We recommend that you discuss this service with your Beany accountant before purchasing

Helping you set business goals & developing and implementing strategies to achieve them

Preparing budgets and input into Xero so you can track how you're going

Quarterly meetings to help reach your goals

Financial benchmarking with your competitors

Success pack

We set you up with the right Xero subscription and manage your payments.

Xero monthly subscription

We will provide you with guidance and support on what you'll need to do to establish and commence running your new business

We can provide advice on the best business structure for your needs and take care of establishment and registrations

Set up your Xero file so it's optimised for you and give you initial training so you start off in the right way

Preparation of a budget tailored to your business and input into Xero so you can track how you're going

Starter pack

We prepare your BAS returns ready for you to review and pay. We also remind you of when and how much to pay, and even send an alert if you forget! Requires Xero.

Prepare BAS

If you would rather be doing something else, let us do your bookkeeping for you. We love coding and checking and you can relax knowing it's all done right, and on time. Requires Xero.

Bank reconciliation

We set up your Xero file so it is optimised for you and your business.

Xero setup

We'll set up your Xero file from scratch, then give you the training you need to use it to its full potential.

Xero setup & training

An hour of training on how to use Xero to it's full potential.

Xero training

If you would rather be doing something else, let us do your bookkeeping for you. We love coding and checking and you can relax knowing it's all done right, and on time.

Large bank reconciliation

Getting payroll right is crucial for businesses, from legal compliance to employee retention. Learn how integrated HR and payroll systems can streamline processes.

FINANCIAL LITERACY  •  27 MARCH 2024  •  2 MIN READ

Ensure compliance and employee satisfaction with accurate payroll practices

Paying employees correctly and on time, and ensuring they get their entitled leave and holidays, plays a huge part in keeping them happy and motivated.

For most people, earning money is a principal reason to go to work each day. It’s also one of the easiest ways for them to measure themselves and their achievements.

While this can all sound obvious, there are many Australian businesses that don't get this right. In 2019, KPMG estimated more than a million people (13% of the total workforce) were affected annually by underpayment of salary or wages, at a cost of more than $1.35 billion. In the years since, there have been more high-profile cases of large organisations getting employee pay wrong, including Australia Post, the Commonwealth Bank, BHP, Optus, and Woolworths.

Business owners and management are ultimately responsible for any pay mistakes and their
consequences. At best, you may have to repay your employees. At worst, you could face
prosecution and fines from a Fair Work Ombusman Inspector, or the Australian Taxation Office (ATO), as well as any interest and potentially expensive legal fees.

Having integrated payroll and HR systems that pull directly from the same data will go a long way towards making sure your people's leave, pay, and tax calculations are accurate, timely, and compliant with the law. It will also make it quicker to identify and resolve any issues.

Let's look at the top reasons why it’s so important to get payroll right for your employees.

Under the Fair Work Act, employers must provide their employees with at least the minimum pay and entitlements outlined in the relevant modern award, registered agreement, and the National Employment Standards (NES).

Most awards or registered agreements also stipulate how often employees must be paid. If not, it must be at least once a month.

Then there are a host of other legal requirements around pay slips, taxes, superannuation
payments and other deductions, leave entitlements and loadings, and correctly calculating and paying public holidays.

By coupling your payroll processes with the oversight of a good HR team, you’ll ensure you're always meeting all your legal requirements and obligations to your employees.

Beany Resources delivered straight to your inbox.

Why getting payroll right is so important for employees

Financial literacy

A good business plan helps you grow your small business with confidence. To write

BUSINESS ADVICE  •  21 FEBRUARY 2024  •  3 MIN READ

A good business plan helps you grow your small business with confidence. To write
one, avoid these biggest business planning mistakes.

The biggest business planning blunders

From what we see at The Business Plan Company, the majority of small and medium businesses don’t do any form of business planning. Usually, if they have ever done a business plan, it was to get finance or a licence, then it sat on the shelf and gathered dust.

