Business Assist and Mentoring

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Some of you may not be aware of a service that supports businesses in the area and is subsidised by  councils. Nelson Tasman Business Trust (Business Assist) is exactly what it says – they exist to help businesses, small and large.

You simply make contact through their website https://www.ntbt.co.nz/ . You will be offered a free consultation and they will outline how they can help. They hold workshops on subjects such ass Digital Marketing, Wellness, Leadership and Succession planning on a regular basis. There are many more subjects covered besides. Most of these training sessions are either free or have a small cover charge.

Business Assist also have a Networking morning tea every month. So you can meet other business owners and share any wins, problems, or successes. Meeting other business owners makes you much less isolated.

NZ Business Mentoring

If you need more personalized help they can offer business Mentoring in conjunction with Business Mentors NZ. Call Business Assist or register at https://www.businessmentors.org.nz online for a mentor. Gina will assess your needs and find a match of skills that you are missing. Sometimes it is easier to work with someone who is less emotionally involved with your business and give you good practical help.  “The experienced and independent viewpoint of a Mentor is invaluable”.

It may be that you need to grow your business and need direction as to how; or you may be a newbie to Digital Marketing and need some help with that; you may need help with a specific project.

“Having a Mentor inspires confidence and gives clarity on the direction of the business.”

Having been in business myself and used the services of a Mentor, I can highly recommend them.

Just remember you are not alone in this journey, use the services of lawyers, accountants and places like Business Assist to help you along in business.

Planning for Taxation for Savage & Savage Clients

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Planning for Taxation for Savage & Savage Clients

Death and taxes are the two guaranteed things in life, and we’d like to help  our clients to plan more successfully for taxes. (death is a bit beyond us 😊) We are happy to sit down with you and discuss your individual needs.  Make an appointment with Pauline or Sari and the first half hour will be at no charge. You will only get charged for any time over the half hour.

 

Pauline or Sari will go over your known tax situation if your 2022 tax return has been has been filed. They will factor in things such as your personal circumstances, any major asset purchases you anticipate, any positive or negative changes to your monthly income, etc. We can also show you how to monitor your monthly Xero or MYOB Profit & Loss. That way we’ll  recommend  an appropriate amount to put aside each month for tax. Hopefully, this will take some of the stress re tax planning away from you 😊.

 

Pauline is available by phone (03 548 4894), e-mail (Pauline@savage.co.nz) or Zoom.  Sari is still working from home and is available by phone (03 548 4894), e-mail (sari@savage.co.nz) or Zoom.  Give one of them a call today to make a time.

E-Invoicing

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There has been a lot of noise made by the government lately about E-Invoicing. There seems to be a lot of confusion and people think that if they are already sending their invoices by e-mail they are e-invoicing, so what is the big deal? Actually E-Invoicing is a little different. And it is not an advantage for everyone….

E-Invoicing explained.

E-Invoicing goes one step further than sending invoices by email. Xero, MYOB and a few other accounting packages now have the ability to send the invoices directly into your accounting software. So there’s no need to print or manually key incoming invoices into your software package. They simply show up in your “Draft” Bills to pay in Xero for example. From there you allocate them to the correct code “Cost of goods sold” for example and approve them if you agree. This follows on from our last post explaining that physical copies of many invoices will no longer be required by IRD from next year.

What is the advantage?

The main advantage for our clients, is that for your regular suppliers, you will no longer need to print off or key in creditor invoices from registered suppliers. You just approve them. No more losing invoices to junk mail, no more endless hours of keying bills, no more clogged up inboxes.

What do you need to do?

Here is the catch, and this depends on your own business and how many suppliers you have.

