Business experts share their EOFY tips for future success

The end of the financial year is a time for businesses to reflect on the year gone, take stock of what went well, what didn’t, and plan for the future. In our SmartCompany webinar with MYOB, host Eloise Keating invites a panel of business experts to share their advice for making the most of the EOFY period while offering some practical ways business leaders can launch into the next year. Joining her is Australian Small Business and Family Enterprise Ombudsman, Bruce Billson; MYOB community manager accountant Jody Sitters; and Cat Bloxsom and Morgan Collins, small business owners of knit and crochet kit company, Cardigang.

Streamline manual tasks with automated tech tools

With the chance to reset and plan for a new financial year, it’s worth taking a closer look at tech options to ease your workload. The possibilities are endless, but the panel is enthusiastic about social media management tools, AI that can reply to customer emails or, as Bloxsom and Collins found with Cardigang, accounting software for packaging up your financials. “We initially started tracking our expenses in a spreadsheet and I think about a week in we were like, this is not going to work for us,” Bloxsom says. “So we got MYOB very quickly and set up our bank feeds and created rules, making sure that our systems all talk to each other, so our bank talks to our accounting software, our accounting software talks to our website platform.”

Plan for risk

As the panel mentions, it’s been a tough couple of years for business, but upheaval can teach some valuable lessons. Jody Sitter recommends looking to the future with one eye on any potential issues that might crop up. “Risk is a huge area that we all have to keep talking about,” she says. “The other thing too is we can’t often plan for risk…so it’s really just making sure that everything is as tight as possible and being open to anything that’s coming through the door.” For small businesses in particular, forging strong relationships can be a great way to insulate yourself in risky environments, as Bruce Billson notes. “There’s hardly a problem someone hasn’t had to navigate before asking questions. [Take] the time to have those networking interactions and actually floating some of the things that are on your mind.”

Get your payments sorted

“Getting paid is the most critical part of your business,” says Sitter. “If you’re not getting any income and all your costs are exploding everywhere, that’s going to be pretty tough.” For businesses looking to keep their cash flow steady, it’s worth taking the time to ensure that your payments systems and terms are all in order as we head into the new financial year. Sitter recommends getting smart with MYOB invoicing software, ensuring you’re set up for e-invoicing with automatic payment reminders, payment plans and the ability to receive payments in multiple ways, whether it’s cash, card or BPAY. Bruce Billson suggests keeping an eye on payment terms, too, with anything over 30 days looking like a red flag.

Learn to outsource

One lesson that Bloxsom and Collins have learned with Cardigang is the value of outsourcing work. You might still be hands-on with most parts of the business but there are always areas that can be handled by external expertise. “The bits that are core to the success of our business, we keep them really tight and we are the ones that execute those pieces and those sort of the strategy around Cardigang and the branding and the marketing,” Bloxsom says. “But we’ve gotten very comfortable with outsourcing because it allows us to keep our costs down when we don’t have to employ additional staff.”

Review your whole business

In business, it can feel like there’s never a moment to stop and catch your breath. As the financial year winds down, take a beat to properly review your business in a more holistic way, not just in terms of the smaller pain points we’ve discussed. “What is the goal of you in this business?” Billson asks. “Not everyone wants to grow to be enormous. There are other reasons. There’s flexibility, there’s livelihoods that work with other goals. Knowing the why in what you’re doing is really important to keep you on track. Otherwise you can just chase your tail.”

If you missed the webinar, watch it here. 

Read now: The expert’s guide to nailing your EOFY planning