Questions and answers
Common Problems
It can be frustrating to work on your bookkeeping and then spend even more of your time trying to find and fix issues or mistakes.
And what we don’t want is the unhealthy situation where you are burning out – not good for you or your business!
That’s why we’re here – we know and understand how your bookkeeping and payroll can be overwhelming and we love to get busy with these important areas, so you can have more time to spend with your business and family.
It’s totally understandable how this can happen – you’ve been busy with other aspects of your business and the thought of doing your bookkeeping at the end of the day just feels like an added stress.
But left undone, it can lead to that “out of control” feeling.
We’d love to see you supported in this function – and we have an extensive range of bookkeeping and payroll services that can be customised to your exact requirements.
Your core skills are in probably in other areas and not in bookkeeping!
So perhaps a lot of the time you’re plagued with uncertainty whether you’re doing the right thing or not.
Having trained and qualified specialists supporting you in the areas of bookkeeping and payroll can really help you to streamline the entire bookkeeping function within your business and bring you that peace of mind that it’s under control.
Imagine experiencing the freedom to focus your time on your areas of strength, skill, and passion!
This is a legitimate concern that we face as business owners, and one that we want to give proper attention to.
Perhaps you are regularly anxious about whether the figures you send to the ATO are correct, and asking: are all the aspects of the payroll (including things like PAYG, superannuation, Single Touch Payroll and salary sacrifice) being processed and tracked properly?
We’re here to develop a consistent and balanced approach to keeping track of your financial and payroll records giving you that boost when it comes time to submit your figures to the ATO.
An important aspect of getting out of this cycle is identifying aspects of your business where it’s a strategic advantage to you to bring in some specialized help.
We’re here to provide you a personalised, offsite, bookkeeping and payroll package that suits your exact business needs. And we want to take away the headache of recruiting and training a new hire to deal with your bookkeeping and payroll issues.
We want to ensure that as the business owner, your investment in quality bookkeeping makes absolutely good sense for your business, and for you personally.
Like most businesses, you will often be spending and receiving funds for a variety of reasons. Some of your funds need to be set aside for specific purposes (for example, new equipment to improve your business operations) or as reinvestment to your business reserves.
This could prove to be difficult to keep track of (perhaps because it’s not your area of expertise), and so as part of our solution for you we can assist you with:
- keeping track of the funds that you have set aside for special purposes or obligations
- implementing for you effective and compliant bookkeeping procedures to account for these funds
- processing your monthly, quarterly, or annual journals required to maintain good records of these funds for you
- providing you with information and reporting on movements in your fund transactions and balances
- providing you ongoing advice on your bookkeeping options for correctly treating the different types of funds you have
Our bookkeeping and payroll team can help you ensure that specified funds do not become confused with your general operational funds (which can lead you to misread how much money you have available).
Your business or organisational payroll can be complicated and time-consuming.
Getting it wrong or paying staff late can be difficult for the team, and potentially lead you into unexpected backlogs or corrections. Plus, the legal requirements of your superannuation, tax, leave loadings, termination payments, etc. are often complex.
One of the keys to you having a good payroll system is ensuring that you are set up and configured correctly. There are multiple elements to this, and we can take care of each one for you according to your needs:
- creating your correct payroll calendars, cycles, and procedures
- setting up the payroll components of your general ledger to give you the tracking and information you need
- setting up all your pay items (with the correct configurations of PAYG, superannuation, and BAS reporting) to support your payroll structure
- setting up your leave items (e.g. annual leave, personal leave, long service leave) to match with your local leave management preferences
- and then getting your employees set up and on a regular payroll cycle
One of the great things about the bookkeeping systems we use for you is that a lot of the information we need to process your accounts is already available to us.
This comes to us through your bank feeds, through the information you’ve given us, and through detailed notes and procedures that we keep about your unique situation, as well as our own experience serving other wonderful clients like you.
So, after your initial setup, this greatly reduces the amount of ongoing information that we will need from you.
New things pop up in your bookkeeping or your payroll from time to time, and we may seek your assistance to know what they are. So, we’ve put in place a simple system to manage this easily with you:
- each week or month, we’ll collate a list of transactions where we need more information from you
- we’ll send you this list by email, showing you the transactions and the information we need
- there’s a space next to each item where you simply add your notes/information
- then you email the updated list back to us and we continue processing it for you
We put this in place for you as a simple and effective way of keeping things up to date and respecting your valuable time.
