Recently I was asked ‘what is the best piece of advice you would give to a business owner for staying inspired?’. I could list stacks of ideas that would cover all the usual things like, getting a mentor, reading good books, going to conferences etc etc. But the truth is that business owners are incredibly busy and often to do these things comes at the cost of stopping something more important to fit it in.
The thing that has been the number one regular source of inspiration for me in my business life has been listening to great Podcasts.
Use Taxes are often reverse Sales Tax that businesses self-assess. This is common in US States and Canadian Provinces with PST (BC, SK & MB) which require businesses to self-assess Use Tax on out-of-state/province purchases. Xero goes a great job of managing Sales Tax we charge on our invoices, and even on Input Tax Credits for countries with a GST/VAT style tax. However, managing Use Taxes are a little more tricky.
Xero will not calculate the Use Tax for you, but it can help you accumulate the raw data. The trick is to be able to flag the eligible transactions. The trick here is to create a Tax Code with a 0% rate, and then to apply this all eligible transactions. If you have more than one form of Use Tax then you should set up more than one code.
Summer can be the harshest of seasons on our looks with greater exposure to the elements, especially sun, having an ageing effect on our skin. So it is especially important that you have a professional aesthetician analyse your skin at the beginning of the season to provide you with the correct information to treat your skin according to your specific needs both in home care and in-salon treatments. Choose a salon that has staff qualified in the use of an electronic skin scanner and who will write you a prescription report explaining exactly what you should be including in your home care regime. At this time of the year most people require products high in anti-ageing anti-oxidants, especially Vitamins C, E, F and A.
Xero has just announced that Accel, one of the top US tech investors, has invested $US100m into the company. Xero have always raised funds well ahead of the need – and with half a billing in the bank they are strongly poised to continue their development and rollout in North America. In addition, they have just appointed a new US President. While Xero have yet to make any Canadian changes to the system or put staff in Canada, these new announcements will have positive spin offs for Canada over the next year. Stay tuned for more!!
Fuel Accounting is founded by Xero’s only Canadian award-winning accountant. We are Canada’s Xero Expert!
One of the things we like to explore with clients is an area of their business that rarely gets much attention—but IS ALWAYS CLOSELY SCRUTINIZED BY CUSTOMERS — and that’s the buying process. In other words… how can you make it EASIER for customers to buy from you?
In their excellent book “WAYMISH: Why Are You Making It So Hard For Me To Give You My Money?” authors Ray Considine and Ted Cohn identify several areas where businesses actually make it more difficult than easy to deal with them. And like virtually everything else we recommend to clients and other business owners, it’s very easy to put this right.
Now, before we look more closely at this, I strongly advise you to walk through your own buying process.
Doing this will immediately identify ‘sticking points’ in your sales process that you’ve so far probably taken for granted.
So here are the four main elements of WAYMISH that you need to focus on to make doing business as easy as possible for your customers…
This article is re-posted from the xero.com blog.
I’m not a huge fan of the Super Bowl, but I love seeing the ads. They’re always the highlight of the whole event for a lot of people. This year there was a great ad by BMW that showed a clip of two TODAY show hosts from 1994 who was reading an email address out loud. It was obviously the first time they’d done so. They didn’t know how to pronounce an ‘@’. This led to the perplexing duo questioning “what is the internet anyway?”
It is easy to create a statement for your customers/debtors in Xero, but at present there is no easy way to create a statement to reconcile your suppliers/creditors. Here is a quick way to simulate a supplier/creditor activity report:
1. From the Account Transactions report, generate a report for the month for the Accounts Payable account and export it to Excel.
2. In Excel delete rows 6 and 8 (these are blank and will prevent the filter from working)
3. Switch on the auto filter.
4. Now search the filter for column C for your contact – accepting “Payment: contact” as well.
IMPORTANT: This post is specific to Canada. If you are not a Canada business/taxpayer then it is probably not applicable to you.
Payment Evolution and Fuel Accounting are hosting a breakfast meetup for Xero users on Feb 26 2015 (8am – 9:30am) at MaRS Discovery District. It’s free. Please register at http://www.eventbrite.com/e/xero-online-accounting-toronto-meetup-tickets-15800650170
The last eighteen months has seen some HUGE changes in Xero—our preferred online accounting system. Let’s run down just a few of the significant ones: Files
About 18 months ago Xero added the ability to attach files to any transaction. You can email files in to a designated “inbox” and then move them to existing transactions or initiate a new transaction and have them attached automatically. In our office, and with many of our clients, we now scan all incoming bills and upload them to Xero. We don’t keep the originals anymore! Purchase Orders
Plain language in business is a global move. It’s seen as a human right, given legislation, and supported by case law. Some judges have dismissed accurate contracts in favour of Joe Public in breach, saying that the onus is on businesses to make rules clear if they want them followed. This essentially ends loopholes built on complexity, with one judge calling them “deliberately misleading”. Human-speak
Apart from good old fashioned honesty, plain language is decent. Founded on cognitive science, it addresses lower education, English as a second language, dyslexia, time pressures, and other tricky issues. Busy executives and Government Ministers alike cry out “less is more”. No-one has the energy to wade through what’s known as ‘ego-speak’ and simple words can literally halve the size of documents.
