Accountants for small businesses can secure the best outcome and success of your business startup. Starting a small business can be intimidating, but the journey can be less daunting with trusted accountants, like SureBooks.
When starting your business, it is important to ensure you have all your ducks in a row. Things like financial, managerial, advertisement and content planning before launching can help save you time, money and stress in the long haul. In this article, we will be suggesting tips and tricks that can help build the best possible foundations for your small business. These foundations can help guarantee the strength of the business you hope to launch, and with SureBooks accounting packages, you have one less thing to worry about.
Accountants For Small Businesses: Financial Planning
When starting a small business one of the most vital things to make sure you account for is financial planning. One of the most significant contributors to failing small businesses is financial mismanagement. Your company’s cash flow, invoices, taxes, payrolls, profits and expenses are just some things that need to be managed efficiently and correctly if you want to avoid bankruptcy and debt.
You also want to make sure that you are tax compliant so you don’t end up with penalties on your income. In South Africa, you can be penalised anywhere between R250 to R16 000 every month on your taxable income for the administration of late tax returns alone. Other consequences of poorly managed finances and financial documents in South Africa include:
- Value Added Tax (VAT) payments that are made late can receive a 10% penalty on the amount, in addition to an interest on outstanding VAT payments. These penalties accrue every month until payment and interest are paid.
- Registered employers can receive a 10% penalty for not filing an employee tax return on time.
- If you do not file your provisional tax return, in essence, a declaration of your estimated annual income during the tax year, on time you can also amass a 10% penalty.
- You can also receive a 20% penalty if you submit an inaccurate provisional tax return, with a rand of 5%-200% if you make an understatement of your estimated annual income.
So perhaps the biggest tip and trick to starting your small business is making sure you can either account for your bookkeeping skills or hire an accountant who can make financial plans on your behalf. Having an organised record of your business day-to-day helps you in the long run.
One of the packages called SureTaxes is a perfect example of how we can help you manage such a consequential aspect of starting a small business. This package is an all-inclusive package from R900 per month that includes the following:
- Compilation of Financial statements
- Provisional and Final tax returns Calculations
- Submission of Annual Returns to CIPC
You don’t want to be sitting with tax returns, audits and renewal of permits every month and at the end of the financial year completely lost. Businesses can benefit from accountants because they help manage this financial data. With an accountant, you don’t have to worry about things as big as tax compliance, to the equally as important but smaller things like reconciling bank statements.
Hiring An Accountant
SureBooks is an accredited small business accountant with partners like the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants (SAICA), South African Revenue Service (SARS) and SimplePay. We are not only accredited by these accounting service bodies, but we are registered tax practitioners with SARS and our leadership is in line with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA). Put simply, these accreditations mean we are a business you can trust with your business.
We have over 20 years’ worth of experience in our leadership teams, with each being an entrepreneur themselves, managing accounts. Based on this, our business model is founded on entrepreneurship needs, as we ourselves are entrepreneurs. So as a starting small business that has transcended into a successful company, we know how challenging it can be. We know what is needed to make it easier, we did it for ourselves so we know we can do it for you.
We are able to analyse business data to create profitability with our real-time reporting technology like Xero, Simple Pay and Receipt Bank. These technological tools do the following:
- Xero is a software company for small and medium-sized businesses that automates your admin by connecting you to your accountant, bookkeeper and bank. We use this tool to ensure efficient accounting services.
- Receipt Bank, known also as DEXT, is an innovative financial management system. We use this tool to simplify receipt and expense management for our customers.
- SimplePay is a payroll system that powers our company’s payroll services.
These technological systems mean we also have complete transparency with our accounting services. It makes the process easier and less time-consuming for you, while also making the finances of your company ethically transparent between us, investors and banks.