  1. Enter your own NZBN into your own software (For Xero – Settings/Organisation Settings). Do this once only
  2. Sign up to e-invoicing (for Xero we can do this for you or talk you through this, it takes about 5 minutes. Please note the Xero online instructions available are not yet applicable). Again, you only need to do this once.
  3. Find out if your bigger suppliers have signed up too. There is a handy little Excel spreadsheet of those already signed up on the link at the bottom of the page
  4. Enter your suppliers NZBN number in your contacts (it is on that spreadsheet mentioned above). This will take the longest, so I would recommend doing just one or two first, and see how you like it.
  5.  Send your supplier an email letting them know your NZBN number and that you would like to receive e-invoices. Job done!!!

Your invoicing

You can also send your invoices via the same route, but if your customers are mostly non business people, there is a lot of work for not much advantage.

If you invoice regularly to other businesses, you may get requests to sign up.

Regardless of what you decide to do, e-invoicing is here to stay, and it would be prudent (and time saving for the future) if you were to include a businesses NZBN number into every new contact you enter into your software. The link below also tells you which software companies have the capacity to e-invoice. They are using a global company PEPPOL. You can continue to use Hubdoc (provided free by Xero) if you are using this currently – this is also a good option, but to use this you forward on emailed invoices to Hubdoc and then insert them into Xero. The advantage of this is that if you go to look at a supplier invoice that was entered via Hubdoc, you can see the original invoice emailed to you in Xero.

We can explain more in detail if you are interested.

https://www.einvoicing.govt.nz

 

Changes in GST record keeping

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Good news for the trees, the planet and your storage cupboard!! IRD are introducing changes in GST record keeping in two stages that will reduce the amount of paper storage required for businesses.

There have been some smaller changes regarding GST effective 30.3.22

Buyers of goods had to keep a physical tax invoice to be able to claim GST for anything over $50. With the changes, a bank statement, contract, supplier agreement or electronic tax invoice is sufficient for expense claims.

Sellers still need to produce tax invoices over $50.

There are also changes to Buyer-created invoices (where the buyer determines the price perhaps by weight of the goods etc.) and also shared tax invoices. These are more detailed, and do not apply to many, so if this applies to you, click on the link above.

More changes are coming….

Many more changes are coming in April 2023, these changes mean no more invoices for purchases under $200. You can use a bank statement line to show who you paid and when. However, remember to note on your payment what it was for.

For purchases between $200 – $1000 you will need to keep a record as before, but an electronic record is sufficient. For those who use Xero, there is already provision to store your invoices in Xero. No more printing out! The buyers details are not required.

Over $1000 a full copy of the supply with all details are needed. No paper required.

Of course these are all proposals. IRD have yet to fully explain all the changes, so we will keep you up to date as changes are finalised.

These changes in GST record keeping are a step in the right direction in reducing paperwork and compliance. Let’s face it, the trees on the planet can be used for better things than tax invoices.

Personal Tax Rate increase

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From the 1st April the top tax rate is set to increase from 33% to 39%.

If you have a company that pays dividends you should do this before the end of March so it can still be taxed at 33%

Talk to us urgently for tax advice around this and other matters relating to your personal tax situation if you are likely to be impacted by the increased tax rate.

Planning to pay the correct tax is important for many reasons, but especially for your business’ cashflow, no one likes the surprise of a tax bill at short notice. We do our very best to ensure clients stay on top of their upcoming tax payment obligations but talk to us if you have any queries.

A great source of business news

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If you’re looking for information about about law changes, setting up a business, places to get help and so much more then you should check out www.business.govt.nz/news

This is a government run site that highlights all the information business owners need.

We recommend subscribing to the regular e-newsletter.

Covid-19 Short-Term Absence Payment

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Financial support for businesses to pay people in situations where they cannot work from home and need to stay at home while waiting for a COVID-19 test result.

What is it?

The Payment is a one-off amount of $350 for each eligible worker (full or part time) that is unable to work from home while they are staying home waiting for Covid-19 test results.

Who is it for?

  • For a person, employee or self-employed, that is staying home while waiting for their own Covid-19 test result.
  • Can also be for a parent or caregiver of a dependant that needs to stay home while waiting for a Covid-19 test result
  • A household member or secondary contact of someone who is a close contact to a person with Covid-19, and the worker has been advised to stay home while waiting for the close contact’s test results

Criteria

Test must have been taken on or after 9 February 2021. The payment can be applied for up to 8 weeks after the test, but not retrospectively if the test was taken before 9 February 2021.

