FAQ

We start with industry benchmarking and compare against your accounts.

For instance,  if the industry average benchmark for Cost of Goods Sold is 33% and yours is 40% we will instantly be digging down to find out why you are higher than the average business. We will look at your buying strategies, for wastage, portion control, at times we have found continual theft by staff was the problem.

It is not rocket science but it takes a bit of work to get the best benchmarking information from the raw data files from the ATO and to organise your accounts in to the relevant cost groups.

We have been around a fair bit, running our own businesses and working with over 60 others.

Many of the problems you are facing we have seen time and time again and it doesn't take long to pick this up, we do know the tell tale signs.

We'll be asking each other questions. Your answers and questions will tell us a great deal.

From experience, getting the black and white business systems and management is relatively straightforward. It is the easy part.

It all becomes difficult if the business owner does not instigate or proactively maintain the essential business operating requirements.

A common example: a business owner knows they should have a set of financial accounts but if they do not do it because it is 'boring' a valuable tool is lost to the business.

Sometimes this is fixed by paying a book keeper.

More often it is showing how the accounts are such a valuable and useful management tool and with that knowledge the business owner see the reason for them and off they go...

Small business owners are a distracted lot. We have put significant resources on-line and found that small business owners only want to access it when they are in trouble.

Consequently, by the time we are involved there are problems and we need to act quickly and decisively and to do that eye-balling each other is important.

We'll be honest. We are changing the way you do business and often that means changes in you.

Even if these happen overnight it takes time for the profits to start flowing.

However, we find clients see the important things straight away such as greater understanding, easing up of pressures, lower costs, greater margins and they know that is leading better profitability.

Every business is different.

For instance a manufacturer in the steel fabrication industry in Western Australia was not making profits. With a bit of prior homework within 20 minutes we identified the problem was not in their manufacturing but in their remote installation contract terms. Builders were not having the sites prepared in time and they were having to pay for idle staff in remote locations.

The problem was fixed by the end of the day simply by changing their contract terms and conditions.

In another case it took 12 months to get a fast food business to start making a profit but this involved bloated staff rosters, theft, education, OH&S, poor food safety procedures...it was a mammoth task.

Definitely no! We only enjoy our work only if we have something to work on and see progress.

We want timelines to have tasks completed by and if we see stagnation or completion, we'll call it upfront.

Our aim is to do ourselves out of a job as soon as possible.