It’s November, Have You Thought About Your Finances?

The year is coming to a close, and as a business owner you need to start thinking about the holiday season, how your cash flow will be impacted and how you’re going to kick off 2021.  Below we discuss some of the ways people and businesses create revenue and the things you need to think about.

Your Rental Property

For the mum and dad investor, the Healthy Homes changes will have far-reaching consequences that you need to understand before it comes into full effect on 1 December 2020, especially if you have an older rental property built before say 2005. It covers:

• Heating
• Insulation
• Ventilation
• Moisture and drainage
• Draft stopping

I guess now is a good time to weigh up the pros and cons of owning a rental, the pros being that your property is increasing in value exponentially, rents are on the increase and interest rates are on the decrease, demand for rentals has gone crazy and you can guarantee with government policies none of these is going to change soon. Against the benefits of owning a rental, you have the draconian laws brought in by the current government, like, the Healthy Homes standards, the tenancy law reforms and taking away the ability to claim rental losses against other income.

I suggest also that if you manage your own rental property then you seriously need to consider having a property manager to manage it. Be aware though that not all property managers are the same. I suggest you don’t go for the big companies, instead find a little boutique management company with a good reputation, (ask around).

Rentals usually start off with a cash flow negative situation, however with the advent of low-interest rates and higher rents they soon become cash flow positive and will provide a better return than depositing your capital with a bank. The only other way to get a return on your capital is by putting your money into shares, whether it be the share market or an investment broker, but that’s another story for another day.

I suggest you look at the following links 

https://www.tenancy.govt.nz/assets/Forms-templates/compliance-statement.pdf

Planning for Christmas

If you are a small business owner, then you should know the importance of planning for Christmas to ensure that you don’t run out of money during the holiday season.

There is nothing worse than going cap In hand to your bank manager saying that you’ve run out of money when it’s too late, it certainly doesn’t inspire confidence in you as a business person, that is if he hasn’t gone on holiday himself.

So what to do, look at your past historical information for the previous three years as to what sales came in over Christmas and compare this with what’s likely to come in this year, now do the same with your expenses.

Consider any other one-off expenses, have you accounted for holiday pay and also remember that a lot of people go on holiday over Christmas and worry about paying their debts when they get back. If you are a new business person then your figures will have to be based on projections.

The important thing is to do some planning now, if you are going to be short, talk with the bank now while things don’t look too bad to get an overdraft.

Read before you sign – unintended consequences

A client came to us with a contract from his lawyer, it is unknown if it was intentional or not but it would have severely limited his choices of accountants and subsequently increased his accounting fees by a considerable amount.

Make sure you understand what you’re signing before you sign it.

HAVE WE GOT YOU THINKING?

Contact us if you’d like to talk about financial forecasting and budgeting.

TAX DATES TO REMEMBER

·  20 November. 2020 – monthly employers PAYE payment…

·  28 November. 2020 – Bi-monthly GST Return for Sep/Oct 2020…