When they are written, it's often a scramble by the owner or senior team member to put the plan together in a hurry. Unfortunately, for many small businesses, the process is often quite a haphazard and unprofessional.

There is no disputing that business plans play an essential role in the small business growth journey, as well as being essential tools in getting accreditations, investors and loans. Where utilised well, business plans can transform a small business from a trial-and-error business management style, to one of clarity and certainty. If your plan is being used for an application, it is going to be turned inside out, so you need to make sure it is accurate and a strong representation of your business.

With thousands of plans under our belt, here are the top business plan blunders we have seen.

Before you start, make sure you know who it going to read it. Business plans for particular applications need to include specific information to enable the assessment of your application. That could be a bank employee, council or authority and often there are specific formats and templates that you need to follow, to make that easy for the assessor. Know what they want.

Often business plans are developed by business owners who have just written what they know, from information off the top of their head, without any external research. In plans where there is research, it’s often from low-quality sources and not referenced. Take the time to dig deep and include market research; after all, part of the value of planning is to push you outside your current knowledge.

Everything in the plan needs to be extremely tight, in order to present your business in the best possible light. That means consistent fonts, styles and sizes, no spelling mistakes and being concise and easy to read. As part of your business planning process, have someone else review the plan to check readability, spelling, grammar and formatting.

In order to build your business plans and create a vision for the future of your business, you will have to include assumptions. Your reader, will likely know nothing about your business, so everything needs to be explained very clearly. An external reviewer can quickly point out the areas that need editing and clarification before you finalise the plan.

In your business plan, you will tell a story about your business, so that story must be complete and consistent. As you write the plan, cross-check each section against each other so it matches. Missing or inconsistent information raises red flags with the reader, alerting them that you have not considered all factors.

We have seen all sorts of super ambitious business plans, with high growth and over-hyped projections. If you go too far away from what is the norm in your market, the whole plan can lose credibility very quickly. Use your past trading data and performance to justify your assumptions; if you are a new business, refer back to industry averages.

Business planning is a useful exercise, whether you are doing it for an application or just for yourself. As with anything you want to do in business, it requires skills and knowledge to get the best outcome. A business plan — if you want it to mean anything — is not just a collection of regurgitated data and information cobbled together as an afterthought. If you are struggling, don’t have time, don’t know what to do or aren’t doing any planning at all, get help. There are professionals out there that write plans every day and can simplify the process, produce a significantly better product and increase your chances of the outcome you are seeking.

Business advice

We're excited to share that we won silver at the SME London Business Awards

BEANY NEWS  •  9 FEBRUARY 2024  •  1 MIN READ

We're excited to share that we won silver in the Best New Business category at the SME London Business Awards 2024 overnight 🎉

This is an awesome achievement for Charlotte and the rest of the Beany UK team.

Beany wins silver in the SME London Business Awards 2024

Beany news

The ATO are aiming to remove all hyperlinks from outbound communications by tax time 2024 as a scam protective measure.

INDUSTRY NEWS  •  23 JANUARY 2024 •  1 MIN READ

ATO to remove links from SMS communications to help with ATO-related scam prevention

The number of scams from Australian Tax Office (ATO) impersonators was higher than ever in 2023 with 25,609 reported in the last financial year, up 25% on the previous year.

With significant growth in the use of email and SMS by cybercriminals, the ATO are taking action. Scammers often use hyperlinks to take people to fraudulent websites (such as a fake myGov page) where they then steal personal information or install malware.

To help make it easier for the community to identify legitimate SMS messages, the ATO are in the process of removing hyperlinks from all outbound SMS by tax time 2024. While the Australian Tax Office may use SMS to contact you, they will never include links or ask you to log in directly from a text message. If you need to access the ATO services, always type the url directly into your web browser (ato.gov.au or my.gov.au) to ensure you’re visiting the legitimate website.

For further information, read the full update from the ATO here.

