Accounting and Business Advisory Solutions

You’re here because you’re looking for an accountant who can take care of all the annoying hassles of accounting and tax. That’s something we have been doing exceptionally well since 1973 and we have the proof to back that up.

We’ll get back to that proof in just a minute. But first, what do we do?

We advise on all aspects of accounting and tax, including

• Income Tax,
• Capital Gains Tax,
• Fringe Benefits Tax,
• GST,
• Pay As You Go (PAYG),
• Payroll Tax,
• State Duties,
• Division 7A, etc.

We also do tax efficient structuring, including the use of trusts, companies and self-managed superfunds.

Using the latest technology available, we give as much or as little direct bookkeeping and accounting assistance as you require.

We also manage all interactions with the Australian Taxation Office and handle ATO audits, high wealth reviews and other disputes on your behalf. Though, we always proactively working to avoid disputes wherever possible.

This is all with the goal of legally minimising your taxes as much as possible.

Now, back to the proof. We’re extremely proud to share our large collection of genuine 5-star client reviews as received on Google, which rank us in the Top 2% of all Australian Accounting Firms. You can see these on our Testimonials page.

There is no doubt in our mind that you’ll be extremely well served and supported if you choose to entrust us with your accounting affairs.

That’s not just because we’ll help you tackle the complex when it inevitably comes up, or only because we’ll help you win tax disputes should they ever arise , but because over the journey we’ll become very close,… becoming your trusted confidant in business, and ultimately working together to help you focus not just on tax, but wealth protection and business improvement too.

Truly unlocking business growth, to propel your business forward for the long-term, means getting down to the root cause of problems, and fixing them for good.

When you resolve root causes, a multiplier effect happens. You fix more than one problem.

And when you build the internal capabilities to fix root causes indefinitely, well, that’s when you tap into a competitive advantage.

So, the outcome we strive to achieve with you, when overcoming problems like revenue stalls, poorly performing staff or capacity constraints, is not only the resolution of those issues, but also enhancement of your business’ capabilities to dramatically mitigate them resurfacing into the future.

Business leaders who genuinely commit to getting to the root cause of problems and permanently fixing them, are the ones who get to experience sustained success. You’ll be amazed at how few business leaders there are like that; are you one of them?

Go to the Unlock Business Growth page if you’re struggling with achieving viable sales growth, your staff aren’t performing to their best or you’ve got a talent shortage.

If you’re prepared to get to the root cause of problems, then also go and see the Build a Sustainable Competitive Advantage page.

And when you’re ready, go to the How We Get Started page and book a free Get to Know Each Other meeting. At that meeting we can explore potential root causes of your problems, and design a Risk Free Trial of our service offerings, to propel your business forward for the long-term.

If you’ve ever wondered why some millionaires have gone bankrupt but still live a lavish life, it can have a lot to do with how they protected their wealth long before a crisis arose.

You obviously hope that you’ll never have a crisis to deal with. But you can never predict the future with certainty.

For instance, it’s not uncommon for some form of family dispute – such as a divorce – to jeopardize the family business…. and these days you don’t even have to be married. Sometimes these situations can seriously harm wealth that has been hard earned over generations.

When in business, there are known and simpler risks to protect against, such as business name risk. There are also the potentially devastating ones like mishandling ownership of intellectual property. Then there are the unknown risks.

You have the opportunity to use strategies to protect your business and family’s wealth. The key is to proactively make this investment in protection early – since waiting until a crisis is on the horizon is often far too late.

Please, if you’re in business or about to go into business, seek out professional help to limit your exposures.

This is something we take great pride and care in, and would be delighted to help you with.

Do your due diligence.

That’s something you’ve probably been told or read about as you’ve been making your way through the buying a business journey. But what does it mean and what should it achieve?

They’re interesting questions to answer and one’s we have some important insights to share.

Due diligence, with regards to buying a business, generally refers to the process of investigating the claims, facts and overall situation to uncover the truth. Its purpose is to help you decide whether the business is actually worthwhile buying.

What you might not know is that not all types of due diligence uncover the same truths. You can limit the due diligence in many ways. It might only look into:

• Tax and legal;
• The financials for the last couple of years, as opposed to the last five years; or
• It might include a customer analysis, supplier analysis and/or key dependency risk.

