As the year draws to an end, it’s a good time to reflect and look at all the areas you could have done better in the business. It is usually best to do this before people go off on their holiday festivities. That way, it is fresh in your mind what challenges you have experienced and where your strategy for the upcoming year needs to focus. This process of reflecting is great for a company of any size, it is however, more instrumental for SMEs that are still growing and need to put structure to their growing business.
As your business grows structure becomes very important, if you have gone from the 3 employees you started with and you now have 20 team members, it is good to start considering a proper payroll process. It is a real problem when businesses that are still growing pay their employees but don’t issue pay slips, and often enough the record keeping of these salaries is poorly kept as well. What this does is it creates a lot of unnecessary frustration for you as employer and for your employees as well. A good payroll system will mean the automation of your process, reliable record keeping and structure to this key process.
Earlier this year, when, due to the lock down a lot of businesses were financially affected, the government stepped in to assist employees via the Unemployment Insurance Fund. While this was a relief for some, it was a disaster for small business owners who had not registered their businesses and staff for UIF. These are some of the administrative tasks that any business owner needs to attend to for situations such as these. It is their legal obligation to register their employees. If you found yourself in this situation this year, or you are starting out and realise that this is an area you need to sort out, we at SNC- TAX offer our service in compliance and will help register your business to be in adherence to all relevant statutes. This will include other registrations including PAYE and COIDA.
While a number of businesses struggled this year there are some that happen to have done very well during the pandemic. If you happen to be part of the lucky few, then it means that your business’ cash flow has increased. If your accounting was not following a well-structured approach you stand the risk of not fully enjoying the benefits of that extra income. If your finances are not well managed you may compromise the life span of your own business. Now, you may ask, what if I don’t have the expertise within the business. An increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their accounting services, and we are in the business of managing the accounting for various businesses.
Enter into the new year with a clear perspective on what you would like to do for your business to move to a better level, to improve productivity, to better manage your human resource and finances. It’s been a tough year, however, that should only be a motivator to go into the future better prepared for any uncertainties that may rise.
