It usually starts as a sensible decision. Cash is tight, the business is small, and the books look manageable enough. So you set up Xero, watch a few videos, and take it on yourself.
Nobody sends you an invoice for that choice. That is exactly why it is so easy to keep making it, long after the bus...
You have done the maths. Your costs have moved, your margin has thinned, and you know the price needs to go up. And then you picture telling your customers, and you quietly park it for another six months.
That gap between knowing and saying is where a lot of margin goes to die. So let us talk about...
There is one number in your accounts that quietly tells you whether the work you are doing is actually worth it. Not your revenue, and not your bank balance. Your gross margin.
The good news is that it is already sitting in Xero, and you can find it in about two clicks. The better news is that once...
When a business wants to make more money, the instinct is almost always the same: sell more. Chase more leads, run a promotion, take on more jobs. Growing the top line feels like the obvious lever.
But there is a quieter lever that most owners rarely touch, and it does far more for your profit with...
Most business owners can tell you, to the dollar, what they charged for their first job. Far fewer can tell you when they last changed it.
That is not carelessness. Pricing is one of those decisions that feels settled once it is made. You worked it out, it seemed fair, customers said yes, and you g...
If you've ever paid provisional tax, you used one of three methods to work out the amount. The catch is that most business owners never actually chose theirs. They were put on the standard method by default when they first crossed into the provisional tax net, and they've stayed there ever since, wh...
There is a particular kind of stress that only business owners really know. The tax bill lands, the amount is bigger than you hoped, and the money to pay it is not sitting there. You knew it was coming. You just did not put anything aside for it.
It happens to good operators all the time. Not becau...
Provisional tax has a reputation, and not a good one. For a lot of New Zealand business owners it is the tax that arrives bigger than expected, at a time when the cash is not there to meet it. It catches out more owners than any other part of the tax system.
Here is the reassuring part: provisional...
Every business owner knows the feeling. An invoice is well overdue, the customer has gone quiet, and every option in front of you feels awkward.
The good news is that you do not need a difficult personality or a scary lawyer to get paid. You need a process: a calm, staged sequence you follow the sa...
Chasing invoices is the job almost no one enjoys. It is easy to put off, easy to forget, and every day it slips is another day your money sits in someone else's account. The good news is that most of it can be automated, so the follow-up happens whether or not you get to it.
Here is how to set your...
Most business owners have thought hard about their prices. Far fewer have ever revisited their payment terms. Yet the terms on your invoice decide when the money actually reaches your account, and for cashflow, when matters just as much as how much.
The good news is that payment terms are one of th...
You did the work. You sent the invoice. And now you wait.
If that sounds familiar, you are not alone. For most New Zealand business owners, the gap between finishing a job and seeing the money land is one of the biggest drains on cashflow there is. It is winter now, the time of year when slow payer...