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Born and raised in Preston, Gloria Bitilis’ family background is Italian. She and her husband now reside close to her adult children in Mill Park. She has been with Swag for over 2 years. She enjoys working within a small team with others that enjoy providing small businesses with a more intimate style bookkeeping service. Her work experience started in the legal industry then moved to Accounting Firms. She has played some sort of a role within the accounting realm for the past 15 years. She enjoys spending time with family, friends and most importantly, her dogs. She also enjoys her time alone reading a good book. She hopes to continue working but also to balance it with a bit more travel both within Australia & overseas.
We hope you enjoy meeting the team. We want to be one big family along with your team.
Do your own bookkeeping but avoid these MISTAKES
Cloud-based technology and the advent of Xero have been game-changers in the world of bookkeeping. Historically, bookkeeping was tied to a computer and a location and involved paper records. Today desktops are being replaced by internet browsers.
With cloud accounting, records are able to be managed in digital form and accessed from pretty much any device, from any location as long as the user has access to the internet, although it should be noted that this is not entirely true for the very popular MYOB AccountRight Online. This is a hybrid package for which you still need downloaded software on your device to access your file online.
The technology provides for automatic bank feeds which allow transactions to be imported into your file directly from the bank pretty much in real time, although a delay of a day is not uncommon.
The software is intuitive and easy to use and empowers business owners to take control of their bookkeeping. Unfortunately, this can encourage over-confidence in the software packages.
It is not always apparent what is happening in the background of the accounting package, and our bookkeeping service finds itself being called upon more and more often to identify and rectify issues that make it apparent that the bookkeeping records are not quite right.
Irrespective of which accounting package is chosen, we see the same mistakes being made and these are readily avoided with a bit more understanding of what is happening behind the scenes.
The bookkeeping file commences on a certain date, often the first day of a new financial year. If the business has already been operating before adopting Xero, there will have been transactions on the account. The bank accounts and credit cards will have balances – opening balances. Unless you tell Xero what these balances are, Xero assumes they are zero.
Automatic bank feeds are a major benefit of online accounting packages, but they start on a particular day. If the bank feed commences a week after the conversion date, any transactions that occurred before this date will not have been downloaded to your file. These need to be either recorded or imported manually –
The online packages record the wage/salary expense through their payroll function. The actual payment of the net wage, super and PAYG withholding tax is then meeting the liability that has been accrued as a result of the wage being recorded. The payment out of the bank account should be recognized as the payment of this liability and recorded against the liability accounts ie. wages payable or super payable. If the bank transaction is posted as an expense item, the payroll expense is incorrectly duplicated.
Automatic bank feeds make bookkeeping easier and more
For businesses using Paypal where the Paypal expense is debited from their main operating account, the Paypal debit from the operating account is often recorded as an expense instead of a transfer. The expense will be recorded in the Paypal account. The debit out of the operating account is only a transfer of money and should be recorded as such, otherwise, the expense is recorded twice.
Cuba is famous for its cigars, and well known for its old cars. It has a reputation for being a Communist country in a bit of a time warp but a recent trip to Cuba belied this image.
Cuba has an intriguing history of revolution and evolution, heavily influenced by the American embargo and the leadership of Fidel Castro.
Music and dancing are everywhere, even at roadside stops. The salsa rhythms are infectious; the mojitos delicious. Finding a cane farm named Australia was endearing.
Entrepreneurship is being encouraged. Local families are letting out their homes and rooms for tourist accommodation. It is a great way to meet locals, get a glimpse into their daily lives and to enjoy some local hospitality.
Wifi is readily available in Cuba, where they refer to it as “wiffy”, although it can be a bit patchy. You can readily identify where the wiffy connection is good by the groups of people clustered together on steps and outside hotels, heads bowed, all intent on their phones.
Unfortunately, neither Google nor Xero was supported in Cuba ie. unable to be accessed. Apparently, visitors to China experience the same situation. We have since been recommended ExpressVPN as a workaround to get through the Google firewall. Apparently, you can sign up for a month.
Bernadine Oosthuizen was born and raised in Zimbabwe. She immigrated to Australia when she was 18 and became a citizen, later returning to Zimbabwe to get married and commence a life of farming with her husband. Just 9 months later, their farm was taken from them in the ‘land reform program’.
They moved to Zambia to join in-laws on a family farm they started when they also lost their Zimbabwean farms. They were there for a little over 5 years but unfortunately lost those farms too. They decided to immigrate to Australia with their young daughter.
Starting from zero was hard since they had lost everything. Today, they are the proud owners of a small farm (just over 30 acres) and have planted a 10-acre macadamia orchard. Maintaining the orchard keeps them well occupied.
Bernadine also works as an admin/accounts clerk for a local cabinet maker. She is the mother of three girls, aged 11, 9 & 7, and still manages to volunteer for sporting organisations and a school.
Bernadine started with bookkeeping for small clients in Zambia and worked remotely for a luxury safari lodge on the Zambezi river. She continued to work for them for about 3 years after she immigrated to Australia.
