True business accounting is about so much more than just tax returns and compliance. It’s about looking beyond the numbers to ensure that while your business is meeting its full potential, both you and your employees feel safe and enjoy being at work.
As we enter a new financial year, we’re working closely with our clients to ensure that their businesses are meeting all the new ATO regulations for the year including Pay Rates and Single Touch Payroll. While this does fall under ‘compliance’, it leads us down the path to explore employee contracts, working with Adelaide’s best commercial lawyers to provide you the best legal advice for the future.
Throughout the years, we’ve seen a number of issues with employee contracts, the biggest being the use of templated contracts. Using these templates without customising them to your particular industry or award conditions can leave an employer vulnerable when working with a staff member who may need to be reprimanded for indecent actions.
Your Business Needs Customised Employee Contracts
As society shifts to a stronger online presence with more and more social media platforms in use, it’s important to make sure you can control what’s being uploaded about your business. Once it’s up there, it’s nearly impossible to take back.
Gone are the days of having a whinge about your job at the pub with a mate. This used to be an isolated chat between 2 people, who would often check first to make sure they didn’t know anyone else around and couldn’t be heard. Nothing was written down and it would stay between those few people and that would be the end of it.
We all need to vent our frustrations every once in a while. It’s only natural and you’ll never be able to stop your employees getting annoyed at certain things about their job. But now these complaints have gone digital and employees are posting slanderous comments about you and your business on social media for everyone to see.
And this is the one of the biggest issues we’re facing with our clients and how to rein this behaviour in to make it unacceptable and a grounds for formal warnings or even dismissal.
If you’re using a templated employee contract, it’s very likely that it doesn’t include a social media clause. Without that clause it can be very difficult and messy for you when you’re trying to control a situation when an employee disparages your business online.
Social media isn’t going away – it’s just going to be bigger. And while people are starting to get much more savvy with privacy and understanding their consequences, we can’t assume that your employees will always do the right thing.
More Ways Business Accountants Can Help With Employee Management
As we said before, at Bartley Partners, we’re so much more than numbers. We review a full range of employee management issues and needs that directly affect businesses like yours and offer viable and efficient solutions.
Employee Contracts and Policies
We work closely with you to learn about your business and employees. From there, we set up your employment contracts, employer policies and human resource processes and procedures. Always customised to your business needs, these can help you manage your employees with ease.
When it comes to small businesses who are not large enough to need an entire human resource staff member or department, it’s still important to have a firm understanding how your business will handle anything that would normally fall into this category.
Employee Management & Dispute Resolution
Creating a team of people in a work environment and expecting everyone to get along and be best friends is a naive expectation. Just because your team are all working in the same industry, doesn’t mean their goals, backgrounds and demeanor will all be the same. You’ll always have times when your team will butt heads – and that’s ok.
It’s when things between particular staff members start to get serious that you need a plan in place to help everyone cool off, find a way to work together, and shift focus back to the work at hand.
We provide an outsourced complaints handling process for your employees, giving them an avenue outside their direct chain of command to make serious complaints about misconduct, harassment or other breaches.
Payroll Management
As with any business – there are still numbers to be taken care of at the end of the day.
The team at Bartley Partners are experts in setting up your payroll system, automated super payments, single touch payroll, TOIL capture system, portable long service leave for the construction industry and workcover registrations.
We’re on top of all ATO regulation to make sure that you meet the award conditions and any industry specific issues.
Ensuring that you’re paying your employees correctly and on time is fundamental in keeping them happy and positive in the workplace. It also means you won’t find yourself in and hot water with the ATO and can avoid additional financial penalties.
If you’re a small business who’s looking to team up with an accounting and employee management firm with experience and focus on your business, call Bartley Partners today on (08) 8388 1033 or get in touch online to learn how we can help you.
Cryptocurrency and Tax
/in Business Accounting, Cryptocurrencies /by Chris OvertonUnless you have been locked away on a desert island for the last few years, chances are you’ve heard of cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies operating independently from central banks or governments. Using encryption techniques to generate and regulate production, these currencies were developed to reduce fraud and increase security, the success of which is a hotly debated topic.