SureBooks has a myriad of small business accounting packages available, and even custom quotes for any alternative needs. Some of the things we offer in our packages are
- Reconcile accounts receivable (Employee issues own invoices)
- Reconcile credit card and bank statements up to 250 +
- Xero monthly health check
- VAT: Ensure correct VAT allocations
- Maintenance of fixed asset register
- VAccounts Payable: Weekly reconciliation and management using Receipt Bank
We make sure you’re saving time and managing your cash flow in a way that’s valuable in the long-term investment of your small business. Not only does it help in long-term investment, but it helps external investors and banks know you have organised bookkeeping of your company’s financial health. This means that you don’t have to worry about the financial management of your business, you can get peace of mind knowing you have an organised bookkeeping system.
Financial Investment
Investment is important in any business. Investors are influential to your small business as they can help you achieve your goals and build on your progress. Especially if you are starting out, investors can help you make informed decisions on your financial risk and economic decisions. Investors also empower innovative ideas, which allows you to pursue your passions. The valuable mentorship and guidance investors can provide are worth pursuing.
So, how does one find investors? Well knowing the first things they are generally looking to invest in is the first trick. Companies mainly look at three things before investing. The first is the revenue your company generates through sales and income. The second is having a positive cash flow.
A positive cash flow is an indication that you have enough liquidity to cover the expenses of your business like employees’ salaries, loans and debts as well as your investors’ return on their investment.
Small businesses also have a bigger return on investment (ROI) as there is a larger level of control over costs, and can assure investors will receive a larger amount of the profits. This means that you benefit from having some financial security, and investors benefiting from their financing of your business.
ROI is a performance indicator that highlights how your business uses its resources effectively, and that there is potential for more growth. There’s a clear link between how financial planning can help you, and your accountants, create a business worth investing in and seeing a return on that investment.
Finding Investors
A good starting place for finding investors before finding them is researching private equity firms which could aid in funding. You can additionally advertise on private and public social networking platforms like LinkedIn to broaden and expose your company to a larger audience.
When approaching investors themselves make sure you have a great pitch for why your business is worth their time and money. Additionally. You need to be aware of potential investors’ expectations and communicate from the get-go honestly and directly. Come prepared with thorough research of the companies or people you plan to approach so you can answer any questions they might have.
Most importantly though, make sure to approach investors whose vision aligns with your own and avoid any conflict that may arise by alternative goals. You want support from people who have the same value system as you and can expose you to a greater network of connections. By networking and making connections through your investors, you are able to increase the exposure and competitiveness of your business.
Incentivising Investment
It is important to also have an investment in your business that takes a role of moral support and encouragement. SureBooks, in particular, has a Chief Financial Officer (CFO) package which is great for strategizing how to secure your business’s financial health. By strategizing with a CFO you are able to have a professional in your corner with practical pieces of advice to secure financial investment, budget strategies and long-term goals. Our CFO package offers the following benefits:
- Weekly meets
- Bi-weekly calls
- Executive Reporting
- Virtual CFO
- Strategy
- Measurement And Control
Not only does this offer investment from outside experts, but you are also investing in your business by learning and growing as an entrepreneur. It is a mutually beneficial relationship that incentivises others to invest in you because you are investing in yourself. It also helps with the financial investment of your business because financial investors want to be confident in their ROI.
Businesses trust you if they have confidence in you, which also creates better and healthier communication. As a result, having confidence in your business is crucial to its success, and investing and having others invest in you secures internal and external confidence in your business strategy.
Small Business Accountant: In Summary
Your small business is most likely to be successful by ensuring you have the best possible financial plan, accounting expertise and investment in your business. These aspects ground the best possible foundation for your business and expose you to knowledge and experience you might not have. It saves you time, secures less financial risk, adherence to tax compliance risk and makes your business worth investing in.
These are vital components to building long-term confidence and success in your business. Here at SureBooks, we can guide you in all these vital components and support you in your small business endeavours. We offer multiple packages to choose from and free consultations. So don’t hesitate to engage with us so we can help kick-start your small business.
