Business Startup Advice

Congratulations from A One Accountants, we are happy that you have taken your first steps into opening and starting your own venture, and we are looking forward to providing you with the highest standard of business startup advice to ensure success for you and your business. We will guide you and support you every step of the way on how to start your own business, while providing you with business startup advice that comes from our extensive knowledge and experience with starting small businesses, to help you make the best decisions. We first enclose and send you a set of documents, which will form a part of your company file.

Enclosed documents relating to starting your business may include:

  • The company constitution
    • This document is the governing document and sets out the rules regarding how to run your company. We would recommend familiarising yourself with this document, since you may need to refer to this when running and managing your company.
  • The ASIC certificate:
    • This certificate proves you are registered with the Australian Securities and Investments commission. (ASIC). You would be required to renew this membership each year by paying a review fee.
  • The Ancillary documents:
    • You would also find share certificates and director’s consent documents with a list of other documents enclosed. You should organise a meeting of members and sign each of these documents for your documents to be valid and be made part of your company file.
  • Proof of ABN TFN, GST &PAYG registrations (As applicable):
    • We would have enclosed evidence of above registrations as applicable and you should be able to verify these from the ABR portal within 1 week of the receipt of this email.
  • Other documents:
    • Based on your request we could have attached other documents including our invoice for the service. You should print all of these, sign where indicated and have the files ready for the next steps.

When thinking about how to start a business, it can be hard to know where to start, so we have outlined a step by step process for you below and we can also provide you with business startup advice during any step of the process to help you carry out these steps to start your business.

STEP 1: Open a Bank Account:

The first step most people take is to open up a bank account. To do this, you would ideally make an appointment to see a business banking manager with a recognised baking institution.

STEP 2: Initial deposit:

Standard shares issued are 100 Shares @ $1 each unless otherwise specifically requested by you. You would be required to deposit the share capital into your bank account.

STEP 3: Register and link business bank accounts with a recognised cloud accounting software. We can provide business startup advice regarding what the best software to use would be based on your business activity.

STEP 4: Add us as your advisors in the accounting software:

You would generally be required to go to the users section and add us as your accountants, once you have opened up an account with a recognised Australian accounting software provider.

STEP 5: Sit back and wait for us to complete the rest of the process.

Once you have completed the above steps, we can provide the below services for starting up a business in addition to providing you with business startup advice, depending on the services you chose to avail when you signed up to register your company or for accounting for your company:

  1. Setup the accounting software and connect this to your bank account.
  2. Add employees and provide training in regards to how to run payroll for your staff.
  3. Setup employer superannuation account based on directions from you.
  4. Setup Work-cover insurance with a provider of your choice.
    • Please note: there are only 5 providers in Australia that provide work-cover and the premiums are regulated. This means regardless of who you choose you would be required to pay the same premium based on your industry classification. Providers list is as under:
    • Allianz
    • CGU
    • Gallagher Bassett
    • Xchanging
    • EML Vic

 

  • Register your entity for Single touch Payroll. (Only if you have employees)

Step 6: While we carry out the above processes to start your business, you should consider the below insurances for your business and your personal circumstances. If you do not have a current association with an insurance broking business or a financial planner, we can recommend some to you as part of our business startup advice that we provide. We do not receive any commissions on kickbacks from who we refer you too. We only ask them to provide quality advice and service. In case you were unhappy with the service provided by someone we referred you to, kindly share your experiences with us.

  1. Business Insurance
  2. Public Liability
  3. Keyman Insurance
  4. Director’s indemnity
  5. Audit Insurance
  6. Business interruption insurance
  7. Property developer’s insurance (for property developers only)
  8. Personal insurances
  9. Other insurances as may be applicable to your business

Step 7: A Business Plan:

Although accountants can prepare business plans, the most accurate one can only come from a business owner and this is you. We suggest you sit down and get used to using excel sheets and chalk down your first budget. The below basic fundamentals should be followed. We can provide great business startup advice to help you make a business plan and we could provide a template to help you do this, however we recommend making one yourself, since you would be required to do this quite often as a business owner. For property developers we have a detailed template which we shall be able to provide to you upon request.

As a minimum the below annual costs should be included in your proposed budget:

  • Annual Sales
  • Less:
  • COGS (Purchases)
  • Payroll Costs: (The biggest outflow for a normal business):
  • Rent
  • Utilities
  • Bank Charges
  • Loan interest
  • Other costs (As applicable)

Step 8: Legal Contracts:

We suggest you have a solicitor onboard to help you advise on legal matters pertaining to the business, as legal matters are not included in the business startup advice we provide you with, as we are not qualified legal professionals. These could be in relation to a contract of sale, franchise agreement, and so on. With regards to employment contracts or other contracts, there are many online websites that you can use to build one yourself. We can act on your directions and prepare one for you should you need our admin assistance. We could also refer you to a solicitor if requested.

Step 9: Tax planning and accountants’ consultation:

We believe that you would have undertaken most of the steps associated with starting up your business at this stage, so now it is time to organise a free tax planning session for your business with one of our accountants, where we can give you business startup advice to help you plan ahead and save as much as possible on tax in the future. At this point a client manager will also be assigned to you, who will go through a checklist to ensure that everything has been achieved as a part of your business startup.

Step 10: Ready to trade: You should be confident in your process and go out and make money. We want our clients to succeed, because if you do, we do too. Best of luck.

 

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