Sam IRD mail doing the rounds - AGAIN

Be aware - the spam IRD email is around again. If you receive an email along the lines of "Dear valued member, After the last annual calculations of your fiscal activity, we have determined that you
are eligible to receive a tax refund of 254.90 NZ Dollars. Please submit the tax refund request and allow us 2-3 days in order to process it. DO NOT CLICK ON LINK

Unleashed - online Inventory Software

Here at Astill Hawke & Associates we are proud to announce that we are now a partner of Unleashed - online inventory software.

This is a fantastic SaaS product that links in with Xero.

Check them out www.unleashedsoftware.com

Networking – The Way of the Future

To many observers, networking is the way of the future for small to medium-sized businesses. Essentially a network is a group of enterprises pooling their talents and resources to get results that otherwise would be impossible.

The Benefits to business:
 Sharing the enormous amount of expertise now required to survive in business
 Overcoming common problems of limited resources, limited skills, limited capital base and overall insufficient critical management skills
 Gaining access to a repository of knowledge in relation to markets and other suppliers and their products
 Overcoming barriers for growth through lack of financial resources and marketing expertise
 Accessing new markets, customers and suppliers
 Increasing muscle from their combined strength, ensuring they can continue to compete in the future
 Overcoming the difficulties of insufficient size – while successful in their own right, many SMEs are too small to be competitive head-on with major companies
 Providing a scale of economy or buying power and offering a broader range of financial and human resources with which to expand their businesses
 Producing individual items and services that, when put together, create a product that none of the members could have produced on their own

Click here for your local Xero Accountant

Time Poor Society

Consumers are bombarded with advertising and most of us do our best to avoid it. It’s up to the advertiser to think beyond the realm of traditional advertising. Here are just a few reasons why much advertising just doesn’t work any more:
 Ads in the newspaper are often glossed over – many of us have precious little time to read the news let alone the ads.
 Advertising material in our mail boxes is weeded out and dropped into the bin – we’ve only got time to get the important stuff.
 Advertising material in our email boxes is especially tedious – we get enough messages as it is; spam gets deleted without even being opened.
 And on the TV, ads are often muted, fast-tracked, or simply not seen – that’s the time to make a cup of tea, chat to your partner, or, if you’ve taped the programme to watch later, skip to the end of the ad break.

DARE to be different – make people react!

Click here for your Auckland Xero Accountant

Monitor Business with Business Measures

Every business owner needs reliable figures to regularly check on business performance.

A valuable set of measurement data to collect is your annual customer numbers, average sales, number of customer visits and so on. Using these figures as a baseline you can then set realistic targets towards increasing profitability and continue to monitor the business’ performance on say, a monthly basis.

In a retail store, for example, (although the exercise is appropriate for other businesses also), you need to collect the following data from the previous year:
 Number of customers = x
 Average sale per customer = y
 Average number of transactions per customer = z.

By multiplying the figures, x * y * z, you can calculate the business’ annual turnover. Ensure this figure equals the total sales for the year.

The next step is to use these figures to set specific targets for the following year and record this data in your business plan, for example:
 Number of customers last year – plus targeted percentage increase
 Average sale per customer last year – plus targeted percentage increase
 Number of transactions with customers last year – plus targeted increase.

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Go the Extra Mile for Your Customers

Many business owners would agree that customers are gold – without them you have no business. But do you regard and treat them as gold?

Do you know them inside and out? Do you understand their needs, desires and expectations? Do you go the extra mile for them? Do you even know who they are?

Successful businesses have excellent relationships with their customers. They get out and talk to them or make contact in other ways to learn as much as they can about each person.

Details on demographics, interests, what they buy, why they buy from you, and so on is collected and recorded on a customer database. This information is vital in understanding how a customer thinks and what they are interested in.

But that’s not the database’s only purpose. As you collect customer contacts you can now communicate with them on a regular basis.

You now have a means of telling them about new products or services you are offering, relevant courses or workshops or one-off special deals. With enough contact details at your fingertips, you could write to them, email, text, or simply pick up the phone. If you know your customer well, you’ll know what deals they will be interested in and how they like to be contacted.

Click here for your Xero Accounting Specialist