Payment cannot be paid for workers who:

  • Doesn’t have Covid-19 symptoms and involved in routine testing or not been notified through contact tracing to stay home
  • Are returning international air crew
  • Are currently overseas
  • Are staying in managed isolation facilities
  • Are an employee of a State Sector organisation or SOE

Business can’t apply if receiving other Covid -19 wage subsidy or leave support scheme payment for the same worker.

Applications

Application must be completed by the business, not the worker. The self-employed or contractors can apply directly.

Payment can be applied for once in a 30 day period (for each eligible worker)

Apply online using MSD online form https://www.workandincome.govt.nz/covid-19/short-term-absence-payment/how-to-apply.html#null

Xero Starter Plan update

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Did you know Xero have recently made some big changes to their starter plan*?

No business is too small for this Xero Starter plan, whether you work alone or employ a whole team you can spend less time working in spreadsheets and more time working on projects.

What’s changed?

  • Unlimited bank reconciliations

Xero has removed the limit on bank reconciliations so you can keep a close eye on money coming in and going out

  • Send 20 invoices a month

Xero have increased the invoice limit to 20. That is roughly one invoice for each business day in a month

Xero’s Starter Plan has all the tools needed to keep track of your accounts no matter how small your business, including:

Online invoicing and quotes made easy

  • Send up to 20 personalised, professional invoices and quotes each month. Plus, set up automated invoice reminders and spend less time chasing payments.

Paying bills is painless

  • Enter five bills each month, see when upcoming payments are due, schedule payments and batch pay multiple suppliers in one go.

Simple bank reconciliation

  • Keep track of cash flow effortlessly with bank reconciliation in Xero. Save time on admin and get daily updates on your business.

Capture bills and receipts with Hubdoc

  • Automate manual bookkeeping tasks like entering bills and receipts. Hubdoc extracts key information from each bill or receipt so it’s ready to copy into Xero.

If you are thinking about making the move to Xero, give us a call or email and we will be happy to assist ?

Contact Ellie Harris for software support and training, she can tell you about all the options you have.

*Note that all other starter plan inclusions and limits remain the same.

Xero – Saving Files in Xero

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Did you know that Xero has an inbuilt online file management system? With Xero file library you can keep all your files (i.e. receipts, bills, images) organised in Xero.

The file library is located under your organisation name on the left-hand side of your blue taskbar.

Your Xero file library contains an Inbox and Contracts folder, and you can add any additional folders you need.

Using the Xero file library is easy, either:

  • upload files to the file library (left-hand option) or
  • email files directly to the Inbox folder (right-hand option, using your unique Xero inbox email address)

Whenever you see the attachment icon in Xero, you can then attach these files to individual transactions, items, and emails.

Follow this link for more information on how to use files in Xero: https://central.xero.com/s/topic/0TO1N0000017kqDWAQ/files-in-xero#business

Our In-House Software Training and Support Specialist

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Ellie Harris – B.Com
Software Support & Training – ellie@savage.co.nz

Ellie Harris has been working for us for a number of years and as a recent B.Com graduate, with experience managing our tax system and working with clients on various compliance matters, she has now become our in-house software specialist.

Ellie has a number of Xero certifications, has experience working with MYOB products and has been developing her knowledge on all payroll matters – from employer payroll obligations to implementing payroll systems most suitable for your business.

Ellie can help you migrate from one accounting system to another, set up your new accounting software systems for you, advise on a range of solutions that will help you run your business accounting needs easily and efficiently and will be running training sessions for our clients in small groups so you get lots of one-on-one assistance with using your accounting software. She is also available for individual training in our offices or can even visit you at your workplace. Some of this is free to clients so if you need help or advice contact Ellie to arrange a time to meet with her.

Watch this space for upcoming free training courses.