When you come on board with us for your bookkeeping or payroll, an important aspect of working together is to have a simple information flow. This saves you time and also keeps your records stored securely for when you need them.
We’ve developed a great system to make this easy for you:
- you will receive a dedicated, secure, online “In Tray” where you can easily place documents for us
- once we’ve processed your documents, we file them electronically for you in a secure, backed-up environment
- if you misplace your version, we can happily provide you with the items we’ve saved for you
This is one of the standard stress-relievers you can enjoy in working together with us.
This can be particularly helpful for you at audit time when you may be wanting to access some older information without having to trawl back through hundreds of emails. Again, a time-saving and peace-of-mind aspect of the bookkeeping and payroll solution that is on offer to you.
Bookkeeping questions
Business bookkeeping can be a daunting task if you’re not using a suitable accounting software.
The wrong bookkeeping system can leave you feeling frustrated, confused, or worse!
However, finding the right bookkeeping software isn’t nearly as complicated once you know what your needs are.
We can give you professional guidance, advice, and setup services whether it’s Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks or some other cloud accounting software option available to Australian businesses and organisations.
You may even want to move from one accounting software to another – our experienced team can manage this for you.
Entering and paying your accounts on time (and accurately) helps your business by:
- building great relationships with your suppliers
- improving your credit rating
- contributing to an accurate picture of the financial health of your business
We can begin our work on your Accounts Payable by ensuring you have a well-structured system to:
- accurately record your bills and expenses as they are incurred
- prepare the payment for each of your bills on schedule
- ensure each of your bills is allocated to the correct account(s) in your general ledger
And as may be helpful for you, we can also advise you on streamlining expense claims for your team, or even on setting up for you a virtual credit card expense management system, further freeing up your valuable time.
Your business invoicing is critical your operations and your revenue. Having this managed accurately and on time for you, helps you by:
- keeping your cash flow moving and avoiding you having delays in receiving payments
- having your clients on the same page as you as to what they owe
- avoiding you dealing with lengthy and awkward calculations for missed invoices
Our bookkeeping team can help you set up processes to ensure you invoice your customers regularly and on time. Perhaps you’d especially like assistance with:
- preparing and sending your invoices to your clients
- maintaining your schedules of invoices for your regular client agreements
- keeping track of when your client pricing reviews are due
- transferring your paper-based invoices into your bookkeeping system
- ensuring that your different types of income are recorded correctly in your system
- allocating your incoming payments to your correct client invoices
- ensuring your payment information is flowing correctly from your external systems
- helping you to set up an online credit card payment option for your clients to use
This can all mean smoother operations and helping you avoid delays in receiving valuable income for your business.
Following up your late payments might be something you put off because:
- you may feel awkward in addressing late payments with your client
- you don’t have time to work out which invoices are late
- you don’t have policies or procedures in place to know when or how to follow up late payments
Perhaps you could use some help from our experienced bookkeeping team in the way of:
- setting up for you automatic invoice reminders to be sent to your clients
- issuing statements showing your customers what they have paid and what remains outstanding to you
- setting up a standard debt follow-up procedure for you
- implementing for you regular debt follow-up tasks (emails, phone calls, referral to external collector
It’s important to us that we work closely with you in understanding your different clients and payment terms, and the process that will work best for your business.
Your bank reconciliations record all movement of money into and out of your business’s bank and credit card accounts. The process of reconciliation ensures that what is occurring in your bank is correctly and helpfully being captured and recorded in your accounting software.
While your software makes this process quicker, your reconciliation needs to be checked and errors corrected so you don’t end up with growing inaccuracies in your figures that could come back to bite you.
It may not surprise you to know that when we review past reconciliations for new clients, we often find that money has been allocated to the wrong place in the accounting software, or even entered multiple times. If your accounts are incorrectly reconciled, it can lead you to unhelpful reporting, or worse – you or your team could be making decisions that you regret based on wrong information.
Knowing where to look to spot these errors (and how to fix them for you), can make the difference between you having accurate or inaccurate accounting.
During the reconciliation processing and review that we do for you, our experienced bookkeeping team can identify and follow up discrepancies we find for you. Then we can then resolve them for you so you can experience the increased reliability and usefulness of your business reporting.