Generally, we’re advocates for conducting a comprehensive due diligence.

It just doesn’t make sense to have limited due diligence given the substantial dollars involved and the risks you’re taking to buy the business. That’s a key lesson we’ve seen learnt the hard way by new business owners.

Let us share a couple of brief learning experiences to emphasise our point:

1. At the beginning of a due diligence project, often you’re supplied with a detailed due diligence checklist to get a good understanding of what could be done.

   Sometimes people chose to reduce the scope to a limited financial due diligence.

   A limited financial due diligence will result in a report expressing the opinion of the financial health of the business.

   For instance, it might say that the business has been steadily getting worse over the last few years. In circumstances like that, this might make you go back to the negotiating table and perhaps reduce the purchase price accordingly.

   You would have benefited from the due diligence, but, because it was limited in scope, otherwise identifiable challenges would not have been addressed prior to the acquisition.

   For example, a limited financial due diligence would miss key customer dependency risk. Such as, the situation where a major part of the customer base had ties with the prior owner.

   This could subsequently lead to the loss of many customers shortly after the business changed owners, which naturally would have a major negative impact on revenue and bottom-line profit.

2. In this second learning experience regarding doing your due diligence, a business was acquired and for a few years, things were going pretty well for the new owners. However, unbeknown to them, they were operating against local council laws.

   What happened next was a sad struggle to keep the business afloat. Eventually the owners had to abandon the business, as the local laws make it unviable.

   Prior to buying the business, if a comprehensive due diligence had been completed, it is likely that the law breaking problems would have been uncovered.

   This would have allowed the prospective buyer the opportunity to proactively resolve such issues prior to the purchase, or directed them to buy an alternative/viable business instead.

To summarise, one must always be extremely careful when buying a business. Limiting a due diligence may be appealing in terms of being less costly and quicker, however, the long-term implications may prove very costly.

With experience, we’ve learnt to look for and find more and more otherwise hidden risks.

We are invested in wanting to assist you in buying a business that has the best chance for long-term success.

If you’re keen for this outcome, please reach out to us.

When starting a business, you need to tick off the basics.

Some of your decisions may have profound long term implications. Especially with regards to:

• Tax deductibility,
• Tax minimisation,
• Access to Government grants,
• Capital raising, and
• Liability protection.

Besides the tax and legal considerations, there is the most important factor: Are you pursuing a viable and worthwhile endeavour?

Consider these situations:

1. If you’re seeking to go down the disruptive and high-growth start-up path, you’ll want to be nimble, highly agile and connected to the start-up ecosystem.

   Very importantly, you’ll need to be highly critical of your business idea:

   • Are people really going to pay for your product?
   • Will they pay a high enough price to cover known and hidden costs (don’t under-appreciate the hidden costs)?
   • Is that market going to be big enough, and will you be able to defend your position?

2. Are you just creating a be-your-own boss type of business?

   This is where you might be great at getting and doing the work, but the financial rewards are perhaps just slightly better than a wage or salary job (sometimes it ends up being worse).

   Is that worth the 24/7 business ownership stress and risks?

   What might you be able to do to make it worthwhile?

3. Do you have the skills and passion to work ON-the-business, instead of IN-the-business ?

   A great many aspiring business owners are domain experts.

   They are exceptional at getting the work done to deliver the product to their customers.

   But, owning a business, especially one you hope to be worth millions one day, demands far greater management. You will need to build a team capable of:

   • Creating customer demand,
   • Winning that business,
   • Recruiting, training and retaining a team of exceptional people, and
   • Throughout, maintain ample cash-flow in order that your business survives.

   These things can be learned, but please be sure to give these challenges the respect they deserve.

We encourage you to join the Munro’s Business Academy to help you as you start your business journey , and please feel more that welcome to reach out for additional help when you’re ready.

If you’re ever in doubt about when’s the right time to seek professional help, please follow one of our key pieces of advice, which is to be proactive and ask early.

There comes a time in the business growth journey where you encounter considerable trouble getting your business to perform as desired.

