Cash is King! Get paid faster with less effort. Instead of you spending hours chasing overdue payments, Xero can automatically email reminders to your customers. Just set and forget. Use the preset timeframes or adjust them to suit your business. Tailor the email message and the days overdue as needed. Or take a more proactive
Over 56? Then this affects you!
There is growing speculation that changes will be made to the tax treatment of Transition to Retirement Income Streams (TRIS’s) in this year’s Federal Budget which is to be announced early next month (3 May 2016). These changes may see a reduction in the tax benefits which currently apply to these pensions and associated strategies.
2016 Federal Budget…should we be worried?
With almost every conceivable tax saving on the table in the last 6 weeks, what’s still left standing for the government to consider? To date the government has ruled out changes to the GST system, changes to capital gains tax and negative gearing (or has it?). What we do know for sure is it hasn’t
Perfect Foundations
At Initiative we use an analogy called the Game of Money to describe the different stages of a person’s financial life. It’s the story we tell people to help take away their fear around dealing with money, and to make money less complicated. Most people say they want to be financially successful, but the sad
Do you need to pay FBT?
Fringe Benefits Tax (FBT) is a tax employers pay on certain benefits provided to their employees (which also includes an employee’s family or other associates). This benefit could be in addition to or part of the employee’s salary or wage. There are many types of FBT, however we will touch on four of them in
Advice for accountants: don’t learn the hard way
Interested to know what Initiative have been up to in the financial planning sphere? Read more…
Happy Easter
I was recently at the shops and was perplexed at the amount of Easter paraphernalia for sale. It seems some hot cross buns and a chocolate egg on Easter Sunday is not enough anymore. Easter is starting to resemble Christmas, when did this happen? There are now Easter trees, tree decorations, bon bons, party decorations, string
St Patrick’s Day
One way of preserving Irish traditions and customs in Australia is celebrating St Patrick’s Day each year. St Patrick is one of Ireland’s patron saints. He died on March 17 in or around the year 493. The legend of the leprechaun and its gold is one of the many Irish folktales shared on St Patrick’s
Xero Tip of the Month – Budgets & Reporting
Budgets are one of the most important business financial statements. If planned and monitored well, a budget allows you to monitor the financial impact of your business decisions and operational plans. Xero accounting software can quickly prepare comprehensive budgets and compare against actual performance on selected periods. Xero can create one overall budget as well
12% Investment Return or 4%? – Avoid Bad Investor Behaviour…
Fundamental to our investment philosophy at Initiative is a study known as the ‘Dalbar Study’. The original Dalbar Study was conducted between 1980 and 2000 in the USA on the top 500 US listed companies. The study found that the average return for the 500 companies over that 20-year time period was 12%, which is