Without question, Google AdWords is one of the best marketing tools to use for your business.
Since it really is one of the strategies you should be using, I’ll use the time we have this month to give you a general overview of how to get results, and in a later issue I’ll do an advanced session on it.
But remember, before launching an AdWords campaign (or any other, for that matter), your website must be ‘FIT FOR PURPOSE’. In other words, it must already churn out enquiries for you—otherwise AdWords won’t work. Yes, it will generate you a ton more traffic, but traffic that doesn’t convert is pointless and a complete waste of money.
In June we travelled to the USA (New York City) to meet with our North American members.
I’m constantly on the lookout for business ideas, things that can be transferred to our business and that of our subscribers and members. So
wherever I visit, I always take time to read the press, watch the news and keep my eyes wide-open for any business that does things differently. (As an aside, this is something I urge you to do as well.)
There was one significant thing I came across, which can have a big impact on your business. Let me explain…
Is there a dead spot in your day? It’s probably a good time to look at boosting your energy. Lack of energy is a motivation crusher for you and those around you. It’s unhealthy too – it leads to bad posture which in turn can cause workplace injuries. And of course lack of energy shows up in your office output or, rather, lack of output.
IMPORTANT: This post is specific to New Zealand. If you are not a New Zealand business/taxpayer then it is probably not applicable to you.
p>Are you planning a Christmas function for special clients and/or suppliers and business contacts? Be aware that this will come under the entertainment regime for purposes of tax deductibility. Any expenditure on food and drink
that your business provides off your business premises will be 50% deductible. This extends to any incidental expenditure on things like hireage of crockery, glassware or utensils, waiting staff, and music or other entertainment provided for the function you’re planning.
One of the business philosophies I’ve adopted for a number of years is that to be ultra-successful, your business must be SYSTEMISED. Even before I read Michael Gerber’s brilliant ‘E-Myth Revisited’ (if you haven’t read it, you need to—it is required reading) I realized the importance of systemization and what it can do for a business.
IMPORTANT: This post is specific to New Zealand. If you are not a New Zealand business/taxpayer then it is probably not applicable to you.
Thinking about giving your staff a well-deserved Christmas Present of Bonus this year? Cash bonuses are always subject to
PAYE and should be put through your standard payroll process. There is a category called “Extra Emolument” designed to avoid overly penalizing lump sum payments. Other non-cash gifts (gift baskets, flowers, vouchers, etc., are subject to the FBT rules. An FBT-free allowance of $300 per employee per quarter is available.
IMPORTANT: This post is specific to New Zealand. If you are not a New Zealand business/taxpayer then it is probably not applicable to you.
So you have a retail outlet and are using Xero to manage your accounting. Great start. But in retail you have a number of settlement issues. There are sales on account, customers may pay on account over the counter, EFTPOS (debit cards) and various credit cards may settle on different days and some settle gross and some settle net of commissions. How do you handle all this?
First, let me recommend that you consider using a Point of Sale system that integrates with Xero. We use Vend, and highly recommend it. Vend has a Register Close function that will handle the balancing of each register and post the appropriate totals to Xero. If you would like to look at implementing Vend please let us know – we are Vend partners and can help you evaluate, implement and integrate properly with Xero.
My eldest son, Thomas, turned 17 last November. Since then, in between his studying, he has been learning to drive (no accidents yet, although his driving instructor reliably informs me there have been a few close shaves!). He will shortly be taking his test, so my wife Helen and I decided to buy him his first car (ouch!).
As always, I can’t help myself in evaluating the sales process businesses use. Most businesses really don’t have any ’process’ at all when it comes to sales and selling and, whilst the car industry is a fairly old and sophisticated market in terms of ’selling’, it’s no surprise to me that there are hugely differing approaches, most of which SUCK.
One of the problems we have in the UK is that once new drivers pass their test, especially at 17 – 21 years old (but in particular at 17 and 18 years old), the insurance companies hike their prices to a ridiculous level. So much so that it just wasn’t feasible to put Thomas on either my wife’s car insurance or mine (the lowest figure was £8,400 a year – yes, that’s eight thousand four hundred pounds!). Typically, most people will therefore drive very small cars with engine sizes of less than 1.4cc.
There are plenty of times when you need to be able to offset Receivable Invoices against Payable Bills. This is usually the case when you working on “trade” with someone (no cash changes hands, but you each do work of equal value to each other – you still need to account for the HST and income tax on these transactions) or where you allow a customer to offset an amount you owe them from their bill.
