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Staff Spotlight - Kirsten Rose

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An overview of the new Trusts Act 2019

The Trusts Act 2019 comes into force on 30 January 2021 and is the first major Trust reform in New Zealand in almost 70 years. The aim is to make the law more accessible and easier to understand. Most of the changes relate to Trustee obligations and strengthening the ability of beneficiaries to hold Trustees to account.If you have a Family Trust, or are involved in a Trust in some way, you must make yourself familiar with the provisions of the Act and ensure your Trust is compliant....

Dairy Farmers - Know Your Numbers

Following the announcement of Fonterra's annual results last month, Shelley and Kirsty joined four local regional managers from Fonterra at the Cambridge Rural Professionals meeting on Wednesday morning. Aside from the financial result, the team gave an overview of The Co-operative Difference. This is a framework designed to help farmers produce high-quality, sustainable milk and aim to prepare farmers for changes needed in the future. The Framework has five areas of focus and when all five step...

Setting Sales Targets

Setting sales targets for your business is standard practice for any aspirational, growing company. If you’re going to stretch the sales and marketing teams, it’s important to have clear, unambiguous targets for them to aim for. But what happens when a crisis looms?In uncertain times it’s more than likely that your pre-crisis sales targets will effectively become unrealistic and impractical for your teams to use.So, how do you set sales targets during a crisis? And how can you ensure these...

Inspirational podcasts for your business

Podcasts can be are a great source of inspiration. You can listen to them anywhere, from your morning commute to your walk around the block, or even while you're cooking dinner.   The current crisis has challenged normal business activity. With all the stress, it might just be time to challenge your thinking and consider where you want your business to head. Are there opportunities you can grab? These podcasts might provide the inspiration for your business planning or just something i...

Staff Spotlight - Denise Hare

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4 burning questions SMEs are asking

This time last year, you might have been pondering Christmas bonuses or booking your summer holiday, but with a completely different business landscape in front of us, your head is no doubt filled with different questions. Here we explore four common topics keeping Kiwi business owners up at night. ...

Are you paying yourself too little?

You probably didn’t get into business just to make money, but it is (and should be) part of the equation. Getting your salary right is an important part of a healthy business. Pay yourself too little and your bills will go up as your motivation goes down. Too much, and you might be at risk of breaking the law – many countries have rules around how much business owners in different sectors can take out....

Have you seen our new website?

If you've walked through our doors, you know that we love to get to know you. We wanted our website to reflect the truly personal approach that is Shelley Tweedy & Associates.  The website boasts a fresh new look and user-friendly navigation and it's been updated with all the latest information about us and our team. Huge shout outs to Sirjana & Ben from Tinted Photography and Ella from Layers by Ella for your incredible work on our photo shoot. We are absolutely thrilled with the results!...

Succession planning for small businesses

It takes guts to start a business. It also takes a strategic mindset to succeed.Business owners are no strangers to weighing risk and navigating uncertainty, but the current climate has dialled everything up. Many business owners face the uncomfortable position of having to remap carefully thought-out succession plans and exit strategies and to consider selling their business before they’re ready and, possibly, for less than it's worth....

The obvious and unexpected benefits of having a personal budget

Having a personal budget is essential to gaining control of your personal finances. Budgeting doesn’t necessarily mean restriction; it frees up your money, so you know exactly what’s available to spend....

Does your business have a CRM tool?

Having clean, up-to-date information and data about your customers is a vital part of running your business. But recording, tracking and accessing this customer information can be tricky if you don’t have the right tools to get the job done. Client relationship management (CRM) tools offer a fast and effective way to manage all of this customer information. A CRM solution provides one central hub for recording all your customer data. This data could be the basics of customer name, address and ...

6 Reasons To Look at Your Financial Reports

Making time to look over your financial reports each month is an important task for any business owner. If you are not taking the time to do this, either because you’re too busy, or perhaps you don’t really understand what you’re looking at and it doesn’t make sense to you, then here are 6 reasons we recommend that you should start to.But before we get our 6 reasons, let’s talk very quickly about which reports to look at. At a bare minimum, and depending on the complexity of your busin...

We are open for business during Level 2.

