Create Your Sole Trader Invoice for Planning Effortlessly

Sole trader invoice for Planning

amazing hi everyone let's get into it welcome to the Kenora and Aki webinar foundations of bookkeeping for ndis sole Traders um small business is challenging enough as it is let alone having to navigate the red tape of the ndis system on top of that so today is about supporting our Kenora service provider Community by introducing some business building Concepts um via our friends at Augie so this is Bane uh if you're a canara member you may already know me as Kenora coach Yvette uh kanora Team Member Aaron is in the chat and today I've already introduced by in the who is community lead at Aki oh there's Aaron thanks Aaron um Bain thank you for sharing your knowledge with us today no worse awesome um if you're not a can or a member and you're joining us today a brief background is that Kenora is a safe and supportive online community where you're able to get support for your ndis business questions from ndis coaches and our community of thousands of other ndis service providers and participants um you can also list your service offering in our Google indexed marketplace directory for a monthly subscription of 49.95 today we get to dive into the sometimes ignored until entirely necessary subject of bookkeeping and being aware of your business's financial position we're going to explore some essential Concepts and essential Concepts and best practices for managing your business finances and please feel free to jump in with any questions as we go through each of the topics today um if you've been in one of these webinars before you may be aware that we record these sessions to share the replay in and the resources in Kenora afterwards and a few days after the webinar we'll we'll email it out to everyone so even if you're not a member you'll get all of the content direct to your inbox afterwards um if you look to the top of your screens there is a chat button and Aaron's just written that you can pop in your comments and questions introduce yourselves and as we go along Aaron will be monitoring that and let us know if any questions come up as we go through the webinar um great all right so before we get into the actual content I would like to do an acknowledgment of country I'd like to acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians of the country we are meeting on today all across Australia wherever you are as we broadcast this webinar Across the Nation we recognize their continuing connection to the land in the waters and thank them for protecting the coastline and its ecosystems we pay our respects to Elders past present and those to come and to all First Nations people today you're just joining us now this is the foundations of bookkeeping for ndis sole Traders presented by Aki and whatever business you run within the gis space we really hope you get something out of today's presentation and we'd love to hear from you after we wrap up today all right being enough for me sorry let's jump in what are we talking about today uh well today we're going to be talking about the foundations of bookkeeping and look at this really boring initial slide I've got for you it's wonderful that is the literal foundations it's kind of why I did it um before we go into the webinar hopefully I just want to explain like how this session will play out like uh depending on your level of knowledge there may be a lot of uh new information in this webinar for you however that means you can uh like there there may be like a bunch of questions you might have that will bug you throughout it and basically at the end of each of our topics we'll stop briefly for any questions um related to that topic and as avetta said um if you find you've got a question just drop it in the chat and we'll try and get to it um as part of the topic or we might get to it at the end of the session um it's worth letting you know I'm not a financial advisor so any guidance that I'm giving here is purely General and while it's been well researched to make sure I'm getting the best answers I can I'm just one person so please make sure to do some research uh and maybe discuss the topics on the Kenora Community before taking any big decisions based on anything you learn here today um just a brief rundown about hockey and why I'm here um Aki is an Australian owned and operated software uh designed to take the hassle out of finances for sole Traders like yourselves we specialize in creating ndis compliant invoices including line items support and plan manager forwarding to minimize the amount of work you need to do to finish your books and keep going with your business let's Dive Right In awesome so the overall topic for today is Introduction or foundations of booking bookkeeper sole traders in Australia but let's go into what an actual sole Trader is being sure so a sole Trader is an individual who runs a business on their own it's different from other business structures like a partnership or companies the key here is that you as a sole Trader are personally responsible for every aspect of your business including its finances as a sole Trader it's crucial to have a solid understanding of bookkeeping to make informed financial decisions and ensure your business runs smoothly boom great so talking about bookkeeping though bookkeeping for me especially is kind of in the realm of of like legal and accounting topics that always seem really Technical and so then gets put in the two hard basket um so what it actually is bookkeeping Bane sure well the bookkeeping can be complex but it doesn't have to be yeah it really just involves maintaining accurate Financial records of your business transactions it helps you to stay organized and comply with tax and legal requirements as well as manager cash flow effectively um it can be challenging especially if you're juggling multiple responsibilities but it's important to avoid common mistakes like mixing personal and business finances or neglecting to keep your records up to date there's many resources and tools available to help you streamline your bookkeeping process and today we're going to provide a bunch of tips on choosing the right tools for your specific needs yeah awesome okay great so aside from understanding how your business is going financially the other big reason for keeping accurate Financial records is the tax office so how does bookkeeping fit in there sure so as a sole Trader it's essential to know your tax obligations and how the Australian tax system works it'll help you stay compliant and avoid any potential issues with the ATO or the Australian taxation office um so I've got a bunch of boring text on the screen for you we're going to break down each of the individual uh types of uh like tax and and requirements that you might need to be familiar with okay great so first up is uh income text so sole Traders are required to pay income tax on their business profits your business profit is calculated by subtracting your business expenses from your business income you'll report this profit on your individual tax return and it's going to be taxed at the same rate as individual tax buckets um it's also important to know that sole Traders just like most people who pay tax are required to pay the Medicare Levy it's a tax that helps fund Australia's public health system and the amount you pay will depend on your income level another key tax consideration for sole Traders is the pay as you go installment system so this is a system that the government has put in place to help you make regular payments towards your estimated income tax that you'll owe at the end of the year spread out throughout the entire Financial year this makes it so that way you don't have to receive a big tax invoice at the end of the financial year and hopefully you can spread those payments out throughout the year yeah cool so income tax poag and then superannuation so that's something that employers are obligated to do to employ for employees but how is that how does that affect sole Traders so sole Traders strictly aren't required to make superannuation contributions for themselves but does it sound great but it is a