Your General Ledger in your accounting system is where all the recording of financial changes take place (coded as a series of Debits and Credits).
Most of the updates to the General Ledger happen automatically when a transaction in processed.
There are, however, times when additional General Ledger journals need to be manually recorded in order to correctly account for specific things in your business (for example accruing funds for annual leave).
Where you need regular or one-off management of your general ledger journals, we can:
- keep a record of these requirements and the dates that they are due
- process these journals in your system
Some journaling requirements will be outside the scope of your normal bookkeeping and will come from your accountant’s advice. We are very happy to collaborate openly with your accountant to ensure that these are recorded accurately, saving you time and hassle.
Lodging your Business Activity Statement (BAS) and/or Instalment Activity Statement) (IAS) is an important aspect of your business compliance.
If your BAS/IAS is lodged late you can incur significant penalties and interest which can, in turn, affect your cash flow and budget.
And if you have inaccurate lodgments, this can make the whole process more time consuming as you try to rectify past mistakes by preparing and lodging amendments.
Our experienced team will help you manage your entity’s BAS/IAS requirements by:
- reviewing your system’s GST set up
- implementing for you cyclical reviews of your reconciliation reports
- performing cyclical reviews of your GST transactional audit report
- performing cyclical reviews of your PAYG figures
- preparing your BAS/IAS and submitting it to you for you to authorise
- once you’ve authorised your BAS, lodging your BAS electronically with the Australian Tax Office (ATO)
- managing your past period system-locking (this prevents your system users accidentally posting current transactions into past periods which could affect your BAS assessment)
As a BAS Agent (registered with the Tax Practitioners Board), we are also able to help you liaise with the ATO – we can speak to the ATO and act on your behalf in relation to your BAS and PAYG and related matters, and also in relation to any debts you may have with the ATO in these areas.
One final BAS stress-saver for you – it can be confusing for your team how to record the GST, PAYG and ATO Client Account transactions into your accounting software. Our experienced bookkeeping team takes care of this for you by journaling the BAS lodgment transaction directly into your system for you.
Some industries (for example the construction industry) require an additional report to be lodged each year.
This report shows the details of relevant contractors and payments, and is called the Taxable Payment Annual Report (TPAR).
This can be an unwelcome task for you each year, trying to get this report completed and lodged.
We can assist you with this important report by:
- working with you to get your system showing the correct, updated information
- prepare the TPAR report for your to review and authorise
- once you authorise, lodge the report directly to the ATO for you
Again, increased peace of mind for you with our experienced bookkeeping team helping you keep up to date with this requirement.
Knowing your real financial position can be a difficult aspect of running a business.
And so, we want you to have a clear picture of how things are going for you, not just in the basics of your bookkeeping and payroll, but in the bigger picture of your business performance.
We can work closely with you to produce regular information that:
- takes an accurate snapshot of your physical cash balances
- adjusts these for monies you have on hold for legal obligations
- projects out your anticipated changes in cash balances based on your budget forecast
- adjusts this forecast for known influences that may be affecting your budget
- builds in an allowance that considers your “buffer” comfort levels
- compares your resulting projected cash balances with your cash flow/savings goals
What this kind of financial reporting can do for you is it provide you a “warning system” where you can regularly see not only how your business is performing against budget, but importantly:
- how much cash reserves you actually have; and
- when your cash reserves are likely to go below your comfort level (or run out completely)
Seeing these “red flags” ahead of time can greatly assist you when making decisions, giving you time to understand and respond appropriately.
You may be surprised how easily and quickly your business’s accounting system can get out of whack (you may have experienced this first-hand!).
We can put in place for you specific period-end checking that includes:
- check for extraneous transactions in your system (where things have been entered, but are not showing up in your bank account)
- checking and reconciling your Wages Payable (ensuring that your employees have received payments in line with your payroll system)
- checking and reconciling your PAYG (checking that amounts you’ve remitted to the ATO for PAYG match your system)
- checking and reconciling your Superannuation Payable (checking that what you owe for superannuation has been correctly sent)
- checking and reconciling your ATO Client Account (checking that your system is accurately aligned with your ATO client account in areas of GST, PAYG, interest, and penalties and that any balances you owe the ATO, or that the ATO owes you, are correct)
Major unplanned adjustments in key areas like these can directly affect your bank account and available funds. And so regular checks, by an experienced bookkeeper, of these key places in your system help keep things in order and alert you to where issues may be occurring before they get bigger.