Remote bookkeeping for Swag Bookkeeping allows Bernadine to supplement the family income, whilst juggling her family and work priorities and being engaged with her local community. She is a valued member of the Swag Bookkeeping team.
A practical place to start the budget process is to review your cost of living. Adding up the annual costs of maintaining your lifestyle or even the annual costs of the lifestyle to which you aspire, will help you to determine what is the minimum amount of wages or income that your business needs to provide for you.
If you are using an accounting package (e.g. Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks, etc.), export your historical data to a spreadsheet and build on this. You will be able to increase the existing expense amounts by a certain percentage to account for expected rises in costs such as CPI. The exported data will also identify individual months that you would expect to pay annual expenses such as insurance, motor vehicle registration, filing fees, etc. Other months can remain blank or recorded as zero.
If you are using figures from your accounting package, be aware that the amounts do not include GST. If your figures are showing a $5000 computer expense, you will have paid out $5500 for this computer purchase at the time.
If your budget results show you need to earn $20,000 in income, be aware that this means you will need to bill out $22,000 in sales invoices – $20,000 in income, and $2000 GST that you are collecting on behalf of the ATO.
If you are building sales targets into your budget, consider what extra costs might be involved in earning this income. You might need to allow for higher marketing costs, more stock, more staff or contractors, etc. Hiring more staff also has associated cost increases such as superannuation and workers compensation.
Once you have completed your budget, record it in your accounting package, so that you can review your actual performance against what you expected. Using a budget on a regular basis (e.g. monthly) to help you to measure how your business is performing against your expectations. Operating with a budget will help to identify issues around income and expenses that need attention.
Xero, Quickbooks and MYOB Essentials users should be able to import this budget into their business accounts as a CSV or Excel file.
To receive a free budget tool that starts with a good look at your living costs, and then feeds this into your business budget, please email [email protected] and put Free Budget Tool in the subject line.
Now is an ideal time to be setting a budget for the 2019 financial year. Many of us think of a budget as something we ‘should’ do, but don’t get around to it. Hopefully, there is some motivation in the following, and a budget will now become an end-of-financial-year priority for you.
We can all get caught up in the day-to-day operation of our business. With all the demands of business, we don’t always give our finances the attention they deserve, even though sound financial performance is essential for our business success. You are more likely to achieve financial success if this is where your attention is.
A budget is a good tool to support setting your business goals for the coming year. A budget encourages you to quantify your goals for the coming year and ideal business growth. For businesses with seasonally affected income, a budget will map out which months to expect higher income, and which months are more likely to be lean.
When looking at goals for increased income, a budget is a tool that allows you to factor in the increased costs of earning more income. You might need to hire more staff, which will not only increase your wages bill but also your superannuation and workers compensation expenses. If you need to purchase a new desk or computer or chair, these costs can also be built into your budget.
A budget is a great tool for measuring and analysing business performance if it is used to measure actual performance against budgeted expectations on a regular basis. Meeting or exceeding budgeted sales targets can be a great motivator to continue with the hard work, a particularly successful product or service, or even marketing exercise.
A budget can help you to identify what is the absolute minimum you need to earn to cover your costs, whether this includes your own income.
A budget can be useful in quantifying the income needed to maintain a consistent or desirable profit margin, particularly when costs increase. Plans on how to achieve increased sales to cover cost increases then can be formulated.
A budget can provide a good basis for projected cash flows, giving you a picture of when money is going to come into the business and when money is going to go out of the business. It will help you to identify if cash flow is going to be a problem at any stage, giving you time to prepare for this.
Your budget will give you some indication of whether you might need to invest more money in your business to achieve your goals, and whether you might need to consider some financing to cover these objectives.
Regular review of actual income and expenses against budgeted expectations can highlight issues with greater than expected costs or lower than expected income on a timelier basis that then allows you to act on a timelier basis. Underperformance is not something you want to wait until the end of the year to discover.
The process of setting a budget and then comparing actual figures and business performance against these projections on a regular basis will provide a lot more clarity and understanding of your business financials, and how they impact on your business success
Budget figures don’t need to set in concrete and can be reviewed and revised as circumstances change, but the benefit lies in creating a budget and using it.
If you have another good reason to prepare and implement a budget for your business, we would love to hear it. Please email [email protected] and use Budget Reason in the subject line.
This month lets look at two business essentials, LastPass and WeTransfer, and how they could help you manage, more efficiently.
LastPass lets you manage all your passwords for multiple websites. You only need to remember one password. LastPass helps you avoid repeating your password across different platforms or making it easy to guess. You may also generate a long, randomised password on the system for additional security against hacking. Generate complex passwords easily and on the fly. It also has an automatic form-fill feature that fills in any website’s form fields with your details such as name, address, credit card number, and more to save your time. You can efficiently use LastPass in any web browser and smartphone.
Another handy feature is the ability to authorise multiple users to your other accounts. Quickly and securely share passwords by just adding users with their email address. When you share, you can choose to reveal the password or only allow LastPass to autofill for the user. If you share passwords without showing them, you won’t have to change it each time you revoke someone’s access. It automatically shares password updates to everyone that you’ve previously given prior permission. It can also actually go through the entire process of changing a password by simulating a user session on your behalf – all with a single click.
