Hi all,
I hope you all managed to have at least a small break during the recent Easter and ANZAC day long weekends. We know that it has been a particularly busy period for our New Zealand clients over the past month with end of financial year duties.
For Australian business owners, the hectic end of financial year period is also rapidly approaching. Fortunately, our latest MYOB Business Monitor research has found almost half of small to medium enterprises start preparing their financial reports well before June 30.
MYOB CEO Tim Reed says it’s heartening to see a high proportion of SMEs getting to grips ahead of time with compliance issues and other matters relating to the end of financial year.
“Preparing for EOFY early means SMEs can start the new financial year on the front foot,” says Tim. “While EOFY is a compliance-driven exercise, it can be an ideal opportunity to draw a line under the previous year and look at what worked for your business, and what didn’t. This way when you look ahead to the next year you’ll have a much better idea of what activity will drive your success.”
Tim offers the following top five handy tips for end of financial year:
1. Take advantage of deductions, write-offs and rebates before June 30. Contact your accountant to discuss the deductions, write-offs and rebates available to your business before June 30. Take action to scrap worthless stock, plant and equipment by reviewing your asset register (which keeps track of your company equipment including items purchased, sold or disposed of).
2. Provide relevant information to your accountant or bookkeeper. Once the previous step is completed provide all necessary financial information to your accountant or bookkeeper. There are several options; for example, have them make a point-in-time copy from your data file in the cloud, or provide them with a secure copy of your backed up files. Check what best suits them.
3. Finalise end of year adjustments. Your accountant or bookkeeper may want to make a number of adjustments to your reports or accounts. Once changes have been updated, lock all accounts relating to that year so that data remains accurate. This will help ensure an easy transition into the new financial year.
4. Create a separate copy of your accounts and back it up. Whether you’re working on your accounts in the cloud or on your desktop, you should seriously consider making a point-in-time backup outside your accounting system that creates a data file for the 2013/2014 financial year only. Carefully save and store your 2013/2014 financial year file elsewhere in the cloud or offline.
5. Prepare for the new financial year. The end of financial year shouldn’t be all reports and numbers. It’s also a good time to reassess and tweak your business plan and ensure you’re on the right path for next financial year. It’s a good idea to review your accounting software and think about how your business can benefit from cloud accounting solutions, whether that’s moving to online accounting or removing pain points by using add-on solutions.
Our preparations for the end of financial period in Australia include hiring dozens of new support representatives. We understand that your time is valuable and that our wait times for phone, LiveChat and email support recently have been too long. We’ve just had new support representatives start work, and several more groups of new team members will be starting in support in the coming weeks. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.
It’s been another busy week on the Community Forum. We warmly welcomed another 260 new members and over 560 posts were made, including 180 from MYOB staff.
Our top contributors this week were @TonyLane, @Julie_A_C, @jenniek, @ronatbas and @Mike_James. Well done also to @TonyLane, @Julie_A_C and @jenniek who had multiple posts marked as Accepted Solutions.
Congratulations also to @gavin12345, our latest Super User.
A huge thanks to all those community members who generously shared their knowledge, wisdom and expertise on the forum this week.
Love your work,
Jason Hill
Community Manager