Having some assistance from your bookkeeper with your audit process can help take the pressure off you during what can be a very detailed and time-sensitive process.
We can partner with you and assist you during this time by:
- providing you with the end-of-year reports, ready for you to give to your auditor
- assisting you with more detailed transactional reports that your auditor may request of you
Also, during the audit process, you may find this a valuable time to reflect on feedback or ideas that your auditor may suggest to you.
Our experienced bookkeeping team are ready to work with you to plan out any changes that may flow from this. This forms part of a continuous improvement approach where the management of your business finances is not static, but dynamic and open to helpful changes and improvements.
Good management of funds is probably important to you.
And one of the key tools that helps you to achieve this is having a meaningful budget in place.
Of course, it may be that for you an annual budget is a company requirement and so you must have it in place anyway.
But there’s a whole bunch of value to your business that good budgeting can give you throughout the year. When you and your team know the scope of your budget, and you know how their budget is tracking, this can save you confusion, frustration, and, in some cases, unintended overspending (that leads you to having less funds than you thought).
To support you in this important process, we can:
- provide you with a list of all your general ledger accounts in a table that you can fill out with your budget data
- take the budget data you provide and incorporate this into your accounting system
- ensure that your budget information (budget/actual) gets included in your regular reporting
For your business, this may be all you need. But as your requirements grow in complexity, we are very happy to discuss more detailed and complex budgeting with you, and explore further assistance for you in the budgeting process that will continue to both inform and to free up your team.
Good reporting can give you such an important boost in your business’s financial management.
But the challenges you may face when it comes to reporting are:
- knowing what reports you should be looking at each period
- how you can understand the information in your reports
- what are the implications of your report figures for the daily decisions you make
We really value working with you to get meaningful information and insights you can use into your hands.
As a basic starting point, we can update you with regular standard accounting reports that will be helpful to you:
- your Profit and Loss Report – this is also known as a Statement of Financial Performance, or a Statement of Income and Expenses
- your Balance Sheet Report – this is also known as a Statement of Financial Position
As you settle into these, you may also be wanting to build a suite of reports that cover additional areas of your business and provide more detail to you and your various teammates.
Our experienced bookkeeping and payroll team can work with you on these growing requirements and develop for you a detailed schedule of your regular reports and your customised reports to provide you with the insights you are after.
Payroll questions
Your business or church payroll can be complicated and time-consuming. Getting it wrong or paying staff late can be difficult for the team, and potentially lead you into unexpected backlogs or corrections.
Plus, the legal requirements of your superannuation, tax, leave loadings, termination payments etc. are often complex.
And if you only have one person in your organisation who knows how the payroll system works, there’s the added pressure for you if they go on holidays, become ill or leave.
Key to you having a good payroll system is ensuring that you are set up and configured correctly. There are multiple elements to this, and we take care of each one for you according to your needs:
- creating your correct payroll calendars, cycles and procedures
- setting up the payroll components of your general ledger to give you the tracking and information you need
- mapping your default payroll accounts correctly
- setting up all your pay items (with the correct configurations of PAYG, superannuation, and BAS reporting) to support your payroll structure
- setting up your leave items (e.g. annual leave, personal leave, long service leave) to match with your local leave management preferences
- superannuation funds set up for your system
- adding in Auto-Super to your set up
- setting up and reviewing your Single Touch Payroll
Getting your payroll setup right allows you to breathe a bit easier, knowing that all these elements have been looked at and accurately recorded for you.
You’ll also be able to enjoy the extra peace of mind that this can bring to your employees, and a reduction in the amount of enquires and follow-ups that you may have been dealing with.
And of course, becoming and staying compliant with ATO requirements helps avoid potential penalties, fines and legal issues.
Growing your team is an exciting time, and having your new person set up correctly in your payroll system is a key part of their onboarding process.
There are some crucial elements to make sure each of your employees is set up accurately.