Share groups of passwords. This one is particularly useful if you work with specific teams or functions which need access to related accounts in one go. LastPass lets you give emergency access to others. Users with emergency access can request access to your password. You will receive a notification of the request, and if you don’t reject it within a time limit previously set by you, the password is shared. This feature can be quite helpful in case you are unreachable, or there’s an accident.
https://www.lastpass.com/
WeTransfer is a cloud-based computer file transfer service. It is located in the Netherlands and the US and founded in 2009. The core service is free, with more features available for premium accounts. Free users can send files up to 2GB; WeTransfer ‘Plus’ supports sending files up to 20GB and offers features like password protection, channel customisation and 100 GB storage. It works with your email account. You type in your email address and the recipient’s e-mail address, add a message, attach the file, and send.
The benefits of using WeTransfer vs Dropbox is there is no need to give access to that file in your Dropbox account. You can send the data and forget about it.
https://wetransfer.com/
Modern awards have been a feature of the Australian workplace relations system since their implementation in January 2010. Despite this, many employers still say they don’t understand them or don’t even know they exist. This lack of awareness can have very serious consequences.
Here are five key facts about modern awards that business owners need to know:
Australia’s 122 modern awards contain mandatory terms and conditions of employment that must be provided to any employee who is ‘covered’ by a modern award. The modern award entitlements apply in addition to the ten basic entitlements set out in the National Employment Standards (NES).
If an employee is covered by a modern award, you can’t ‘choose’ not to comply with the award – the award applies as a matter of both law and fact and irrespective of whether the employer or employee want the award to apply.
If a modern award applies to an employee, his or her employer must ensure that all award entitlements are provided at all times. For example, many modern awards may impose an entitlement to annual leave loading or other additional allowances.
Similarly, most modern awards contain limits on the ‘daily span’ of working hours and detail when overtime rates must be paid and how these are to be calculated. Employers are legally responsible for providing these entitlements, and penalties are steep.
Many employers mistakenly believe that if they pay an employee a basic rate of pay that is higher than the minimum rate in an applicable modern award, they don’t have to worry about award conditions or provisions.
However, unless the contract of employment makes it clear which modern award entitlements have been incorporated into the ‘over award’ rate of pay, it is more than likely the higher rate will simply be treated as the ‘base rate’ upon which all of the loadings, penalties and allowances in the award must then be calculated.
This means the employee will benefit from a higher base rate as well as higher loadings, penalties, and allowances.
The Fair Work Ombudsman (FWO) – the Commonwealth Agency responsible for investigating employers for breaches of award entitlements – has no ability to definitively tell anyone what award applies to a particular employee. They can only give you ‘general advice’.
It’s still a very good idea to get the Ombudsman to provide their ‘general advice’ in writing for future reference, but nothing can protect employers from future claims that are caused by them applying an incorrect award.
Finally, it’s important to note that modern award rates are generally increased on 1 July each year. This means you need to check the rates currently being paid to ensure they are at least equal to the new minimum rates in the award.
Remember too that it is essential that all award-covered employees are allocated to one of the award’s classifications. If this is not done, it will be impossible to determine whether the correct rates of pay and other entitlements have been or are being provided.
How can SWAG help?
At SWAG Bookkeeping, we compare both time and money data to help our clients find a profitable ‘sweet-spot’ for their business. Contact us for an obligation-free consultation today.
From tracking your hours against projects easily to quickly accessing important documents on the go, there are so many free tools that your small business could benefit from using.
However, we know that researching and understanding what’s on offer can be overwhelming. So, to get you started, we wanted to share three of our favourite, easy-to-use free tools for your business:
Google Drive
A cloud-based tool, Google Drive lets you create, edit and manage documents, spreadsheets and slides for free. It’s just like working with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. To use it, all you need to do is set up a Google account, then you can save your documents to the drive and access them wherever you have internet access. You can also easily send links to your documents, removing the hassle of trying to email huge files.
My Hours
We recently discovered this tool when one of our customers, who charges clients by the hour for consulting work, was having trouble tracking her hours against different clients in Excel spreadsheets. She found and registered for MyHours, and now simply logs in at the start of each day and easily tracks her time against her different clients, even if it’s just 15 minutes here and there. She can now easily view the hours she has worked for each client without stressing about her poorly maintained Excel spreadsheet. MyHours even allows her to quickly and easily turn her records into PDF documents to send to her clients, with visually impressive pie charts automatically created that show her clients how her time was spent.
MailChimp
MailChimp helps you easily set up lists of your customers’ email addresses as well as set up attractive and professional-looking email templates for your regular eNewsletters or other announcements to customers. What’s more, it’s really easy to set up and use! (If you do need help, it’s easy to get someone to help you set up the templates and email lists in a few hours, so that you can start using this really great tool.)
Can we help?
We hope this list of our top three free tools helps you in your business. If we can help further by taking away the burden of your bookkeeping, please just get in touch to see how we can help.