While Bitcoin is the most popular, there are more being created nearly every day – there’s Ethereum, Dash and Zcash just to name a few. Now the ATO is actively tracking these schemes via your banking transactions to and from online wallets and you know that they want a piece of the action!
What are the ATO rules on Cryptocurrency?
When it comes to cryptocurrencies, ATO guidelines state that it is an asset, rather than an actual currency. This is due to the volatile nature of these assets and how they can change in value so rapidly.
Due to this economy, the way to declare these cryptocurrencies to the ATO may not be so straightforward.
When you declare the AUD value of your coins at the end of the financial year, you must declare the value they were at the time they were received. So if you were to receive Bitcoin to the value of $250,000 in January, their value could drop to $20,000 by the end of the financial year. When you are declaring this income, you must declare at $250,000.
If value does decrease, it means you’ll be paying taxes on money that you no longer have. It seems unfair, and in many ways it is. But the ATO is simply trying their best to navigate this new form of currency.
Cryptocurrency & Capital Gains Tax
When you sell, trade, exchange from one cryptocurrency to another or use your cryptocurrency to obtain goods or services a CGT event occurs.
If you are turning a profit from the disposal of your cryptocurrency, your gain may be taxed, just as if you were to sell a property or other valuable asset for a higher value than it was purchased.
So, if you purchase $1,000 of a cryptocurrency, and sell 3 years later for $10,000 your gross capital gain can be eligible for the CGT discount. However, if you’re buying and selling cryptocurrencies regularly for a profit, the ATO will treat you as a trader, and you won’t be eligible for the CGT discount.
Accepting Cryptocurrency as Payment
If you’re a business who accepts a cryptocurrency instead of AUD, the ATO sees this as being paid with goods or services. The AUD value of cryptocurrencies is the taxable amount of the non-cash consideration for your goods or services at the time of the transaction.
However if you use cryptocurrencies to pay for goods and services, the AUD value of the payment would be used for tax purposes as if you had paid with cash.
4 Top Cryptocurrency Tax Tips
In short, these are the top things you need to remember before you dive into crypto.
This is a standard part of our tax system and is unlikely to change so proactive tax planning and proactive advice driven accountants (as opposed to compliance driven) are more important than ever.
Ultimately, when you’re dealing with something that’s grown globally and so quickly, without a governing body to liaise with tax offices and central banks, there will often be grey areas and confusion.
Just as the public is trying to work out the best ways to use cryptocurrencies, the ATO is also trying to ensure this asset is fair for all parties involved.
If you’re worried about the tax effect of your cryptocurrencies, call Bartley Partners today on (08) 8388 1033 or get in touch online to learn how we can help you.
Business Accounting Employee Management Services
/in Business Accounting /by Luke EdwardsTrue business accounting is about so much more than just tax returns and compliance. It’s about looking beyond the numbers to ensure that while your business is meeting its full potential, both you and your employees feel safe and enjoy being at work.
As we enter a new financial year, we’re working closely with our clients to ensure that their businesses are meeting all the new ATO regulations for the year including Pay Rates and Single Touch Payroll. While this does fall under ‘compliance’, it leads us down the path to explore employee contracts, working with Adelaide’s best commercial lawyers to provide you the best legal advice for the future.
Throughout the years, we’ve seen a number of issues with employee contracts, the biggest being the use of templated contracts. Using these templates without customising them to your particular industry or award conditions can leave an employer vulnerable when working with a staff member who may need to be reprimanded for indecent actions.
Your Business Needs Customised Employee Contracts
As society shifts to a stronger online presence with more and more social media platforms in use, it’s important to make sure you can control what’s being uploaded about your business. Once it’s up there, it’s nearly impossible to take back.
Gone are the days of having a whinge about your job at the pub with a mate. This used to be an isolated chat between 2 people, who would often check first to make sure they didn’t know anyone else around and couldn’t be heard. Nothing was written down and it would stay between those few people and that would be the end of it.
