Helping You Know Your Numbers Xero is beautiful accounting software. That’s easy for us accountants to say, but working with Xero over the past eight years we’ve seen the difference it has made in so many businesses, both small and large. Xero helps you better understand your numbers, saves you time around invoicing and keeps track of your expenses, making it easier to run your business. To help you know… Read more
When you’re reviewing your investments, it’s important to remember that income and returns come from two main sources, Capital Gains and Interim Income. Capital gain (or loss) This is the difference in the overall value of your investment between when you purchased it and now (or the date that you sold it.) You can work it out as: ((Current or sale price per unit – purchase price) * number of… Read more
Record your log book easily utilising GPS technology. If you use a vehicle in your business that is not exclusively for business then you need to run a log book for 3 months every 3 years detailing your trips and what they are for so you work out what percentage of your travel is for business use. This percentage is then used to calculate the amount of expenses related to… Read more
How does Your Business Profit Measure Up? Are you happy with the Profit you are currently making in your business? If not, what can you do about it? You first need to understand what Profit is and how it is derived. What is Profit? The formula for Profit is: Sales – Expenses = Profit Profit is what’s left over, after you’ve paid all your expenses How to Increase Profit Profit… Read more
If you want to increase sales on your e-commerce site, you should not only focus on traffic but also on your conversion rate. The higher your conversion rate, the more money you can make with the same number of visitors. Here are five tactics to help you increase your conversion rate. Test Testing is an important part of improving your conversion rate. Split testing can help you determine what aspects… Read more
What systems do I need and how do I get the most out of them. At last count in our accounting firm we had 16 different systems that we use on a daily basis that all cover off a different part of our business functions. The amount of systems that businesses run has changed significantly over the last few years as it has become a lot less expensive to develop… Read more
With social media, you can connect with business associates quickly and creatively. But this communication mode is not without risk. A thoughtless post can offend customers and other business partners and damage relationships rather than build them. By following a few ground rules you can be confident your comments and posts will be appropriate ones. Abstain From Posting or Tweeting Certain Information If you aren’t sure it’s acceptable to post… Read more
If you think you can or you think you can’t, either way you are right. I was speaking at a Mike Pero Real Estate conference in Rotorua several years ago and one of my favourite quotes that I shared with the conference attendees was Henry Fords “If you think you can, or if you think you can’t, either way you’re right”. I told them, that it is a little known secret,… Read more
With the new financial year upon us it is a great time to establish some financial targets and import them into Xero so you can compare your actual results versus your targets (or budget). What we find, is that the understanding of the financial make-up of a business is enhanced significantly when you set targets and then report against those targets and get curious about the variances. Some good tips for… Read more
Xero have released the long awaited Payroll functionality for the NZ version ready for use from 1 April 2015. Xero’s payroll functionality includes the standard features of payroll software in terms of calculating pays, managing leave etc but it also includes the ability for staff to login and view their leave balances, pay history and submit leave requests. As you would expect from Xero the User Interface looks nice and… Read more