Industry news

Hear from Justine, co-owner of automotive specialists Auto Focus Ltd, as she shares her story, industry trends, and her experiences with Beany

CUSTOMER STORY  •  20 NOVEMBER 2023  •  4 MIN READ

Hear from Justine, co-owner of automotive specialists Auto Focus Ltd, as she shares her story, industry trends, and her experiences with Beany.

Auto Focus Ltd - Automotive specialists helping people go places with Beany

Whether you can replace your own spark plugs or have never changed a tyre, chances are you have your go-to mechanic. Based in Hikurangi, Auto Focus Ltd are automotive specialists servicing the Northland region of New Zealand and beyond.

A locally-owned business, Justine and Kevin opened Auto Focus Ltd in 2017. Justine covers the back end of the business while Kevin brings his 30-plus years of expertise to clients, along with their co-owner Wayne, as they provide everything from automotive consumables sales to vehicle repair services. The company began as a wholesale business, but quickly expanded.

“Well, Auto Focus is a three-pronged business,” Justine explains. “We now supply automotive parts - both retail consumable and wholesale - as well as a mechanical workshop where we do repairs, maintenance and servicing of vehicles.”. With such a diverse business model, the trio work hard to be a one-stop shop for a wide array of clients.

The biggest challenge Auto Focus has faced is probably something all business owners can relate to - the effects of COVID-19. The 2019 opening of their vehicle parts shop came just in time for the country’s first lockdown. “We rely heavily on our day-to-day servicing and repairs of vehicles, so cash flow became very difficult,” Justine tells us. “Despite everything, we had excellent turnover in growth. The issues from March 2020, along with the extreme weather events this year, definitely took a bit of shine off that - particularly the last financial year.”

What’s equally important, Justine points out, is the flow-on, symbiotic effect COVID and any extreme weather event brings: suppliers can’t supply, and clients can’t pay. “A lot of our wholesale customers are farmers and contractors, or work in logistics, transport, forestry, and the like. During the extended wet weather-over the past sixteen months, farmers weren’t able to harvest, so they weren’t servicing their tractors or machinery. Contractors couldn’t work either, the land was just too boggy.”

“There’s a huge flow-on effect. For every month that we have an issue, it takes six months to recover.” Each problem can bleed into the other, which can prove particularly complicated when dealing with the books.

Justine opened Auto Focus Ltd with a healthy dose of accounting experience. Previous business ventures, a job with Inland Revenue, and prior studies meant she was able to open the company’s books with a smaller learning curve. Despite this, Beany was still able to add value for Justine and Auto Focus. For Justine, this value came in the form of earning back some time.

There are many different things that eat up a lot of Justine’s time. “I take care of supplier invoicing, entering it into Xero. That’s probably my biggest job, along with paying bills and keeping on top of cash flow. I am also constantly making sure we meet all of our GST and tax obligations.”

Auto Focus Ltd is paired up with Rebecca, a lead accountant at Beany. “Rebecca is our accountant, and she’s phenomenal. We would be utterly lost without her. She gets back to me really quickly, and has never treated any of my questions like they're stupid.” Beany accountants work closely with each client, and the remote service means they’re far more accessible than traditional accountants.

“One of the best things I ever did - well, two of the best things I ever did - was to open a Xero account, and to contact Beany.”

For Justine, discussing accounting without the jargon was useful. “It would take me aeons to try and work out answers to certain things Rebecca is so quick with. She then goes on to explain them in layman's terms, which is really, really helpful.”

When asked for advice for other business owners, Justine was eager to stress the importance of mental health in the workplace. A healthy work-life balance, she argues, is a means of ensuring both you and your business stay in top shape.

Be realistic - fully understand all of your obligations, not just with regards to accounting, but also to your customers and yourself as a business owner. Do your best to make sure everything is right, you’re headed in the right direction, and that you have fail-safes in place.

Mental health is critical for business owners, so find opportunities to actually take a break. Small business owners often don't get enough time away from the business to be able to focus on family time, and a bit of downtime. It could be as simple as setting up an answering message, so you can have a day where your phone isn't ringing off the hook.