We all need to vent our frustrations every once in a while. It’s only natural and you’ll never be able to stop your employees getting annoyed at certain things about their job. But now these complaints have gone digital and employees are posting slanderous comments about you and your business on social media for everyone to see.
And this is the one of the biggest issues we’re facing with our clients and how to rein this behaviour in to make it unacceptable and a grounds for formal warnings or even dismissal.
If you’re using a templated employee contract, it’s very likely that it doesn’t include a social media clause. Without that clause it can be very difficult and messy for you when you’re trying to control a situation when an employee disparages your business online.
Social media isn’t going away – it’s just going to be bigger. And while people are starting to get much more savvy with privacy and understanding their consequences, we can’t assume that your employees will always do the right thing.
More Ways Business Accountants Can Help With Employee Management
As we said before, at Bartley Partners, we’re so much more than numbers. We review a full range of employee management issues and needs that directly affect businesses like yours and offer viable and efficient solutions.
Employee Contracts and Policies
We work closely with you to learn about your business and employees. From there, we set up your employment contracts, employer policies and human resource processes and procedures. Always customised to your business needs, these can help you manage your employees with ease.
When it comes to small businesses who are not large enough to need an entire human resource staff member or department, it’s still important to have a firm understanding how your business will handle anything that would normally fall into this category.
Employee Management & Dispute Resolution
Creating a team of people in a work environment and expecting everyone to get along and be best friends is a naive expectation. Just because your team are all working in the same industry, doesn’t mean their goals, backgrounds and demeanor will all be the same. You’ll always have times when your team will butt heads – and that’s ok.
It’s when things between particular staff members start to get serious that you need a plan in place to help everyone cool off, find a way to work together, and shift focus back to the work at hand.
We provide an outsourced complaints handling process for your employees, giving them an avenue outside their direct chain of command to make serious complaints about misconduct, harassment or other breaches.
Payroll Management
As with any business – there are still numbers to be taken care of at the end of the day.
The team at Bartley Partners are experts in setting up your payroll system, automated super payments, single touch payroll, TOIL capture system, portable long service leave for the construction industry and workcover registrations.
We’re on top of all ATO regulation to make sure that you meet the award conditions and any industry specific issues.
Ensuring that you’re paying your employees correctly and on time is fundamental in keeping them happy and positive in the workplace. It also means you won’t find yourself in and hot water with the ATO and can avoid additional financial penalties.
If you’re a small business who’s looking to team up with an accounting and employee management firm with experience and focus on your business, call Bartley Partners today on (08) 8388 1033 or get in touch online to learn how we can help you.
What Does Single Touch Payroll Mean for Small Businesses?
/in Business Accounting, Single Touch Payroll /by Cassandra SturmIf you’re a small business you know that Single Touch Payroll (or STP) is the new way for businesses to report tax and super information to the ATO.
As of 1 July 2019, all small business employers with 4 – 19 employees are now required to report through STP as well as employers with 20 or more employees who are already using this system.
This means that each pay run must be electronically filed with the ATO. Previously, you didn’t have to report wages and withholding until annual PAYG payment summaries were submitted. So this is a big change.
What Does This Mean For You?
If you’re unsure of why this change is happening in the ATO, you’re not alone. While the ATO tells us that STP is simply to make reporting easier. Regular reporting means that annual PAYG payment summaries are no longer required.
The ATO is also changing deductibility rules for non-compliant payments (which they can now see in real-time).
This presents a problem to many small businesses as when you’re running at a smaller capacity, keeping 100% compliant all the time can fall by the wayside.
So if you’re only doing your super and tax deductible once a month, or even once a quarter, it’s time to rethink the way you work – and fast!
What Can Get You In Trouble With STP
There are a lot of examples as to what small business owners are doing which has been perfectly fine in the past, but can now land you in hot water. These are just some examples, but tend to be the most common.
Now that the ATO will know about the above on a live basis, as the directors Fees are not classified as wages and thus must be reported via STP. If taxes are not withheld correctly then the income is still taxable for the director individually, but the expense is not deductible for the company – so it’s a double whammy!
Not to mention that the ATO will now know about that super issue straight away.
