.

With the tough market conditions that are expected to prevail throughout 2020/21, there is an opportunity for proactive accountants to significantly add value to your SME clients' business endeavours.

Ash Evans, Managing Director of AAA+ Financial Solutions will comment on the approach that accountants can take to assist SME clients to be able to successfully fund their business during, what is expected to be, a challenging period in 2020/21. Ash will discuss the services that a financial services organisation can offer to assist an accounting firm in the delivery of outstanding services relating to debtors' financing, business financing generally, inventory financing and advice on the type of relationship that banks and other financial institutions would prefer to establish with SME businesses and their accountants.

You can register for this week’s free webinar to be held on Friday 19th June 2020 at 12-noon AEST by clicking here.

In last week’s webinar presentation Andrew Geddes, the Chairperson of Greencross Ltd for 9 years and a well-known accountancy industry coach and mentor, made some interesting comments relative to the assistance that accountants can give to their SME clients to help them cope with the post lockdown recovery. Andrew indicated that the approach will vary from industry to industry and business to business.

Andrew indicated that there are various software tools available including:

Bstar, which has developed a risk diagnostics tool; and
ESS BIZTOOLS, which has developed a series of product packages to assist accountants to deliver a 'Chief Financial Officer' service.

Andrew stressed that communication was very important; firstly within the accounting firm and secondly within clients’ organisations when all members of the leadership team should be freely communicating with the other members of the team so as to help them with the uncertainty that exists at present.

To navigate the challenges that are all around us at present, Andrew suggested that accountancy firms should get their own house in order first and then return to helping clients:

What’s happened to overhead costs – are there some that could be eliminated or reduced?
What opportunities are there available for clients and the accounting firm?
Andrew asked “How are you feeling?" "Do you need a break?" Because he stressed that, in this period of uncertainty, it’s important that everyone is monitoring their own health and that leaders are conscious of the health status of members of their team.

Renee Chilton, Assistant Regional Manager for AusIndustry - North Queensland gave an overview of the various government grants that AusIndustry delivers to businesses on behalf of the Australian government, particularly the Entrepreneurs' Program.

This program delivers advice on grants to enable high potential businesses to deliver innovative commercialisation services and to grow and deliver what customers are looking for.

Renee indicated that AusIndustry has contacted about 140 business facilitators, who are located in capital cities and regional areas around Australia, to deliver the Entrepreneurs' Program. Renee indicated that the purpose of these programs was to educate the business operators to assist them to grow in their businesses by talking about understanding their potential and working with them to develop a pathway to achieve success.

If you would like to view last week’s webinar recording featuring Andrew Geddes and Renee Chilton please click here.

Want to know more about the services that are available from ESS BIZTOOLS and our Affiliates to assist you to proactively assist your SME clients on a wide range of business improvement services which you could offer to your clients? If so, I invite you to visit the ESS BIZTOOLS' website è Survival In Difficult Times è Learn More, where you'll be able to view an overview of the material included in the product packages that incorporates COVID-19 packages.

A reminder… ESS BIZTOOLS and our Affiliates are presenting this special webinar series “COVID-19 Survival Panel” each Friday at 12-noon AEST until 30th September 2020. If you'd like to register for upcoming webinars (click here). If you'd like to view the recordings for the past nine webinars - (click here).

If you'd like to have discussions relative to the products and services that ESS BIZTOOLS can provide, please contact us: