All Hail Content Marketing!
By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Events, Sales and Marketing, Solutions.Recently we had a new client join us in the tech/marketing space that we thought stood out! It’s called Hail, a platform for you to collect and collaborate on your content. And it seems as though the timing is spot on for them. Many of our customers talk to us about their needs around their marketing (and often sales but that’s another story) and how they can get their message out there. Who will create the material? How will they deliver it? How can they present themselves as the experts they ARE in their industry? The answer is often, Content Marketing.
p: 03 377 0700
fp: 0800 SIDEKICK
m: 021 708 255
Book a time with me here:
Thanks too to Concentrate for their images regarding the stats of US tech co’s
Fee Funders – Innovative Client Payment Solutions
By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Small Business, Solutions.
Meet Fiona Ashford – or Fi – from Fee Funders. Fee Funders take all the stress out of business by giving your customers a spread payment option while paying cash to your business in advance. And what is best is that they are free for Business Owners. We interviewed Fi to find out more about her too-good-to-be-true service.
So Fi, how does Fee Funders work? Fee Funders provide a win/win for the cash-flow of businesses and their customers by allowing the business to offer customers a spread payment solution. The business receives 100% of customer invoice paid to them, whilst their customer spreads payment over 3, 6 or 9 months. This means the business achieves upfront cash-flow at no cost. Fee Funders manage all the payments via direct debit. Their customer pays a competitive flat interest rate of 1.85% per instalment + a $65 set up fee. And the business owner is paid 5 days after we receive the first customer payment. It’s quick, easy and fabulous for the cash-flow of businesses and their customers. We also pride ourselves in being exceptionally friendly and efficient to deal with and funding applications are online taking only minutes to generate. What clients do you work with? Our financial products assist companies such as Accountants, Goods Suppliers, Signage, Web, IT Services, Dentists, Engineers, Coaches, Entertainment providers, Health and Safety Companies, and multiple other industries. Basically we can help any business who’s fee’s/invoices to their customers are between $2,000-$25,000 and who would like a way to offer spread payments while still getting paid up front. There are only a handful of fee funding companies in NZ. Fee Funders is the ONLY one who extends our services beyond the accountancy and legal professions. What is the number one benefit clients get from using you? Definitely Cash-flow. Cash-flow is critical for any business – regardless of size or industry. Chasing payments is time consuming and costly. When your customers pay through Fee Funders you know that you’ll be paid. As you can imagine, the accounts staff love us because we make their job so easy and reduce their workload! Increased sales is the 2nd best benefit. Our clients tell us that they sell more by having the option to spread payments. You have an app! Tell us about that. Yes – we like to make it easy for our Clients and so a mobile i-phone app that quickly works out the repayment amounts is something that many of them use in the sales process. We also have a great online “quick quote” app that’s available to our clients which shows installment and interest charges for amounts and payment terms. It only takes about 2 minutes for a business to generate the funding application and Direct Debit confirmation online -it’s that quick and easy! If you could give one piece of advice to business owners, what would it be? Make it easy for your customers to pay you! What gets you out of bed in the morning? Other than getting the kids to schools on time, have you ever met someone who just so obviously LOVES their job? – I’m lucky enough to be one of those people. I love our clients. I love our product. I love the solution we provide and the lives it changes. I feel very blessed to be in this position. I also love the continual financial up skilling I get from learning about our other specific financial products we have available through www.fundersgroup.co.nz. If you think you could do with better cash flow options for your business, you have nothing to lose for contacting Fi at fiona@feefunders.co.nz or free phone 0800 333 729. www.feefunders.co.nz
How to Keep Investors on Your Side
By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Contractors, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.This is a featured Blog from our friends at SeederBoard.
Raising funds for any business is notoriously difficult. Any number of factors can slow things down or get in the way, preventing you from taking your business to the next level.
Once you have completed endless elevator pitches, a frantic search for due diligence paperwork, then working out a fair term sheet, you might finally close the fundraising round.
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Good News for Small Business Owners
By . Posted in Business Growth, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.Good News, Everyone!
According to this leading Business Index report, the small business output in Q1 of this year reached it’s highest point since 2008. They state “Small and medium-sized businesses in the UK enjoyed the strongest level of activity, year-on-year, for six years.” Essentially this means small businesses are performing better than they have in years.
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Choosing a Cloud Application – Guest Blog – Link Solutions
By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.No matter what background you’re from, you went in to business to do what you love. Not to spend your time on admin. Reuben Sweeney from Link Solutions talks about what your cool, new-age business needs to consider before choosing the cloud software you think will save you time and money.