If you are planning to visit our office during Alert Level 2, we ask that you: Do not visit our office if you are feeling unwell, are over 70 or have an underlying health condition.Use the sanitiser available at the reception deskMaintain physical distancing of at least 2 metres Use the NZ COVID Tracer app or our visitors register to sign into our office for tracing purposes Meet With Us If you wish to keep your distance from us, we totally understand. We have Zoom set up if you w...

5 Ways to Boost Mental Wellbeing at Work

While lockdown wrapped up in June, the impact on the labour market, the workplace, and relationships within it, is far from over. It’s still a confusing and challenging time for many business owners and staff. If you’re a business owner or manager, there’s a lot you can do to support your staff to maintain positive mental health and in turn, keep your business profitable. Studies say ‘happy employees are more likely to be productive employees’ (Kaplan et al., 2009) and ‘employee...

Five Ways To 'Do Good' By Your Staff

You could be selling the most innovative product on the market, using slick systems and the hottest marketing campaign in town, but if you don’t have good people - good luck! People are everything in business. That’s why it’s so important to know your employer responsibilities and how to manage the employment process to ensure high productivity, a solid reputation, and attract and retain staff that love their work. Here are five ways to 'do good' by your staff:Celebrate! Write down o...

Cash Is Not Profit

The purpose of a business is to make money, and that means you have to know the difference between profit and cashflow. Net profit is what you have left after you deduct all your business expenses from all your revenue. You change net profit only by changing the things that affect revenue and expenses. For example, if: You renegotiate with your suppliers, you may get stock cheaper, or carry less inventoryYour staff engage with customers better, you can learn more about what they do and don’t ...

Fringe Benefit Tax

Given the importance of keeping your PAYE and GST record-keeping and payments in order, it might be tempting to think that Fringe Benefit Tax, or FBT, is a relatively minor thing. But don’t be fooled. In 2017, Inland Revenue created a dedicated audit team to focus on this issue. One of the team’s aims is to ensure employers have the right business structures and documentation in place. And it turns out that many don’t. If this sounds like you, now’s a good time to put things right. Regar...

COVID-19 Business Support

Since late March, the Government has announced a number of measures to support small and medium-sized businesses get through the COVID-19 crises....

Livestock Values 2020

Inland Revenue have recently announced this year’s livestock Herd Scheme Values and we think this is a great opportunity to update you on the latest movements. The Herd Scheme Values are the National Average Market Values as determined by a process involving a review of the livestock market as at 30 April....

Welcome Tania!

We are super excited to welcome Tania Brockelsby to our team this week! Tania has worked for accounting firms in the Waikato and Dunedin and comes from a Dairy Farming family. She loves to travel and is already impressing us with her techy skills! Tania will work in a newly developed role, designed to support our team of Chartered Accountants. Huge welcome Tania, we're thrilled to have you on board!...

Feel The Love: How Raving Fans Can Rock Your Business

You may have heard the term ‘raving fans’. It’s a passionate subset, usually about 10-15% of your customer base, who are so in love with your business that they shout it out from the rooftops. They keep coming back, not because it’s convenient, but because they want to. And even if you’ve had a bad moment, they’ll stick with you while others shoot out the door. These people are GOLD, and the very best ambassadors for your brand. So how do you go about reciprocating their loyalty and ...

Pricing Your Services

High, low or somewhere in the middle? Where to pitch realistic charge-out rates is a common conundrum faced by small trade businesses. In fact it’s probably one of the most difficult tasks. You have to be careful not to under price as this will reduce profits, but at the same time, overpricing for labour and material mark-ups could turn customers away. Setting charge out rates is just as important as market awareness, product development and advertising. You can do all these things excellently...

Debtors & Cashflow

If your business isn’t strictly ‘cash over the counter’ you probably already understand the work - and the pain - of chasing money from overdue payments. Sadly, profit means nothing if the cash is not flowing; cash is king. And with the current environment, managing cashflow has become one of the most important things to making sure your business survives the COVID-19 pandemic. Good debtor management can make a real difference to cashflow in your business. Poor debtor management can be a m...

Ways To Pay Your Tax

The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) has changed the way that you pay tax. This particularly affects those that usually pay their tax via cheque. If this was you, your new options are:  By cash or EFTPOS at Westpac You'll need to have a barcode to ensure that your payment goes to the right place.Barcodes are usually printed on returns, statements or letters from the IRD. You can also generate a barcode from the IRD website, which can be printed or shown on your device. ...