– you’ll need to ensure that you have clean
financial statements every month. Growing
your business often relies on bank or investor
finance and this requires ready access to good
financial statements.
This gives rise to the question of whether you
should do your own bookkeeping or consider
outsourcing it to a bookkeeping service to
provide you with regular up-to-date reports and
good financial control.
When it comes to managing the money of your
fitness business, if there’s one task you need
to do internally it’s reconciling your members’
direct debit payments. This is made easier with
a number of billing companies that integrate with
specific membership software. The other tasks,
such as accounts payable, payroll and BAS
(Business Activity Statement), can be outsourced
to a bookkeeping service.
Many business owners also worry about
having control. Of course, you should have total
control of your business’ money, but that doesn’t
mean you personally have to enter all the bills,
compute payroll and lodge your BAS. If a business
takes over $1,442 per week ($75,000 per annum) it
needs to be registered for GST and submit a BAS.
To really control and drive their business, the
owner/s should be able to sit down at the same
time each month with last month’s profit and loss
statement, balance sheet, bank statement and
membership summary, to clearly consider how
their business is performing compared to any
targets they have set.
Reviewing your profit and loss statements, and
setting financial targets (cash flow plan) are made
much easier if you get your bookkeeper to provide
a profit and loss multi-period spreadsheet. This
shows any number of months all on the one page
in separate columns. This can help you identify
the trends and calculate averages – especially
expense averages – so that you can calculate
your business’s break-even. When reviewing
their accounts some owners even pay a business
mentor or coach to sit in as a guest director.
To succeed as a business owner, you should
recognise where your strengths and weakness
are – then do the work where you are most
effective and consider outsourcing where you are
least effective. Doing so can help maximise your
business growth and value.
Looking to free up
time and resources?
Network Members looking to outsource their
fitness business’ financial management can
receive a free detailed Customer Assessment
Survey with Vertaccount, a company that
provides complete accounting services to
small and medium-sized companies. For more
details email [email protected]
Getting on track
Picture the scene: kitchen table, invoices, receipts, payroll time sheets, already
late for the quarterly BAS – all after working a 12-hour day. Plus, add a neglected
and unhappy partner into the mix for good measure. Sound familiar? Keeping the
business books up-to-date is an essential element of any business, but it’s one that
most leave to the last minute.
So how can you avoid this recurring headache?
1
Schedule a regular weekly appointment in your diary to manage your financial
affairs: two hours should be the maximum time you n eed to allocate.
2
Review your financial platform, be it MYOB or Xero.
3
If applicable, review your club management software and investigate how
best data can be manipulated into these programs. There is an abundance of
software solutions, and you simply have to find the right fit for your business,
but do not ‘over-software’ your software. These new technologies afford a
product like iconnect360 great flexibilities by combining most things in one
easy-to-use, paperless platform streamlining existing manual processes and
needless double entry of data.
Integrating your accounting platforms with tools such as iconnect360, credit card
billing and banking accounts is critical to get right and will require expertise to establish.
Once you have it set up, however, it can save you a great deal of time and resources.
Regardless if it’s big or small, you have a statutory obligation to file your quarterly
BAS and annual tax returns. Nobody wants the ATO to come knocking. If you or a
trusted member of your team are very number-savvy and have a good understanding
of business accounting, then you may be happy to manage your business’ financials inhouse. If you’re not, then consider outsourcing this area to an expert who can manage
it more quickly and efficiently, freeing up your time to run and build your business.
As well as being a cost-effective solution for many businesses, outsourcing enables
a third party to gain an understanding of your business and then help you make informed
business decisions. It also removes tedious data entry, of course, and when the time
comes to submit those quarterly BAS or annual returns, it’s simply an email away.
Ask for help, get an assessment of your systems and technology, and you may be
surprised by the improvements that can be made – including getting your life and your
kitchen table back!
David Hayes recently took the giant leap from mobile marketing to bookkeeping with Vertaccount
because he was constantly confronted with clients who were great at marketing but lousy in
financial management. Saving businesses sounded like a good business idea. vertaccount.com
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