A leading cause is because the way you’ve done business up to now has been designed to work very well for a small business. That is where your leadership, and that of your managers, have the skillset to thrive. However, that same skillset, well at least the way it has been applied in the past, is no longer optimal for the new challenges your business faces as it grows into a larger business.

This is a very difficult situation to overcome. Especially when your business is still making decent profits and keeping most customers. It’s difficult because what you’ve been doing does work, to an extent, but it also doesn’t work. You don’t want to jeopardize what you already have, but you can’t let the present growth challenges continue to persist unresolved.

This is especially the case if revenue growth has stalled, since some research has shown that 54% of companies fail to regain even moderate growth within a decade of a revenue stall, and when slow growth persists for more than 10 years the delay is most often fatal.

What you don’t want to do at this junction is get distracted by one of the almost never-ending fads of business management. You know what we mean, one of those new “high-performance frameworks” offering a silver-bullet to all your problems.

Instead, at this critical junction, we believe on relying upon proven research. Focusing on the key things which professional research has shown to have the highest impact on business growth.

You’ll probably be glad to know that there is research which directs you to focus your efforts on six key areas, so it’s not necessarily overwhelming. You’ll probably also find it good to know these are well-known business areas. What’s the difficult part is usually following through on excelling at each area, since the research indicates you’ll only have a better than 90% chance of “Winner” success when you do all six best practices at the same time.

Needless to say we’d be happy to help you scale your business. It is, after all, the purpose of our business – helping business owners and leaders experience success.

A great place to start is a no strings attached Get To Know Each Other meeting. But between now and then, take the opportunity to sign up to the Munro’s Business Academy where you can begin to arm yourself with evidence-based knowledge capable of propelling your business to greater success.

In that video you just watched, we mentioned some research.

If you’d like the references, simply head on in to the Munro’s Business Academy and you can find them on the Reference page.

It’s really wonderful to see a successful business, or a group of successful businesses and investments, built-up by grandparents and parents, passed down to their children.

What’s horrible to see is that family wealth eroded over time, of which there can be many different causes. Such as, mishandling of tax, divorce, poor investment decisions, even embezzlement.

We know very well that planning for and executing wealth succession plays a critical role in mitigating the erosion of family wealth.

Things which may come up in the succession planning stage are:

• Do you need blood-line clauses or binding financial agreements?
• Have all historical, and planned future, loans and gifts been properly documented?
• For family members working in the business, what is their fair market remuneration?
• Do you need an external Financial Controller?
• How often should the financials be audited?
• Do you need specially-designed trustee and/or appointor companies?
• Do you need a family constitution?
• What dispute resolution mechanisms do you need in-place?
• Do you need a family board and what external advisors will help enhance future performance?

There are also the matters of estate planning, to help achieve a smooth, asset preserving transition following the death of a loved one.

All of this can be quite daunting, and unfortunately we know all too well that people can choose to put this into the too hard basket. Sometimes until it’s too late. It’s not a situation any family wants to be in.

If you’re affairs aren’t in order, or you’re not sure if they are appropriately optimised, then give us a call. We’re here to help.

At Munro’s, The Professional Problem Solvers, one of our specialties is assisting Australians with accounting and business improvement associated with selling their business.

Whether you’re planning to sell to an unrelated party or through succession to family members or management, we are here to help.

Our role is to ensure you are well-prepared for the sale, aiming to achieve your financial goals while mitigating taxes. It’s crucial to start preparing several years beforehand. Early preparation can significantly influence the outcome of your sale, which we highlight on our Selling a Business webpage.

Determining a realistic business value is essential. Through profit improvement and strategic growth programmes, you can positively impact your business’s value.

Additionally, proactive tax planning a few years before the sale could dramatically reduce your eventual tax burden.

A comprehensive plan should also address what comes next, including tax-effective retirement planning.

For those considering business succession, particularly to family members, we recommend visiting our Successful Succession Planning page. There we cover what incoming owners should consider, what retiring owners need to do, and how large family groups can preserve and grow wealth while protecting against potential family disputes.

Please explore these pages if you need assistance and take note of the wonderful 5 star reviews that clients have submitted in relation to such professional work we have provided to them. It’s thanks to reviews like those that we rank in the Top 2% of Australian accounting firms.

When you’re ready for our help, we’re here ready to assist.

See you soon.