When a business is just starting out, using several different programs to manage business function isn’t a big deal. As a business expands, however, the costs to both time and efficiency can begin to add up. Effective business management software helps businesses address their scaling growth and operations by keeping things simple.
Let’s look at 5 ways companies can benefit from an investment in a business management system.
With a modern, high quality business management system, companies are able to access everything they need to know about their business easily and efficiently. With just a few clicks, they’re able to easily navigate from one screen to another, moving from accounting to CRM with ease, and more importantly, integrating these processes (more on this to come!).
When you’re new to the business world, you can often find free cloud-based programs that will meet your needs. As your business expands, however, finding an all-inclusive (and free) solution becomes considerably more difficult. Many programs are free up to a point, but then require you to pay if you’re invoicing, selling or generating more than a certain number of reports. Each individual piece of software may be reasonable, but paying for them all together can be much more expensive than one comprehensive solution.
And of course, to be a successful entrepreneur, you need to count costs not just in terms of dollars, but in terms of personnel hours spent on any project. If having multiple pieces of software causes your employees to take longer to complete tasks, then you start to lose productivity dollars. This can become especially problematic when information must be transferred from one program to another, taking up valuable staffing time (and costing you even more).
Every time you take information from one platform to another, you introduce the possibility of errors. You either have to tolerate those errors or you have to spend even more labour on checking for them. With a comprehensive business management solution, you put in information once; the software does the rest. For many businesses, this type of automation and simplicity greatly reduces the chance for errors.
The best business management systems allow you to access them anywhere. Harnessing the power of the cloud, 21st century business management platforms make sure that executives and salespeople alike have access to the parts of the system they need — no matter where they are. At the same time, great systems let your IT team make sure that no one has access to more than they need, matching access to responsibilities and confirming that information stays as secure as needed.
There are a variety of great business management systems on the market, including MYOB EXO. The system comes with a variety of modules that meet the needs of most businesses as they scale from single person companies into larger businesses. In the end, the best business management systems also allow for simplified customisation at their core.
When a company invests in a cohesive business management system, they gain the ability to see a complete picture of their operation. They can see which factors, internal and external, are affecting the business and changing how the business operates within the marketplace.
When you have a clear picture of your business’s overall functionality, you can make the necessary adjustments to keep things operating smoothly. This type of simplified management improves productivity, helps to contain costs, and keeps your day-to-day operations as simple as possible. When you are using half a dozen different programs to manage your enterprise needs, getting that holistic picture is virtually impossible.
Choose a business management system that lets you get that complete picture. That way, your business planning and marketing development can be on-point and useful as you move forward.
Would you like any more information? Contact Horizon to see how we can help your business achieve!
June 30 always seems to sneak up on us doesn’t it? There’s a lot involved in preparing your business documentation for the end of financial year.
The Australian Taxation Office will be expecting your return between July – October 31 2015, and employees will be expecting their payroll information ASAP. It’s not too late to get your business ready for tax time, even if you’ve done a poor job of record keeping so far.
1. MONITOR BANK TRANSACTIONS CLOSELY
According to a 2014 member survey from the Institute of Public Accountants and MYOB, 65% of business operators miscode bank statements. If most of your entries have already been made, it’s not too late to incorporate a software tool to help you catch errors. Accounting software should have built in controls to ensure that data is accounted for correctly, within an easy-to-use interface.
2. STAY ORGANISED AS YOU GO
According to the same research, it is estimated that 58% of business managers fail to keep up with their accounting and business statements on a regular basis throughout the year. One of the main reasons business people run into trouble is the fact that they are disorganised or simply don’t know where important records are.
This is where choosing the right business management and accounting software can really make a difference. Intuitive and user-friendly software (like MYOB Exo!), which can integrate the accounting function with other business management functions (like sales, stock, point-of-sale, payroll, field management etc.) means less work for you as these functions will communicate with one another and keep your accounts up-to-date.
3. EVALUATE GST LIABILITY
You may need to change your GST net liability for a reporting period. Business owners can increase or decrease adjustments, depending on their circumstances. MYOB Exo can help you evaluate your situation and ensure compliance.
4. PAY ATTENTION TO SUPERANNUATION
If you have to make superannuation payments for your staff, paying them in June will ensure that you can deduct them in this fiscal year. An advanced accounting software program can help you avoid exceeding your personal contribution caps.
5. RESPOND TO REQUEST FOR ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE
Around 49% of business owners fail to report or update information when it is asked for. Take care of any “loose ends” and tie things up as fast as you can.
6. CONSULT A PROFESSIONAL
If your paperwork is not quite ready to file, it’s still a wise decision to sit down with an accountant who can assist you with planning and strategy. If your records for this year are not up to date, business data from prior years can give your accounting professional a glimpse into your finances. Accounting software ensures that prior year records and returns are easily accessible at tax time.
