October 14, 2021

Business continuity planning: Are you prepared for the next crisis?

While the possibility of a global pandemic was always at the back of our minds, its emergence still managed to catch us off-guard and wreaked havoc on every aspect of our lives, particularly the world of work. Therefore, it’s safe to say that Covid-19 has been a wake-up call for organisations to rethink their priorities and strategies to ensure their businesses will survive the next disaster. When you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail The current health crisis highlighted the vulnerability of businesses around the globe, exposing the consequences of fragile business continuity plans and executives completely failing to […]
May 4, 2021

Is your business ready to face a bad month, or two, or three?

Are you sitting down? Let us share a frightening statistic with you. In a report published by FinFind in November 2020, it was found that 42.7% of small businesses in South Africa were forced to shut down during the first 5 full months of the lockdown. The research data was comprised in a survey of 1489 businesses across all main sectors of the economy, and so must be understood as a sample of the larger economy rather than an absolute fact. Nevertheless, to think that around 4 in every 10 small businesses closed in this time is worrying. The reasons for these closures are numerous, but at the end of the day it […]
December 11, 2020

5 Tips to digitally expand your business’s professional network

The importance of networking – especially during COVID-19 – should not be overlooked. While many business owners have been struggling to stay afloat in the economic downturn that has resulted from the events of 2020, they may have been neglecting one of their key resources in maintaining their success. Good networking skills are one of the most valuable business assets that any business owner can possess. How you connect to others in your field of work (and this includes your competitors) can have a marked effect on your ability to make the right decisions at the right time with the right resources at your […]
December 11, 2020

Why you need new business policies before July 2021

Since the POPI Act came into effect on the 1st of July 2020, many businesses have had to rethink the way that they use and store information of individuals. In some ways, it may place a burden on some small business who have been using the same tactics for years to engage with clients and potential clients. What are some practical implications of the POPI Act that you need to keep in mind? Since the POPI Act requires information to be kept only for as long as it is used for a specific purpose, and that personal information should be protected, it means that you need to become much more cognisant of where you are storing personal […]
September 17, 2020

Will SARS suspend my obligation to pay when I dispute an assessment?

With the 2020 tax filing season in full swing, many taxpayers are likely to engage in dispute proceedings as their income tax assessments are issued by SARS. This will particularly be the case where errors are contained on the so-called “auto-assessments” (which in itself is a misnomer). But what happens to the disputed tax amount until the process is finalised? Pay now, argue later The basic premise is that even though you disagree with an amount of tax, once you have been assessed by SARS, the amount becomes due. Neither your obligation to pay the tax, nor SARS’s right to recover the tax, is suspended by any objections or appeals against the assessment or pending court proceedings (i.e. you have to pay the tax, […]
July 28, 2020

Setting your business up for expansion

When businesses expand, they often look beyond national borders. With such an expansion, there are several added advantages for establishing a holding company, which then owns the various group operating companies in different jurisdictions. Various aspects contribute to considering an ideal holding company location, and a brief discussion is outlined below. Political stability Political instability and constant political upheavals cause uncertainty within the jurisdiction and foreign countries that do business with that jurisdiction. Ease of doing business This does not specifically refer to actual business done by the company but relates to the associated (support) industries that one may encounter […]
May 9, 2018

BUYING OUT SHAREHOLDERS

We are often approached by clients to advise on the most tax efficient manner in which a shareholder can sell an investment in a private company. Typically, the parties involve a majority shareholder of a company that is interested in buying out the minority shareholders in the company and which will ensure that that majority shareholder becomes the single remaining shareholder of that company. In essence, two options are available through which a shareholder may dispose of a share in a company to achieve the above goal: it could either sell its shares to the purchasing shareholder, or it could […]
October 7, 2015

Financial ratios: What do they mean? (Part 3)

Ratio analysis can be used when financial information needs to be simplified to make it possible to interpret and compare the information. Banks often do ratio analysis when they need to decide whether to lend money to a client or not. If a business wants to open an account with a supplier, the suppliers often use ratio analysis to determine the financial health of the business before deciding if they will sell to the business on credit. In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series of articles on financial ratios, the limitations of using ratios have been mentioned. However, […]
August 11, 2014

Business life after death

Imagine your business if you or a key executive were to die unexpectedly. No-one wants to talk about death, and it’s the last thing most entrepreneurs think about when they start a business. It is, however, something that deserves a thought. Plan for the possibility now, and you will save your colleagues a lot of trauma and financial uncertainty while they are coming to terms with their loss. When a company’s leader dies unexpectedly there is a huge risk of losing everything. In an article Jim Murphy, a successful entrepreneur, shared what he had learned when facing the death of […]
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