Make sure your insurance is rigorous and covers absolutely everything that you could possibly need. Be it indemnity insurance, insurance for a work vehicle, for stock, or for contents. Whatever it is - make sure you are covered.

Do what you're passionate about. If you're not passionate about it, don't do it.

There are big changes in store for Auto Focus. Kevin is planning for retirement in April 2024. In the meantime, the team are eager to continue servicing Northland with their multi-layered expertise, all while advocating healthy work practices. “When you're lugging around 200-litre drums of oil, things can get quite exhausting! So that's our aim for this year - to find a lot more fun and have that work-life balance.”

We couldn’t agree more, Justine! All of us here at Beany wish you, Kevin, and Wayne the best for 2024 and beyond.

We’re an online accounting firm that is always right here for you, your accounting pain relief. The most advanced technology lets us work way more closely with you than a normal accountant would. ​

We have a dedicated team of certified accountants and a support team to take care of your business no matter where you are, so you can focus on growing your business. We take out the ‘fluff’, break down the barriers and get things done. Looking out for you is what we are all about. Get started for free today.

Customer story

Accountants are typically responsible for financial reporting, analysis, tax planning and compliance while bookkeepers handle the day-to-day record-keeping. Learn more about the difference between accountants vs. bookkeepers in our article.

FINANCIAL LITERACY  •  6 OCTOBER 2023  •  4 MIN READ

Accountant vs. Bookkeeper: What’s the Difference

The terms ‘accountant’ and ‘bookkeeper’ are often used interchangeably, but there are distinct differences. Both roles are important in managing a business’s financial records, but the responsibilities of each serve different and complementary purposes.

In this blog, we’ll answer key questions on:

Whilst anyone can call themselves an accountant, most people are looking for a certified or chartered accountant when looking to engage or work with one. A certified or chartered accountant has spent many years training, studying, sitting exams and carrying out CPD to become an expert in the accounting field.

Accountants are typically responsible for financial reporting, financial analysis, tax planning and compliance.

Financial reporting - preparing financial information which includes profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements and more. An accountant will prepare financial reports and may also prepare management accounts for use by management, investors and other business stakeholders

Financial analysis - reviewing financial information and identifying trends, anomalies, inefficiencies or opportunities. Accountants can help convey what financial data means and therefore assist with decision-making.

Tax planning - Australian tax legislation is lengthy, complex and constantly evolving. Accountants stay on top of the ever-changing tax landscape in order to minimise tax liabilities for their clients while remaining legally compliant. By knowing the tax rules, reliefs and credits, accountants are always looking for ways to improve tax efficiency for their clients, and help them preserve cash for investing back into their business if they choose to do so. 

Compliance - compliance with ASIC and the ATO is a key role of an accountant. All companies have statutory responsibilities in terms of filing documents with ASIC and all businesses have to lodge tax returns with the ATO. Accountants are responsible for correctly preparing these documents and ensuring they are filed in the right place at the right time. 

Aside from these core areas, accountants can also provide a broad range of services related to audit, assurance and tax advisory with many accountants specialising in particular areas.

Bookkeepers focus on the day-to-day record-keeping of a business. They are responsible for maintaining good financial records which are then used by accountants for preparing financial statements, management accounts or tax returns.

Some bookkeepers will have formal education and qualifications, but it is not a necessary requirement for the role. 

A bookkeeper's key responsibilities include data entry, reconciliation of accounts and managing accounts payable and receivable. 

Data entry - the key daily task of most bookkeepers. Most bookkeepers will now maintain a business’s financial records in software such as Xero, Quickbooks or MYOB. The software will reflect all transactions the business has been involved in and will ‘code’ these transactions to a particular income, expense or balance sheet code. Bookkeepers are responsible for ensuring these transactions are recorded accurately and completely, including the coding of GST where applicable.

Reconciliation of accounts - Reconciling bank accounts and credit card statements is a method of checking that the record-keeping has been carried out correctly and ties back to the ‘real world’ i.e. ensuring that what the accounting software thinks the bank balance matches what the bank says the bank balance is. This process helps ensure the accuracy and integrity of the business’s records.