It’s tempting sometimes to feel like we’ve reached a higher plane of existence with the rise and prevalence of cloud-based business applications built around the Xero ecosystem. You’ll hear it called The New Economy in comparison to the ‘old’ way we used to do business. Globally New Zealand businesses are pioneering the use and development of cloud-based business applications. New Zealand is consistently at the top of the global list for ease of starting a business and thanks to products like Xero, Unleashed, WorkflowMax, Vend and GeoOp it’s easier than it ever has been to start your business globally with competitive systems, lower overheads and less risk.
With over 380 add-ons, the Xero ecosystem is busy with industry-specific niche applications that will do 90% of what you need them to do all for a small monthly fee.
In the next five years we’ll continue to see the number of applications available increase but some of the slower names disappear. It’s important when researching cloud apps for your business that you consider not just what the product can do for you (feature/functional fit) but where the product is going, what are their priorities, what is being worked on and how often is it being released? It’s easy to fall into the trap of picking one app over another because one will do 92% of what you need it to when the other only does 91%. It’s easy because that’s the way we used to select business applications back when the platform choice was for life and the apps were static. In a cloud environment it’s not the strong that dominate the weak but the adaptable that will dominate the static.
For the first time as users we’re able to cheaply and easily retrieve business information from our cloud-based business applications and have the minimum expectation that the information is live, timely, mobile and accurate. That’s awesome for a lot of things like planning, forecasting and decision making. These apps are allowing our businesses to act and react quicker than our competitors and quicker than we ever have been able to in the past. That’s just the beginning. These are first-generation apps that will quickly become a minimum standard.
We’re already starting to see the emergence of the second generation of apps from companies like Unleashed and Vend. In the new new economy (which it will no doubt be named) it won’t be enough for an app to simply input, organise and regurgitate/dashboard business information to users. They will need to be smarter because the user expectation will shift from demanding information at our fingertips to demanding only relevant, actionable information about our businesses.
The apps that survive the transition (and have already started) into the 2nd generation aren’t the apps that are fighting for the last 10% of function or fit, or the apps that are going beyond and delivering features and functions you didn’t know your business needed. They will be the apps that bring you as a user and based on your user role (organisational roles) relevant, actionable information specific to your identity.
Imagine a world where like an individually tailored newspaper bites of relevant, targeted information are headlined, distributed and announced throughout your business. Instead of a retailer asking ‘what sales have we done today?’, logging into their Vend from Costa Rica and finding out they’ll receive a headline like ‘You’ve sold more of product range X in the last week than you have sold to date’. Wow. The difference is subtle but deep. One is starting to tell a story, asking you questions of you and the other is giving you an answer.
We’re seeing the start of this transition in products like Vend where instead of saying ‘What do I need to order for my store?’ you can have one staff member draft a stock order based on your minimum stock order quantities for each product, have a manager edit and approve it and have an email order automagically delivered straight to the relevant supplier. A product like Unleashed lets you achieve a similar result but for a warehouse. ‘What do I need to order?’ become ‘What’s in my Low Stock Alerts?’. A product like WorkflowMax turns the question from ‘How close am I to budget for this project task?’ to ‘These are the project tasks approaching budget with X% remaining’.
This subtle change in questioning will define those applications that survive the transition into the 2nd Generation of cloud based business applications. Think about what 2nd Generation business applications might look like as you think about what apps might suit your business.
Save yourself hours of app research by calling Link Solutions on 0800 159 672 or emailing contact@linksolutions.co.nz
Reuben Sweeney
021 774 413 reuben@linksolutions.co.nz
Top Tips For Tradies
By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Contractors, Events, Small Business, Solutions, Startups.Sidekick’s National Powered Up Businesses Roadshow brought together hundreds of trades people that wanted a better, easier way to manage their trade business.
We spoke to Andy Burrows from Trades Coach after the event to compare ideas of where trades businesses struggle.(Link to his fantastic blog).
Three issues that we both found important were:
Cash flow, time and cost management-especially for multiple jobs, and blowing the budget.
1. Cash flow
After a long project is over and you have finally been paid, looking at your bank balance can feel great! But if you are a tradie that looks at the $70,000 then thinks you’ve got enough cash for a new ute, you are not working your cash flow correctly.But firstly how well collecting your payments? And if you aren’t getting paid on time, do you know exactly who owes you what?
Options: Payclip– BNZ have a device that plugs in to your smartphone to collect payments for small jobs right then and there. So if you did great work on your maintenance call out and the owner is home, why not get the money now?
Xero: With Xero your debtors are automatically loaded into a projected graph on your Xero dashboard, once you send your invoice off. This means you not only can see in advance when you are due a big pay week, but you can also see which invoices are overdue for payment/who to chase up. Send an invoice from your mobile on the job too, you could charge them for it but it will only take a minute or two.