7. GET THE BIG PICTURE
Don’t look at June 30th as tax time, look at it as a time to analyse your business, and your financial future. Enterprise accounting software will not only help you with last minute tax details, but it will give you a glimpse into other important details, such as insurance, investments, and retirement planning.
8. LEARN HOW YOUR ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE CAN MAKE THINGS EASIER
Smart business software keeps up with facts and figures that you might forget otherwise. No one can remember all of the facts necessary to keep up with the intricate accounting details of a busy office. However, 46% of business managers are not able to use the software they choose with a high level of functionality. This can defeat the purpose of having tax or accounting software in the first place!
At Horizon Business Systems we have MYOB EXO & MYOB Advanced Consultants, who can work closely with your team to deliver customised training and support.
Automated and fully supported ERP systems – such as MYOB Exo and MYOB Advanced – offer reporting and compliance functionality for business owners and managers to confidently make decisions and forecasts to ensure successful financial management and the ability to seize market opportunities.
Horizon Business Systems offers the perfect combination of expertise and service to ensure that your business is ready to handle tax season, every year!
There are a number of reasons to invest in a great enterprise resource planning (ERP) system as a business develops. From more targeted inventory tracking to better human resource management, software that is developed specifically for your business can help you reduce bottlenecks, identify opportunities, and increase growth.
One of the areas that an ERP like MYOB Exo can really help a company shine is its impressive reporting capabilities. How can one piece of software save your business time, effort, and confusion? Let’s explore the reporting capabilities of MYOB Exo.
One of the greatest benefits of MYOB Exo is the availability of different facets of the software and add-ons that work seamlessly together – such as accounting, point-of-sale, job costing, payroll and stock control to name just a few.
This gives you the ability to generate unified reports that pull information from all the different areas of your business. This might enable you, for example, to cross reference POS and stock, or sales and debtor tracking.
The reporting capabilities of MYOB Exo, however, are advanced even for an ERP of its class. From the core software, MYOB Exo offers deep diving reports on creditors, debtors, taxes, sales, and a variety of other pieces of information that might be necessary for your business.
MYOB Exo also offers a variety of ways to see the reports you run. You can view the report in your system, which is a great way to preview the information and make sure it’s showing the data you need in the way that you intended. For a report that you need to manipulate externally, you can have MYOB Exo save the report to an Excel file, then open it and manipulate the data in Office. Or, if you know exactly what you need, you can have the ERP use its first class reporting capabilities to email the report directly to the intended recipient.
Unique to the MYOB Exo brand is the Analytics report. Analytics is an add-on module which allows business owners to see exactly what is happening with the deepest level of their business. Analytics takes data snapshots at set times from various points in the software, and then collates that data in different graphic displays.
MYOB Exo also offers the Clarity Report Browser and Designer. Most of the above reports have already been created and are built into the software package, but Clarity assures the business owner that there will never be a report they need that can’t be created. By using drop down menus and easy selection tools, the user can compare virtually any data elements from within their company.
If there’s a report you need, and it isn’t natively available in MYOB Exo, you can partner with your Horizon support team to get it created. Horizon has worked with MYOB Exo since it’s inception as Exonet (for over a decade!), and has the kind of in-depth product knowledge that makes creating a custom add-on for your company’s needs both efficient and cost effective. The HBiz Development Team at Horizon is intimately familiar with not just the accounting and financial side of running a business, but also the intricacies of marketing and operations functions. They can help you get what you need out of the software, so that you can get back to work.
If you want to take advantage of the ability to customise your MYOB Exo software, there’s no one better at it than Horizon; that’s why we earned MYOB’s Enterprise Platinum Partner of the Year status. Find out more about our team, or review our client testimonials, and then get in touch to find out what we can do to help your business access the full reporting capabilities of MYOB Exo. Contact us here!
Selecting the right ERP system for your business does not have to be a complicated process, but you should consider the pros and cons of each option for your business – onsite or cloud-based? There is rarely only one solution for every business, and it does help to discuss the specifics of your situation and your goals with a professional ERP specialist (for current clients, or if you’re a new customer email sales@horizonbiz.com.au).
A cloud-based ERP system can only be accessed online, and requires little maintenance – which is usually included in your monthly cost but its efficiency is dependant on the speed and costs of your company’s internet provider. An onsite ERP is one that your business hosts on a server on the premises, and maintenance is up to you and your IT team.
When you’re choosing between an onsite ERP or a cloud-based one, there are several factors you’ll need to keep in mind. Remember that the right system for you will work with your business as it grows.
Generally, for an onsite ERP, you’ll have a high investment cost in addition to maintenance and upgrade costs, while a cloud based ERP requires a monthly subscription based on a package that you choose. However, you will need be dependant on factors such as internet speed for repetitive processes. For example, inputting invoices.
