The Crowd-Sourced Funding Legislation is brand new and therefore presents a fantastic opportunity for accountancy businesses to get involved with this new service.

No accountancy business in Australia has a "historical advantage" with Crowd-Sourced Funding because this is new legislation.

Now is your opportunity to get involved with a product which will offer a great service that will enable you to diversify your services from your competitors.

Crowd-Sourced Funding is targeted at:

• small medium enterprises
• inventors
• entrepreneurs

These business entities are traditionally clients of small to medium-sized accountancy businesses.  Don’t encourage these clients to go elsewhere for advice that, with a little bit of preparation (maybe only a couple of hours), your firm should be able to present an outstanding crowd-sourced funding service.

This will enable you to create a “ Significant New Income Stream” to your accountancy business:

• The initial consultation with the client as to whether their company meets the specifications to be a Crowd-Sourced Funding Company.
• Detailed questionnaire to determine whether the company is able to be called a Crowd-Sourced Funding Company.
• Other work that will be necessary to enable the CSF Offer Document to be finalised includes:
• business plan
• budgets and cash flow forecasts
• company valuation
• share price determination
• information memorandum
• the Crowd Sourced Funding Offer Document ( which is a de facto prospectus) will then be able to be finalised.

There will also be project management opportunities relative to the coordination of other professional work which shall be required for the CSF Offer Document.

This will include market research, marketing plan, intellectual property reviews and other specific services that will be necessary for an individual company to satisfy the CSF Intermediary that all of the necessary work has been done for the preparation of the CSF Offer Document.

Another key role will be to assist the company in the appointment of a CSF intermediary and in holding discussions with the intermediary about the process for the capital raising.

It will probably assist if you prepare a Crowd-Sourced Funding Timetable as follows:

• September 2017 - is when the intermediary can commence to promote the company to potential investors. To meet this target work will need to commence on the components of the CSF Offer Document.
• May 2017 - market research, marketing plan, intellectual property review – whilst these tasks will undoubtedly be undertaken by other professionals, a role for the accountancy business could be to act as the project manager to coordinate these activities.
• June 2017 - a significant amount of work will be required in June including budget, cashflow forecasts, company valuation, determination of share price and discussions with CSF intermediaries.
• July 2017 - preparation of the business plan and information memorandum.
• August 2017 - finalisation of Crowd-Sourced Funding Offer Document including key information from each of the other documents.
• Finalise agreement with CSF intermediary.

A webinar recording on the Crowd Sourced Funding opportunities for accountants is available for you to view - please click here - Crowd Sourced Funding Equity Raising.

You can subscribe to the ESS BIZTOOLS' Crowd-Source Funding Equity Raising Package for $399 including GST.  To subscribe for the package please click here.

If you would like to receive a copy of the article which we have written on Crowd-Sourced Funding please click here.

If you have any questions on any aspect of Crowd Sourced Funding and how you can utilise this product as a “new revenue stream for your accountancy business”, please do not hesitate to contact us.

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Episode 108 -Wanted! Accountancy Firms Committed to Crowd Funding

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