Now, on top of all of this you need to figure out how much of that money is yours to keep, and how much you need to keep your business growing smoothly and your suppliers paid. Trade businesses have fluctuating income so prepare yourself and make your profits where you can, which leads me to issue two and three.
2.Time and cost management for multiple sites, long hours.
So no brainer, you were busy working on the job, and what time did you finish that job last Tuesday again? It can feel like a chore doing your paperwork which might make you put it off, throw it in the direction of your wife, or get sick of it real quick.This is especially for trades that have multiple small jobs to do like maintenance or plumbing. How are your job quoting systems? Are your staff measuring their time well?
Training your staff and subbies alongside a good system means accurate and quick quoting for your staff, and faster payments. You are also teaching your staff good management, which could benefit them in their trade future. You can learn it together.
GeoOp– It’s quite good if you have an admin lady that answers calls and delegates jobs. She can type the job out as she receives them, and drag and drop them (on the computer) to the staff, who get text alerted with all the details. For the lucky tradie that’s nearest or almost finished, a mobile GPS will lead them to their next job.
With GeoOp, you can utilise your staff’s time and increase your turnover, which means you or your admin can think about marketing, fliers, and getting the guys to drop them in a few nearby mailboxes. Ah, carrying on, but last thing-its integration with Xero pushes invoices, bills and receipts through to the front desk so there’s no double entry. There’s so much to cover, so you may as well utilise a free half hour demo- Vanessa on 021 278 1798 can get you one.
3. Back costing and budget blow outs
Back costing helps you estimate your profit properly. You deserve to make a profit for the work that you do, so charge out accordingly. Once you get in to the habit of back costing you can see how far off you are from your job estimates, and your quotes will adjust to your expectations. At the PUB, about 1/3 of tradies back-costed, so there’s lots of room for improvement.Do you know how to set your budgets? Shaun our CA is passionate about budgeting for success, and will give you a free consultation to talk about how you are setting yours. Call him on 021 644 547. Andy Burrows trades coach blog if you want to check it out.
Thanks for meeting us at the PUB!
8 Tips For Xero Users Before Year End
By aucklandnorth. Posted in Business Growth, Cloud Software, Solutions.You’ll be aware that the financial year is ending as we speak. There are a few things you might need to be aware of. We’ve put together some quick things you need to know as a business owner at this time of year. If you have any questions, feel free to call us on 0800 644 547, we’d love to help you out.
1. Reconcile your accounts
This will give your accounts a fresh start for the year ahead. Reconcile from the dashboard. If you need help charting your accounts to your transactions and you have free phone support in your accounting package feel free to call us.
2. Review Your Receivables
Now this is something you need to do before March 31st as if any of your aged receivables are bad debts, you must write them off as a bad debt expense before then end of this financial year.
To write off a debtor as a bad debts expense, you must determine if there is no reasonable likelihood that the debt will be paid. A clear indication of a bad debt is if a debtor has become bankrupt or has gone into liquidation. In other words, you should only write off a bad debt if you have no hope of receiving the money. We do this so you don’t have to mark bad debts as income for the year.
To review your Aged Receivables Ledger in Xero click “Reports”, then “Aged Receivables”.
3. Have your accounts payable up-to-date
In your Xero ledger, make sure you have your accounts payable up-to-date. Create a list of your bills owed and upload these into Xero Files or manually enter these as money going out as at 31st March 2014.4. Finish off your end of month billing
Complete any outstanding jobs that need to be invoiced out and send them off.5. Complete your March Payroll
Complete your March payroll and enter the payroll tax due for March but payable in April, as an Accounts Payable Invoice. If you use one of the payroll packages that integrate with Xero such as Smart Payroll, then you only need to make sure you have finished the final March payrun.6. Got Stock?
It’s important to set yourself a reminder on the 31st of March to put aside some time to do a stocktake. It’s in your very best interest to do this task, because if you capture the balance of all of your stock on that date, we’ll be able to work with accurate margins and data going forwards.7. Beware of IRD Spam!
There seems to be another round of IRD spam hitting many of our email inbox’s at the moment.Do NOT click on any links if you receive an email from the IRD, it’s more than likely unsolicited mail. There are a few tell tale signs that the email is spam:• Poor spelling and grammar.
• The email often refers to your individual return as an IR4, where in reality an IR4 is for a company return.
• The IRD will very rarely contact you regarding a refund, and even more rarely will they do so via email. • If you have a tax agent (that’s someone like us) the IRD will always contact them directly, rather than go straight to you.
It’s best to err on the side of caution here, the spam email will commonly ask for some form of bank account or credit card details.