Accounts payable and receivable - this refers to the entities that the business owes money to (accounts payable) and from (accounts receivable). Some bookkeepers may be responsible for chasing late payers and managing payments to suppliers but this depends on the agreement between the business owner and bookkeeper. Not all bookkeepers will carry out these tasks.

1. Do I need both an accountant and a bookkeeper for my small business?

The majority of businesses need an accountant as they will likely need support in filing documents with ASIC and tax returns with the ATO. Meanwhile, some businesses may not require a bookkeeper if the business owner feels confident in carrying out the day-to-day record-keeping themselves, especially if the number of transactions is low.

For larger or growing businesses, having both an accountant and a bookkeeper is beneficial. An accountant will ensure you are staying compliant, minimise tax liabilities and advise on the performance of the business, while a bookkeeper will look after the day-to-day record keeping. Having both frees up the business owner to focus on running the business.

2. Can a bookkeeper perform the same tasks as an accountant?

We don’t recommend that you use a bookkeeper to carry out the tasks of an accountant unless they are also a certified or chartered accountant.

A chartered or certified accountant will have a much greater understanding of more complex financial matters. They will have undergone extensive education and training in order to perform the more complex tasks and responsibilities required to help you in the running of your business..

3. How do I choose between an accountant and a bookkeeper?

Consider what you need support with. If you’re struggling with day-to-day record keeping then you may need bookkeeping services.. In almost every case, but especially if you need support with financial statements or tax returns, tax planning or financial analysis then you should engage an accountant.

4. Are accountants more expensive than bookkeepers?

Yes. Accountants will usually charge a higher rate than bookkeepers because they have undergone more training and are able to support you with more complex workthan a bookkeeper. 

Accountants and bookkeepers both play an integral role in running a successful business, with each bringing a specific skill set. They complement each other, with bookkeepers handling the day-to-day financial operations and accountants supporting higher-level strategic decision-making. 

We’re an online accounting firm that is always right here for you, your accounting pain relief. The most advanced technology lets us work way more closely with you than a normal accountant world. ​

Elevate your small business with strategic business planning - get expert tips and insights to create a winning business plan that fuels growth and success. 

FINANCIAL LITERACY  •  26 SEPTEMBER 2023  •  3 MIN READ

Elevate your small business with strategic business planning - get expert tips and insights to create a winning business plan that fuels growth and success.

Business Planning Made Easy: Just Answer Four Questions

Small business owners are not big on business plans - that’s my conclusion after 25 years as a small business consultant, thousands of conversations with owners and personally writing more than 2,000 business plans. For most of them, the enemy of business planning is the business plan – the formal, structured document that sits on a shelf and no-one looks at (except maybe the bank). The result is that the practice of business planning is seen as irrelevant, too hard or too expensive. Not knowing any better, without clear direction, purpose or a set of targets that everyone works towards, the business can easily fall short of its potential.

Business planning is a practice - not a single event - something that you do every day and week. For small business owners, changing the mindset to one of actively planning and reviewing is the hardest part, but this can harness the power of business planning. 

Getting back to basics, there are 4 questions that you ask in business planning. Let’s look at each question and explain what’s involved. 

This question involves getting out of daily operational mode and taking an objective look at where the business is up to – internal and external. Businesses have a lot of moving parts, and you need to know what is happening in all of them. At least once per year, business owners should remove themselves from daily operations to take a bird’s eye view of the business. To really know how your business is performing and where it sits in the market is the crucial first step. It can be useful to have some external expertise to do this. What you assume to be true may be changing without you knowing; just look at taxis, newspapers or travel agents as a few examples of industries caught unawares. 

Financial performance, deep dive on all metrics

Marketing performance and new marketing strategies

This part would seem like the easiest part, but really pinning down specific targets and goals can be more challenging than expected. Do you want to grow, expand, introduce new services or even sell the business? Setting clear targets, goals and objectives that everyone can see and work towards means that, in the day-day hubbub of business, you make decisions that take you in the right direction. 