First, you need your new employee to have the correct forms to fill out. We provide you with standard versions of these forms for you to freely use, so that you can:
- Obtain your employee’s details
- Obtain your employee’s Tax File Number information
- Obtain your employee’s Superannuation Fund information
- Advise your employee of obligatory Fair Work information
Then we set up these details for your new employees in your payroll system:
- Employee details and contact information
- Employee pay cycle
- Taxation and employment basis
- Leave accruals and balances
- Employee bank account(s) for net pays
- Standard pay template
- Superannuation accruals
Once set up, your new employee will be ready to be included in your next pay run, with everything in place.
This helps you to avoid difficult and expensive backlogs and corrections to your employee records, especially when these may result in you issuing incorrect payments or having incorrect accrual of your employee entitlements.
Thinking about your business, we believe there are four things that your whole team will appreciate when it comes to your regular pay run:
- having your pay run done accurately
- paying your team on time
- following up issues quickly for you
- keeping good payroll records for you
And these are the key things we want you to experience with your pay run processing.
Here are various aspects of your regular pay run that we can look after for you to make this happen:
- process your regular pay run in your payroll system each period
- where available, upload your net payroll payments to your online banking for your authorisation
- record and review, as relevant, your leave transactions (Annual Leave, Personal/Carers Leave, Long Service Leave, Other Leave)
- review and update any salary sacrifice arrangements you may have
- process your time sheets (if you use these)
- process irregular or corrective pay runs for you
- issue pay slips to your employees for each of your pay runs
- ensure that your PAYG liabilities are calculated and recorded
- ensure that your Superannuation liabilities are calculated and recorded
- file your Single Touch Payroll (STP) obligations
From time to time, you may be wanting information about your historical payroll. By using great systems for you, we have this readily available and can produce for you a wide variety of payroll reports that you may need. This is particularly helpful when one of your team makes an enquiry about their pay – and you’ll be glad that you have everything sorted.
Further, having your regular payroll up to date will really help you and your employees out at the end of the financial year. Your employees will have their Single Touch Payroll (STP) information ready for them promptly and they won’t have to chase you for it when they are ready to lodge their personal tax returns.
Your payroll system doesn’t always keep track of everything you’d like it to. Sometimes there are important things you need to monitor, as they affect what happens in your regular pay run. Things like:
- when there are changes to award rates
- when junior employees have a birthday and their rate changes
- when an employee has a work anniversary and moves to a different pay level
- when an employee crosses and age/hours threshold to become eligible for superannuation
These things can easily slip out of mind, potentially resulting in inaccurate pays.
So, what you may find helpful is having a process put in place where we keep an eye on these for you and apply the updates that you need, to help you minimize unexpected issues and backpays.
When your superannuation is done well, it can be a smooth part of your normal operations. But when left unattended, it can cause you major issues – not only for your employees and the ATO but also with your paperwork and cash flow.
With our experienced bookkeeping and payroll team looking after your superannuation for you, we can take care of all of these aspects:
- ensuring that the superannuation owed to your employees each pay run is correctly recorded and accrued in your accounting software
- keeping track of the dates and periods that your superannuation is due
- preparing your superannuation remittance
- checking that the payment you are making reconciles with what you owe
- have a streamlined system where you are lodging and paying your superannuation easily and on-time
With this up to date, you won’t have to worry about a massive superannuation debt (and potential additional charges from the ATO) building up without you knowing it.
As you may know, Single Touch Payroll, introduced by the ATO, requires Australian employers (like you) to submit payroll details each time there is a “pay event” (e.g. a regular pay run).
This is an important aspect of your compliance which, and you may find that it brings you greater peace of mind having these aspects done for you:
- registering you for STP under our Agent authority with the ATO (if you have not already registered)
- setting up the background procedure for your regular STP lodgement
- including your STP reporting after each pay event
- setting up your annual STP final filing schedule
- preparing your annual STP for lodgement to the ATO
This is one your reporting aspects that’s important, and that you’ll be glad is kept up to date for you, avoiding you having possible difficulties with the ATO in this area.
Another important aspect of your Single Touch Payroll is to ensure that we have the proper authority on file for us to act on your behalf.
Generally, this authority must be updated with you on an annual basis as a minimum.
To keep this up to date for you, we will:
- monitor when your STP authority is due to be renewed
- prepare and send the authority to you for your sign-off
- keep a secure copy of this authority on file for you
We track this requirement, so you don’t have to worry about when it’s due or what to do, you can simply follow our lead in getting this done for you.
