How quickly does Monday come around??  Almost too quick I’d say – but here we are and today we’re looking at another great feature in the online accounting program Xero.

Historically, payroll is one of the areas most business owners have trouble with – there are many laws to be abided by and the whole payroll process can be extremely time consuming and often open to errors.

With Xero, it’s easy to process payroll, pay superannuation and stay compliant – plus, your payroll information streams directly into your financial accounts and this limits the need for manual data entry thus reducing the probability of errors.

Some of the great things I love about Payroll in Xero include:

• changes to tax tables and superannuation rates are automatically updated so you don’t need to install any software upgrades
• you can pay superannuation for your employees at the click of a button
• filing employee TFN declarations and payment summaries is so easy
• multiple pay calendars are available (i.e.: weekly, fortnightly and monthly), and it’s easy to add an unscheduled pay run if required
• deductions, reimbursements and various leave types can all be accounted for
• timesheets are available and can be prepared by the employer or the employee

Have I sold you on Xero yet? Make sure you read the previous posts on Xero…plus there’s more to come!

Regards

I have a confession to make…I’ve written this blog post in advance…so I hope that by the time you are reading this I am actually in Sydney!!

As part of my upcoming trip to Paris (don’t worry…you’ll hear plenty more about this in due course…), I was required to visit Sydney this week for meetings.

So I figured this was a great chance to grab one of my best girlfriends (thanks for coming along T), and take a couple of days to unwind, people watch and drink champagne – don’t you agree??

While we are here I’ll be meeting the other participants for my course in Paris and finding out where I’ll be staying which is really exciting…but the only other thing I absolutely must do while we are here is visit the Lindt Café in Martin Place.

I’m sure you all remember the terrible happenings in December last year, and I won’t go into that now…but it was watching that episode unfold and the aftermath that inspired my Paris trip and I want to visit and pay my respects.

Yes, I’ll probably indulge in a hot chocolate and a Lindt ball or two (maybe six)…but I have a feeling I’ll also need to ensure I’ve got some tissues handy.

Can I ask one thing of you?  Wherever you are and whatever you’re doing right now, please take a moment to remember Katrina Dawson, Tori Johnson and everyone left behind with memories of the experience- and promise me…you’ll get out there and enjoy your life to the full!

That’s all for today xo

Regards

Do you own shares in Telstra?

In 2014 there was a Telstra share buy-back and if you participated then there are implications for your 2015 income tax return!

Any shareholders who participated in this buy-back arrangement are deemed to have sold or disposed of their shares on 6th October, 2014, and the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) has issued a fact sheet in relation to this for taxpayers who are residents for tax purposes and who hold their Telstra shares on capital account (ie: are subject to Capital Gains Tax (CGT)).

For each share disposed of you would have received $4.60 comprising $2.27 as a fully franked dividend and $2.33 as a capital payment – but things get a little tricky because the ATO deem you to have received a capital component of $2.77 per share – are you confused??

The capital component is allocated as proceeds on sale and is used to determine if you have a capital gain or capital loss on the sale of these shares.

If you find yourself in this arrangement, I encourage you to seek professional advice, and I would be happy to help!

If you are interested in reading the ATO fact sheet, you can do so here.

Regards

The bank reconciliation in Xero is one of my favourite features!

You can connect your Xero file to your bank account and your bank statements and transactions are able to be imported and in many cases are matched automatically to information already in your Xero file…all you need to do is click “OK”!

Some of the benefits of using the bank reconciliation feature in Xero include:

• Being able to reconcile transactions directly from your bank, this reduces data entry time and lowers the risk of errors.  You can even reconcile your PayPal or credit card account (the system also supports foreign currencies)
• Each and every day you can see exactly how much money is in your bank account – this means you can make decisions about your business transactions based on real time information
• By using the App. you can be reconciling your bank account while out for coffee or sitting in bed in the morning (Xero is supported for Mac, PC, tablet and phone)
• Xero is able to match transactions based on amounts, names and reference numbers, but the real beauty is being able to create rules to automatically allocate transactions (ie: fuel purchases, postage, insurance), this is particularly helpful for repeating transactions!

All in all, I find the Bank Reconciliation process to be one of the big time savers with Xero – if you’d like to see this in action or have further queries, please contact me!

Regards