Financial goals – make them detailed so you know all costs, profits and other metrics. 

Business goals such as awards, employee satisfaction, new sites, markets or products. 

Lifestyle goals for you as the owner, such as less time at work.

Road maps are not very useful without directions, coordinates and milestones, so this question addresses the steps and stages involved in achieving your business goals. It will need you to develop the detail, such as timelines for activities, milestones, actions for development projects, schedules, plans and budgets.

When you are documenting your plan, you will include descriptions of the initiatives that will underpin the goals, such as:

Marketing plans, partnerships and business growth strategies

The first three questions should be developed in a process of dedicated review, with an annual calendar ideal. But to make business planning effective, tracking your results against the plan creates the greatest value. Working with your plan every month, week and day is where the results will come from; if the actions and goals from your plan is not in your diary then they probably won’t happen, so take the big picture goals and turn them into weekly and daily tasks so they stay top of mind. Check milestones each month, sales targets every week, tick off the projects and market as per the schedule. If you aren’t on course, find out why so you can get back on track again. 

Getting the mindset in place is of much higher importance than the format of the plan itself. Many of the business plan formats available are designed for bank applications or government, not for real operating businesses, so keep evolving your own to include the content that you need to steer your business to its destination. Don’t be afraid to get help either, as a professional can work with you to make sure the plan is created and then keep you on track. 

From what I see, it’s very easy to get a great return on your business planning investment. 

We speak with entrepreneur and business mentor Jay Allen, owner of My TrueNORTH, as he discusses helping people, fixing unemployment, and his secrets for success.

CUSTOMER STORY  •  21 SEPTEMBER 2023  •  6 MIN READ

My TrueNORTH shows businesses to trust their compass with Beany

What does the word ‘success’ mean to you? UK Business coach Jay Allen helps business owners answer - and then achieve - just that. As a leading Ethical Coaching Company in the UK, MyTrueNORTH aims to aid and support 1,000,000 business owners to significantly and sustainably grow both themselves and their businesses.

After being medically discharged from the British Armed Forces, Jay turned his focus to entrepreneurship and has since opened or acquired several successful companies. He launched My TrueNORTH in May 2014, after noticing a common key problem - small business owners were too busy with the day-to-day of their job to focus on their goals and growth.

“We look at your end goal in mind, work backwards, and then ask ‘Is what you're doing right now effective?’” Jay explains. Working alongside his clients by getting to know their businesses innately, Jay teaches his strategies for success through workshops, Masterclass programmes and one-on-one mentorship.

As a business coach, Jay knows all about barriers to success. One of the largest, he says, can be self-inflicted by simply “not thinking big enough”. Setting the wrong targets for success can limit business owners and hinder them from realising their true potential. For instance, when starting My TrueNORTH, the goal was to support 10,000 businesses.

“We're seven years in, and we've just crossed the milestone of helping 8,000 people. In the next 18 months or so we’ll hit our original target.” Jay explains. “If that had remained our target, well...we’d have slowed down. We'd have said, ‘That's it then isn't it?’.” Bringing his growth strategy back in line with his mission statement of helping businesses, My TrueNORTH decided to think without limits. “Whereas about four years ago, we reviewed, and we revised. Are we thinking big enough? Now, our current mission is to eradicate unemployment in the UK.”

According to Jay, there are 759,000 people currently actively seeking employment in the UK. “We want to support enough small businesses that we create 759,000 new jobs in the job market.” Part of this approach involves providing businesses with a survey designed to help them take a step back and consider the big picture. “Before we even start working with the clients, we invite them to complete a survey. We've had 117,000 people already complete the survey, of which 8,000 have subsequently done some work with us.” The report generated from the survey, Jay explains, adds value to any business. “The rest of them get their report and say ‘Well, that was sufficient to know what to do next.’”

Adopting such a growth mindset requires a combination of high-level thinking and loyalty to the overall goals of the business.

