Accountants who are responding to the challenge of proactively supplying a range of Business Advisory Services to clients should include on their list of duties a number of activities which may be referred to as “peripheral activities” but which, in many businesses, do not receive enough attention and each of these items can either save costs or add to income.
- “Waste Management” – Is a key management challenge that needs to be measured if it is going to be controlled. For this reason “Waste Management Measurement” firmly falls in the duties of an accountant performing a “Virtual Chief Financial Officer” service.
The business’ leadership team and the accounting team need to develop an awareness of the importance of managing waste.
Waste is defined as “anything within the process, people or structure that is wasteful” including space, time, parts, people’s potential and more.
Accountants performing a Business Advisory Services role can assist the leadership team by ensuring that, at the regular business review meeting (hopefully monthly), a discussion is held about what is happening relative to waste on the workshop floor, shop floor, office, hospital, surgery, manufacturing plant, transport systems etc., to get a full understanding of the potential for waste reduction and the costs of the current wastage.
It is generally accepted that there are 7 major waste areas:
- Overproduction
- Waiting (Delays)
- Transport
- Extra Processing (inappropriate or excessive processing which does not add value to the customers)
- Inventory (extra inventory increases costs)
- Unnecessary Motion (any movement that is not adding value)
- Defects (costs involved in rejects or reworks)
- “Identification of Grants That Might Be Suitable to the Business” is another “peripheral activity”.
One such grant is the “Export Market Development Grant”.
If your client is an exporter irrespective of their business entity and the businesses spends more than $15,000 on legitimate export market development activities in 2020/21, the business could be eligible to claim an Export Market Development Grant of up to $150,000 as a partial reimbursement of expenditure that the business has undertaken to promote Australian products and services.
An Australian-based business that is pitching their promotions to overseas’ residents to visit Australia (e.g. accommodation provider, leisure activity business such as white water rafting, Barrier Reef cruises) are also able to register with Austrade for this grant to reimburse expenditure that they have incurred marketing their activities to overseas’ residents.
Applications have to be prepared for the full financial year activities ending on 30th June 2021.
The Export Market Development Grant Application deadline for the 2020/21 year is 30th November 2021.
- “Benchmarking” – is also a peripheral activity that accountants can beneficially utilise to identify how the client’s business compares to data obtained from a group of “peer businesses”.
The benefit to your client is that they receive an analysis of how their business stacks up against their peers. This type of analysis will highlight any “problem areas” that, at the very least, require some examination to see where changes can be made.
2021 is going to be a challenging year for most SMEs and many businesses will appreciate proactive accounting assistance to make them aware of a whole range of activities that might benefit their business, including the peripheral business activities mentioned in this article.
ESS BIZTOOLS and ESS BIZGRANTS include a wide range of material to assist accountants to deliver Business Advisory Services to your clients.
You are most welcome to visit: www.essbiztools.com.au and www.essbizgrants.com.au (where you can trial one company for 2 weeks to see how the grant program works).
If you’re interested in obtaining a free, no obligation overview of the Business Advisory Services product packages developed by ESS BIZTOOLS, which are suitable for your clients, please “Book a Demo” (your investment one hour) on the ESS BIZTOOLS’ homepage or contact Peter Towers:
Email: peter@essbiztools.com.au
Telephone: 1800 232 088
12 Eclipse Street, Rowes Bay, Townsville. QLD 4810
www.essbiztools.com.au
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