Partnering together
Every client is special to us, from the smallest sole trader to well-established companies. As your bookkeeping and payroll partner, we value:
- Understanding where you’re at, and knowing exactly where you want to get to
- Being attentive to your concerns and sorting out issues that affect you
- Growing together with you for the short and long term.
Our bookkeeping and payroll team brings together a collaborative and diverse range of skills and experience that we put to work for you. Having this team approach means:
- You’ve got more that one person giving attention to your bookkeeping and payroll
- There’s a backup and review process in place for you
- You’ve got access to in-depth bookkeeping knowledge of best practices and solutions
Yes, we love to do this for our clients – don’t pay for what you don’t need!
Are you looking for a few tasks done here and there?
Yes, that’s fine.
Or perhaps you’re ready for fully outsourced bookkeeping, payroll and BAS?
Yes, that’s fine too!
Yes, we have extensive knowledge and experience working with churches of various sizes and denominations.
We’d love you to benefit from our familiarity with church operations, church finances, church bookkeeping and church payroll.
Get in touch with us and we will help you to explore options tailored for your church.
Yes, at Exdia we offer you a comprehensive variety of bookkeeping, payroll and GST/BAS services for your not-for-profit.
Perhaps you’re looking for a new accounting software. Or maybe you need assistance with the more complicated aspects of your not-for-profit books. We can assist you with difficult elements such as reconciliations, payroll, superannuation, STP, and BAS – helping to keep you up to date with both operations and your compliance.
Get in touch with us if you have any questions or need assistance. Together we can explore where you’re at and what’s really going to assist you.
As an accountant, you may be looking for good quality, affordable, confidential, respectful bookkeeping and payroll support for your clients.
This could be routine work for daily and monthly tasks, or perhaps a complex backlog or forensic reconstruction.
Whatever the case, we are very happy to chat with you about this and possible options that will work well for both you and your clients.
We fully understand that you may have questions from time to time, and things you don’t understand (we’re all human!)
Part of what we want for you is not only that all your business finances are up to date, but also that you have someone to turn to when you are stuck and need help, you’d like to explore some new developments and ideas, or even looking for links to other related areas like administration or audit.
So, we are here for you. You can call us on the phone, or you can contact any of our team directly by email. Our experienced team will handle each of your enquiries with care.
Your concerns and successes are important to us.
We want to offer our clients real, genuine, valuable, affordable bookkeeping and payroll services.
So, whether you’re a small start-up business or a well-established organisation, or whether you are a tiny church or a a rising enterprise – our stories are so different – it’s such a privilege to be involved in your journey!
We want you to be fully satisfied and to relax knowing that these important aspects of your business are in good hands.
One of the things we enjoy is coming into a scenario that chaotic or complex, and seeing it transformed into a state of order and simplicity.
If you are suffering with bookkeeping backlogs or a payroll mess, we want you to experience the relief of getting back on track!
We offer you a range of many bookkeeping services and payroll services to help keep your business running smoothly, including:
- Bank reconciliations
- Accounts payable
- Accounts receivable
- Record keeping
- Payroll and employee setup
- Regular pay run processing
- Superannuation, PAYG and Single Touch Payroll
- General ledger journals
- Period-end processing
- Business and financial reports
- Budgeting support
- End-of-year and audit support
- Activity statement (BAS and IAS) preparation and lodgment
- GST processing and advice
- Taxable Payment Annual Reports (TPAR) for affected industries
- Payroll Tax
- And more!
You can benefit from our extensive experience working with a wide range of business and organisation types in variety of sectors.
Not sure what you need? We’re here to help you work that out too!
It begins with a conversation. We’d love to meet you and get to know you and your situation.
From there, we’ll prepare a suggested way forward for you and give this to you in writing, so it’s clear and upfront.
And when you are ready to kick off, we’ll guide you through the process to get everything started for the new chapter of your bookkeeping and payroll strategy!
We’d love to help you with more information and advice for your specific bookkeeping and payroll situation. And also, to hear any other questions you may have about how Exdia’s services work.
Why not drop us a line at service@exdia.com.au or get in touch on this website. You can also reach out to us on the phone at 1300 139 342. We’d be delighted to hear from you!
