Blog

Christmas Gifts for Employees: Tax Deductions, GST & FBT

Are you thinking of appreciating your employees this Christmas with a gift or a company party and wondering how to not struggle with tax implications?

Here’s a simple guide on understanding tax deductions and how to reduce your tax bill with all the expenses coming up this Christmas and New Year season.

How Tax Deductions Work for Small Business

Tax deductions are amounts a company deducts as business expenses to reduce its tax liability. Tax liability is the amount of tax a business will owe from its net income. Tax deductions help small businesses lower tax bills by reducing their net income.  

The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) requires businesses to report income and settle tax liability periodically or face penalties for not meeting ATO tax guidelines. Follow this guide to small business tax deductions that can help you make the most of your tax time. 

How to Set Up Payroll for a Small Business

Payroll involves paying employees timely and fairly, accounting for and reporting tax, superannuation, and any other deductions required by law. Payroll can be considered an expansive part of accounting and is an important task for any small business that has hired employees.

This guide will teach you how to set up a small business payroll and can help small business owners like you in keeping track of their payroll process so that your company remains compliant.

Bookkeeping Basics for Small Business

Small business management requires oversight of every aspect of the business. Getting an accurate overview of a business’s financial health is a vital part of decision-making, and that is precisely where bookkeeping comes into play.

Here are important bookkeeping basics that can help you decide between double-entry vs. single-entry bookkeeping, understand the benefits of bookkeeping, and learn key bookkeeping steps to keep your finances in order.

How to Calculate Your BAS & GST

Managing your BAS is a critical aspect of bookkeeping and crucial to the continued existence of any business. However, understanding BAS can be a challenging task if you’re a small business owner or new to running a business.

Here, we provide a complete coverage of how to calculate BAS, GST, and everything else you need to know for tax time. Complete knowledge of filing key business reports can help ensure your business stays compliant while helping you get concessions where possible.

15 Must-Know Bookkeeping Checklist Items For Business

Small and medium-sized businesses must maintain specific bookkeeping processes for efficiency. Since staffing is often limited in smaller companies, businesses can have a lot on their plate and it can be easy to overlook some crucial financial responsibilities. 

Having a checklist to ensure that everything is well accounted for can be the difference between success and failure for your small business. With a bookkeeping checklist on hand, you get to keep your focus where you need it the most: your sales revenue. 

MYOB vs XERO: Which is Best?

MYOB (Mind Your Own Business) and Xero, are both accounting software packages. They both provide great accounting solutions but which one is best for your business?

While both account software packages offer pros & cons it depends on how your business is set up that will decide which one is best for you. 

For example, how big is your business? How many employees do you have? Are you managing a great intake of stock, sales, orders, or do you have a service-based business? All of these factors, and more, need to be taken into consideration to establish which accounting software package is the most suitable for your business.

Ultimately it’s best to speak with a professional bookkeeper who can help you decide on what accounting package is best for you and your specific business needs.
 

11 Must Know Steps for Good Cash Flow Management

If you’re a small business owner, you have to be wise for your business to succeed. This calls for consistent monitoring of your cash flow more than anything else. 

Whether it's weekly or monthly, you need to be on top of your cash flow. 

Checking on your statements gives you insight into income levels and whatever is moving out of your business. If the numbers indicate more income than spending, then you’re doing great. If the reverse is the case, then you need to watch out.

If your cash flow management has not been the best, check out these 11 must know steps for good cash flow management.

The Pros & Cons of Outsourced Bookkeeping Services

Outsourced bookkeeping, payroll and office administration services are fast becoming a popular solution for small businesses. Large corporations have enjoyed outsourced business services and now smaller businesses are starting to take advantage of these services too.

With remote access and an Australian based bookkeeping team at hand, business owners have access to a team of knowledgeable experts working to help their business run more efficiently, grow faster, and make more money. In addition, local outsourced business and bookkeeping services come with lower risks and significant cost savings versus hiring an internal bookkeeper.

12 Must Know Bookkeeping Tips for Businesses

As a business owner, you have a lot on your plate. From managing your day-to-day business operations, working with customers, marketing strategies, networking and keeping everything running smoothly. 

Managing your books, staying in control of your finances and making sure your business is compliant is vital for long term success. 

So, before you spend another late night reviewing spreadsheets, here are 12 essential bookkeeping tips every business should know.

10 things to know this tax time!

Tax time is here and the ATO have developed a list of important things you need to know this year.

Please read the following link for more information:

https://www.ato.gov.au/Tax-professionals/Newsroom/Income-tax/10-things-to-know-this-tax-time/

Are you STP Ready?

Single Touch Payroll (STP) is a new way of reporting tax and super information to the ATO.

Large employers with 20 or more employees should already be reporting through STP or have applied to the ATO for a later start date than 1st July 2018. The parliament has passed legislation to extend STP to include all employers from 1 July 2019 for employers with 5-19 employees (small employers). 

Our new Online Client Resources are here!

At Key Administration Solutions we understand that it can be confusing with all of the different files and documents that may be needed in keeping track of your business accounts or payroll.  With the launch of our new website we now have the capability to host informative and helpful documents behind a login that you can easily download as one of our respected clients.

Businesses need more than an accounting package

More and more businesses are moving towards add-on job management programs to improve work flow efficiency and reduce the need for additional excel reporting, double handling and time consuming paper based systems.

There are a number of new softwares appearing in the marketplace such as Fleetmatics, Simpro, Tradify and ServiceM8.

Single Touch Payroll and how it affects you

Single Touch Payroll will become mandatory on July 1st this year for employers with a head count of 20 or more staff including casuals on 1st April 2018.

It becomes mandatory for all other businesses on July 1 2019.