What Happens If You Do Get it Wrong
Getting your STP reporting wrong can mean that you’ll have to answer to the ATO and face potential fines and audits.
Getting onto the STP can be intimidating – particularly when you focus on the money that you could potentially lose if you get something wrong. But it doesn’t have to be a warzone. To give the ATO some credit, they are trying to make it easy and it can even be integrated with certain cloud-based accounting systems like Xero! So once you’ve got STP set up and you get in the rhythm it’ll become second nature.
But you have to have a thorough understanding of the changes to make sure you’re getting all that you can out of the system and not making any mistakes.
If you’re concerned that your small business might need some help running Single Touch Payroll, or you just want someone to double check what you have setup, call Bartley Partners today on (08) 8388 1033 or get in touch online to learn how we can help you.
5 Reasons to Hire an Accountant for Your Business
/0 Comments/in Business Accounting /by Irene VatovecIf you’ve started your own business, you know the highs and lows already. The great feeling from getting more clients, doing the work you really want to be doing and being your own boss. But there’s always another side to that coin. Late nights, stress, financial insecurities. But the thing that’s often not talked about is all the administration work that needs to be done and seemingly never ends.
Working on the books for your business is an important, and often time-consuming, job that needs to be done for legal and taxation purposes. And it needs to be done correctly or you could be up for financial penalties and severe audits.
There are two options for this work – do it yourself or hire a pro. When doing it yourself you’re not paying for a professional, but you are paying in time. And is it worth it?
We’ll explore the top 5 reasons that hiring a business accountant is the right choice for your business.
1. It Saves You Time
Just because you’re able to do your own accounting and financial reporting doesn’t mean that it’s the best use of your time. If it takes you 10 hours a month to manage your books and you charge yourself out to clients at an hourly rate of $150 – you’re actually losing $18,000 in revenue a year. Is that an expense that you’re willing to pay for?
Hiring an accountant means that you’ll be freeing yourself up to focus on what you do best and can develop the business to generate more revenue. And a business accountant will rarely cost you $18,000 a year!
2. Reduce Your Risk
Working on your own accounts, at 11pm after a full day of work is not the best way to go about things. Mistakes can be made when you’re running on empty. And when it comes to accounting and tax returns, a mistake can really cost you!
At Bartley Partners, it’s our job as business accountants to know not only your business, but the current government and ATO regulations. We provide a service that will always be compliant with the most current laws and regulations. So you can rest assured that everything submitted is correct and on time. Which means that at 11pm you can go to bed and sleep easy know you’ve made the right choice for your business.
3. Save Money
It’s not just the job of a business accountant to simply follow a formula and submit your tax returns. One of the highs of our job is finding a way to save you money, whether it’s through tax claims, business structure or cash flow management.
Keeping more money in your pocket is what we live for.
At Bartley Partners, we base our success on yours. If we can help your business grow, build revenue and operate more efficiently, we count that as a win. If we’re simply submitting paperwork to the ATO without a deeper look…well that’s something that we just don’t do.
We can help you grow your revenue and profits by being smarter, not by working harder.
4. Find a Business Structure that Works
There are many business structures that you can follow – and finding the right one can be mean that you’re paying for what you don’t need or even stifling your growth.
When you work with the experienced business accountants and financial advisers at Bartley Partners, we take it upon ourselves to learn the ins and outs of your business and future goals. Which means we can set you on the right path as soon as possible to help you get there.
5. Growth Strategy & Management
Growing your business to more staff, more clients and more offerings doesn’t always mean more profits. There are costs associated with making your business bigger. So when it’s time to grow, you need to know the best way to go about it to remain profitable.
We specialise in growth strategies for Adelaide businesses, and know how hard it can be for a business owner to be able to step back and look at their situation from a clear perspective. We love working closely with our clients to identify when it’s time to grow and the best way to get there.
Because your business accountant knows your books so well, it’s easy for us to make call on what’s achievable and identify the best way for you to move forward.
Are you ready to save time, money and grow your profits without having to put in those extra hours? We’re ready! Call Bartley Partners today on (08) 8388 1033 or get in touch online to learn how we can help you.