ESS BIZTOOLS, ESS BIZGRANTS and ESS BASIP

Welcome to the October 2017 alert from ESS BIZTOOLS, ESS BIZGRANTS and ESS BASIP. 

This alert contains comments on the following:

A. Personal Property Securities Register
B. Early Stage Innovation Company Capital Raising
C. Crowd-Sourced Funding Equity Raising
D. Debtors' Days Outstanding
E. Government Grants
F. Crowd-Sourced Funding Update
G. ATSA Presentation
H. Accountants Minute
I.  For Accountants - Articles
J. Government Grant Application Deadlines
K. Mentoring Sessions

The theme of this Members' Alert is to discuss various work activities that will assist you to generate non-compliance work for your accountancy business.

A.  Personal Property Securities Register

Recent publicity in Queensland has identified the ongoing risk that many contractors have if they have not registered their customers (even when they are major builders) on the Personal Property Securities Register.

If the customer is not registered, then the contractor has no protection against a claim from a liquidator of an alleged preferential payment and the customer runs the real risk of liquidators “clawing back” payments made to the contractor in the six months preceding the liquidator’s appointment.

Complaining that a government agency responsible for the licensing of builders has not been diligent in their activities will not protect the contractor against a liquidator’s claim for preferential payment.

I’ve just completed six workshops for the Federal government’s Entrepreneurs’ Program “Mentoring of Company Directors in Small/Medium Enterprises”.  Less than 5% of the directors attending these workshops had heard of the Personal Property Securities Register and more worrying less than 1% claim that they’d ever been approached by their accountant relative to the risks that they were taking by not registering customers and other items on the PPSR.

Our recommendation is that you talk to your clients about the problems relating to the Personal Property Security Register and that you offer to undertake due diligence reviews to check on your clients’ systems relative to this legislation which can really destroy businesses if people have ignored it.

B.    Early Stage Innovation Company Capital Raising

Have you identified companies that could be eligible to be an “Early Stage Innovation Company” and therefore convey special benefits to investors including tax offset based on their investment and potential exemption from capital gains tax?

The ESS BIZTOOLS – Early Stage Innovation Company Product Package includes material to assist you to identify clients or prospects who may be eligible for an Early Stage Innovation Company classification.

C.    Crowd-Sourced Funding Equity Raising

ASIC is currently assessing the applications that have been received from businesses wishing to be Crowd-Sourced Funding Intermediaries. There is an expectation that companies will be able to start having discussions with intermediaries by the end of October 2017.

Now is the time to be having discussions with companies that may have some interest in being a Crowd-Sourced Funding Company.

To be eligible, companies are required to have a group turnover of under $25 million annually and group assets of a value of less than $25 million and not to be listed on a Stock Exchange anywhere in the world.

We have now installed on the Crowd-Sourced Funding Product Package within ESS BIZTOOLS a checklist to assist you to identify companies that might be interested in being able to be classified as a Crowd-Sourced Funding Company.

Our recommendation is that you evaluate companies that passed the first series of tests to determine those that have expansion ambitions, reasonable business prospects, loans or credit card debts that they might be interested in paying out from the proceeds of a share issue.

Why not invite the clients that you have identified as a prospect for Crowd-Sourced Funding to a seminar to give them an overview of how this new type of company structure operates?

You have full details on all aspects of the journey from a “Proprietary Limited Company” to being a “Crowd-Sourced Funding Company” able to raise equity capital in the ESS BIZ TOOLS’ Product Package for Crowd-Sourced Funding.

D.    Debtors' Days Outstanding

Australia has the dubious title of having the “longest debtors’ days outstanding in the world”. This is nothing to be proud about!

Why not identify your clients with Debtors’ Days Outstanding over 45 days and contact them for discussion on the assistance that you can give relative to Debtors’ Reduction Strategies to improve their business cash flow?

E.    Government Grants

There are hundreds Federal, State and territory grants that all of your clients are contributing to – but how many of them are obtaining grants to assist them in their business operations.

Our suggestion is that as you complete your clients annual accounts that you enter the client profile into ESS BIZGRANTS and then answer the supplementary questions on any of the identified grants that you believe your client might be interested in.

ESS BIZGRANTS will then produce a report that you can discuss with your client and get your clients’ instructions as to whether he/she wishes you to proceed with the grant application.

Being proactive in government grant work gives you the opportunity to be doing some interesting business advisory services work that government grants can finance including:
• Business Plans
• Budget/Cash Flow Forecasts
• Debtors Review
• Management Mentoring

These are some of the examples of non-compliance work that you could undertake utilising the product packages produced by ESS BIZTOOLS and ESS BIZGRANTS.

F.    Crowd-Sourced Funding Update

ASIC has announced that it is now processing applications from businesses with Australian Financial Services Licenses that have applied to be a Crowd-Sourced Funding Intermediary.

ASIC has indicated that the first of the intermediary appointments should be finalised by around the end of October 2017.

If a proprietary limited company wishes to convert to an unlisted public company, so as to take advantage of the Crowd-Sourced Funding legislation, the company will need to lodge a Form 206 “Application for Change of Company Type”.

ASIC is required under the Corporations Act to publish a notice in the ASIC Gazette stating it intends to alter the details of the company registration.

One month after the notice is published, the change of company type will take place.

G.    ATSA Presentation

Peter Towers made a presentation at the ATSA Conference in Sydney on Monday, 16 October 2017 at 4:10pm in Stream 2.

The presentation was made jointly with Marc Johnstone from Enable Funding/ASSOB (a company which is applying to be a Crowed-Sourced Funding Intermediary).

(Click here) for a copy of the ATSA presentation. If you would like to have a conversation please give Peter a call on 0418 190 181.

H.   Accountants Minute

You can access the Accountants Minute articles that we have prepared over the last four weeks at www.essbiztools.com.au click on to “Blog”. The blog articles are as follows:

• Accountants – There are Opportunities Everywhere! But You Must be “Proactive” Rather than “Reactive”
• Accountants – Advising Clients of Government Grants is Good Business!
• Accountants and Business Advisors – SMEs want “Someone” to provide “Business Advisory Services”!
• Accountants and Business Advisers - Are You Preparing for Crowd-Sourced Funding?
• Accountants and Business Advisers - Crowd-Sourced Funding - Heralds a New Era for SMEs!
• Accountants - Are You Adding Value to Company Directors?
• Consultants Training to Deliver Business Advisory Services
• Accountants, Do You Want to Offer Consultancy Services?

I.  For Accountants - Article

“For Accountants” included our article “Accountants, Are You Adding Value to Company Directors?”. If you would like to access the article (Click here) to access this article on “For Accountants”.

J.  Government Grant Application Deadlines

Government grant application deadlines (click here).

K.  Mentoring Sessions

If you would like to participate in a complimentary mentoring session with your team, please contact us so that we can allocate a mutually convenient one hour for the mentoring session to be presented.

Thank you for your support - from the team at ESS BIZTOOLS, ESS BASIP and ESS BIZGRANTS –If you have any questions, suggestions or criticisms, please do not hesitate to contact us P: 1800 232 088 or E: peter@essbiztools.com.au.

To obtain a printable copy of this edition, click here.