“The challenge is thinking bigger and not getting too caught up in the details. It’s about asking ourselves - how can we make our goal exist in reality? If the vision and our values are big enough it will resonate with people.”

As a highly experienced entrepreneur, Jay is no stranger to working with accountants. “This is my fourth business. Beany are our fourth accountant in the last seven years, and the tenth accountant in our last four businesses,” he tells us. “I've also been fortunate to be a guest speaker at the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants international conference and at the ACCA Regional Conference, where I've met hundreds of accountants.”

We were absolutely thrilled to hear we’re helping Jay achieve his dreams of helping business owners.  “My experience with Beany has been - in a word, transformational?” Charlotte and Clare have been, according to Jay, a great fit for the My TrueNORTH mission. “It wasn't like you hit a six - the ball is out the field! We now see Charlotte and Clare as not just an extended part of our team, but an integral part of our team.”

As well as being an accomplished entrepreneur, Jay has previously worked with the accounting software company Sage, meaning he knows a thing or two about accounting. “Nothing has been difficult or overly complicated. Even if it was for me, it certainly wasn't for Beany.” Jay also made a point to mention Beany’s friendly and accessible approach. “There’s this overarching ‘we're here to help 24/7’ feel…that's where you set a new standard.”

"I have never met anybody as proactive, as professional, as courteous, and as forward thinking as I've had in the relationship that I've got with Beany."

As a business coach and mentor, Jay is full of tips, strategies and ways to turn an idea into a success. He shared these golden nuggets with us:

I would always say start with the end in mind and work backwards. Don't get caught up in the detail until you know how the detail is contributing towards the outcome you want to achieve. Always take time to map and measure the things that are irrelevant to whatever you want to achieve.

It's so easy to get caught up in doing the doing that in actual fact, your job as the visionary is to be able to step back from this and attract other people to contribute towards your vision. Stop thinking you're the best person to do everything in your business and make yourself redundant from doing the doing. Instead, attract other people to you that have a better (and bigger) influence on your vision and values. Step out of the way and ask yourself "Well, how best do I contribute towards achieving this?"

There's a lovely quote from Churchill from 1954. He said "A man's greatest strength is to first acknowledge his own weakness." Look at people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos - both of them, if they have one thing in common, is to ask for help early. Just be cautious of who you ask it from!

Never simply look up to somebody - you'll always be disappointed. Look into them and find out what inspires you. Then, you’ll be able to light that fire inside yourself and recognise other people can also be inspired by you.

What does the word success mean for you - both personally and professionally? Make sure the two are aligned, and one has the capacity to deliver the other. Make sure everything you're doing today is contributing directly to that outcome. If not, it's time to either review it, revise it, or stop doing it.

For Jay, it’s all about using everything he’s learned as a launching point as My TrueNORTH continues to expand and help others. “We've really drilled down the niche for where we want to spend the next seven years. We've spent the last seven years becoming comfortable with who we were, and why we are here, and the next seven years will be focused on finding ways to support people better than we have already.”

With relationships formed and contacts established, My TrueNORTH now has the capacity to help businesses thrive in a variety of ways. “We have focused on supporting a breadth of people, so much so we can now explore the depths of ways we support people.” The health and longevity of a business are key goals for Jay, he explains. “There is so much content that we have now to be able to help businesses become what's called a ‘business for good’ - which predominantly means working towards sustainable profitability.”

“By 2026 I want to be able to celebrate having supported or witnessed the creation of 55,000 new jobs.”

So do we, Jay! Thank you for taking the time to chat with us - and we wish you all the best in your journey. 

We’ve bundled everything you need into our core package which covers all of your year-end compliance, tax minimisation and support as one fixed cost split over 12 months. You’ll never get a surprise accounting bill again, that’s a promise. 

Your package includes financial statements, tax returns (company and 2 shareholders), ASIC annual fee and filing, tax planning, management and minimisation, and unlimited advice and support (including for Xero).

Completing and filing your entity tax returns, plus returns for 2 shareholders

Completing and filing your annual ASIC returns

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