With an onsite ERP, you are responsible for the cost of the server and hardware, maintenance, the software, IT personnel to maintain both hardware and software, and more. However, this investment does become more cost effective in time with most large systems paying for themselves within a two to three year period. Also, the speed of your server will, for the foreseeable future, outpace your internet processing speed. This is particularly important if the majority of your business accounting activities take place onsite. You will also need to consider what other software applications you use in your day-to-day business. It is easier to ‘bolt on’ products to an onsite ERP system plus if you use other industry specific software (for example CAD) that needs a server anyway, the costs of maintaining a server will still exist.
If you choose a cloud based ERP, your regular ongoing costs may be higher, but the monthly subscription rate will include the cost of maintenance, hardware, software, and whatever the plan you choose includes. One of the major benefits of Cloud is the access to information from anywhere – great for your on the road Sales Team, work from home staff or Directors.
When you host an onsite ERP, you are responsible for your own maintenance, including having an IT team to update software, install new hardware, and ensure that the settings are appropriate for your business. Both onsite and Cloud systems will need access to a dedicated team that understands how to configure the system to your needs.
As part of your monthly subscription for a cloud based ERP, upgrades and software updates should be taken care of for you. Your service provider should ensure that your business always has the newest version, and that the settings are customised to your business needs.
New versions for onsite ERP systems may require assistance by Support or a consultant – which is great if you have access to a local team.
All updates (think of Apple!) tend to come with fixes and potentially their own issues. This is less of an issue when an onsite ERP where versions can be ‘tweaked’ without having to wait for an online fix/update.
As part of their service, cloud based ERP systems are usually as fast as your plan provides, and they are made available at all possible times. Generally, this should include a backup plan included for natural disasters, updates and upgrades, and any downtown will be scheduled at a natural low traffic time.
Maintaining your own onsite ERP system means that your own IT personnel will manage speed and availability of your system. In order to fully protect against natural disasters, you will likely need two separate servers with matching data in two different locations. As your hardware gets older, upgrades will be necessary to maintain the speed you want.
Whether you choose to host your own ERP or use a cloud based one may depend on the system you are already using. For example, if you don’t have a server, or a place to house one, a cloud based ERP might be more feasible. Do you have the IT team to maintain an onsite ERP? Choosing a cloud based one may make their jobs unnecessary.
Consider each of the items in this list based on the current size of your business, and the rate at which you’re growing. The investment required to house your own ERP system may or may not be worth it, depending on your business.
As we begin a new year, it’s time for cleaning out the old, making new resolutions, and getting organised. It’s the middle of the fiscal year, and you have six months until finances need to be in order for tax time and EOFY goals need to be met – so now is the perfect time to make sure that you are on track.
PERFORM A MID-YEAR SALES & FINANCE CHECK-UP
When it comes to mid-year check-ups, your accounting and business software (like the MYOB Exo Enterprise Accounting Software) can give you a snapshot of your current situation, help you evaluate where you stand and make a plan for the second half of the year in preparation to meet your EOFY targets.
Review your actual sales figures over the last six months and compare these to the forecasts you made at the beginning of the year. Are you on-target? Do you need to take action to boost sales over the coming months to meet your EOFY goals? This task can help you figure out your priorities for the coming months and even help you to make decisions about marketing strategies and budgets for the rest of the financial year to boost sales.
Your accounting software can also help you in tracking deductions, allowing you to take action to adjust your deductions and ensure your business is on track with your financial plan.
REVIEW YOUR ESTIMATED TAX PAYMENTS
It is so important for small businesses to make sure that they are paying estimated taxes correctly. Underpayment can lead to direct penalties, but overpayment can hurt your business financially by shrinking your cash flow during the year, leaving you less to work with.
Estimated taxes are only estimations, usually based on your tax payments from the previous year. However, mid-year is a great time to recalculate your taxes, especially when you have exact numbers for half of the year already. Your estimated tax payments for the second half of the fiscal year can be more accurate with a re-evaluation of your estimated payment amounts.
REVIEW YOUR FILING AND DOCUMENTATION SYSTEM
Keeping your business records and important documents organised can make a huge difference when tax time does roll around. One of the most stressful parts of filing taxes can be going through receipts, documents and expenses, so make sure that the filing system you currently use has been working for the first six months of the fiscal year. Consider making a backup copy of your records thus far, and check in with employees to ensure that they are keeping accurate and organised records.
This way, when the fiscal year ends, you will be able to understand and evaluate your financial year, file your taxes accurately, and avoid an audit!
Talk to us today to find out how a MYOB Exo solution can help your business to improve systems and meet targets. Call us on (08) 9328 1678 or fill out an online enquiry form and we’ll get in touch!
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