good idea to consider contributing to a superannuation fund to secure your retirement basically you're wanting to pay money um into effectively what is a long-term savings account yeah so that way you have some money when you get old and and retire or young and retire if you uh magically super financially successful um but there's also some tax benefits for doing that um basically uh some of your contributions can work as a tax deduction it's something to discuss with an accounting professional and it can really change and Vary depending on your situation yeah for sure um so another topic that comes up a fair bit in the provider Community is how GST is applicable to various situations um what do sole Traders need to be aware of in this situation well GST is a value-added tax applied to most goods and services in Australia if your business has an annual turnover of 75 000 or more you must register for GST it's not an optional thing yeah uh once you're registered though you'll need to charge GST on your goods and services that the tax is relevant to but when it comes to the ndis most services are GST free there's much more detailed information about GST and the ndis on the ATS website so we'll put a link in the chat but generally if you're providing a service to an ndis participant it's a reasonable and necessary service and you have a service agreement or a written agreement about Service delivery then there is no GST applicable to the service you deliver so keeping track of GST in this case is any business expenses you may have and the GST you pay on those things such as fuel consumable supplies anything else relevant to the service you offer to participants um there is one other thing that we can also consider when dealing with GST if there's ever a point in time where you're uh contracted to another organization so still being a sole Trader for yourself but working within another Organization for a brief amount of time that direct um dealing with that organization uh is not GST free and you will have to charge GST on any invoice there yeah great so it's to participants a service provided or yeah correct yeah absolutely great okay cool so sorry sorry no no no I was just gonna say so it's Jesse it's less applicable to NDS service providers when it's service provision within the ndis but outside of the ndis 100 yeah apply applicable for sure absolutely um but then it's also still necessary to register for GST if your annual income is over that threshold limit even if there's nothing that you charge that is GST applicable you still need to register for GST if you had that 75 000 cap cool and that does unfortunately mean that you'll have to report your incomings and outgoings in what's called a business activity statement it's a quarterly thing that the ATO does um and it can be a little bit complex but there are a bunch of guides for it online that really simplify it as much as possible yeah cool all right so Financial record keeping is important for sole Traders but I suspect there are other information obligations that sole Traders Traders need to be aware of especially to remain compliant within the ndis system what are some of those that you can take us through Bain sure um so I guess the the first thing is that personal information is really important for ndis providers yeah you need to keep track of participants details like the name contact info date of birth maybe but you also have to be really careful about privacy laws when it comes to collecting and storing that information yeah um service agreements as I'm sure we're all aware of as well as individualized plans are a big deal too they lay out the specific Services costs and goals for each participant it's essential to work closely with participants when creating these plans to make sure that their unique needs are met um and then progress notes and reports uh helpful to keep everyone in the loop about how things are going as a provider you'll need to document all the ups and downs of Service delivery including what's working what's not and any changes that you have to make along the way there's also more to think about where you know unfortunately incidents can happen yeah and as a provider you're going to need to record these in incident reports it helps to learn from any mistakes and prevent future problems it's important to include details like what happened any injuries if they occurred and and what follow-up actions were taken oh yeah yeah sure being a management system for all of this business information is really important for the overall success of the business um and it generally makes you a better service provider it seems absolutely yeah cool you also need to consider to keep Financial records you need to keep a track of things like your invoices your payments your budgets and any financial statements if there's eventually a point where you end up with staff that's going to be an additional point of record that you would need to keep on hand as well yeah and when it comes to these documents you can't just sort of like have them around for a little bit and then just get rid of them maybe at the end of the year or whatever or when they're just cluttering up your desk or something like that unfortunately when it comes to Australian law you have to keep your records for at least five sometimes up to seven years it depends on each individual State requirement so it's worth checking that out definitely awesome cool business records look after them especially um there's so many um like hacking is so much in the news at the moment and personal information so making sure that you've got some Security based around awesome processes around personal information is a hundred percent a massive consideration for sole Traders um yeah so we've already touched on a few um accounting and bookkeeping terms just in the content that we've gone through already um but they're not generally part of everyday conversations unless you're friends with an accountant maybe um so can we go over a few more pain um so they become a bit more familiar in terms of um their use and and what they apply to sure look if I've probably already said a few words that are a little bit confusing if you're not familiar with the lingo today I've tried to keep this as as plain as I can but unfortunately when it comes to dealing with booking terms they just come up and they can be really frustrating so we've got another big boring slide full of letters for you to look at um but we're just going to hit six and these six are the probably the most common things that come up and what I've made sure we've done is we've created a document for you at the end of this webinar that will have a bunch more terms for you to look at so that way if anything's ever confusing to you you can just have a quick reference to this guide and be like oh yeah I understand what that that is yeah cool so let's start with cash flow um cash flow is the movement of money in and out of your business so maintaining a positive cash flow which is something you might hear a bit means that there's more money coming in to your business than is going out and that's essential for making sure that you're covering your expenses investing in any growth opportunities that might happen and ensuring the long-term success of your business yeah awesome yeah so ideally that also means that you get to pay yourself really yeah that would be that would be the the goal that's the goal yeah um next up we have assets so assets are items that your business owns that have value so these can be tangible or real things such as equipment and stock or intangibles such as product licenses uh you know even something like if you subscribe to Aki that would be a an intangible asset even though it doesn't have any value keeping track of your assets helps you understand your business's financial position and manager of resources effectively and something that I want to just touch on here really briefly is it's important to make sure that you identify when something that you're buying you're buying for the business as opposed to buying for yourself and we'll get into that a little bit later but I just wanted to keep it in in your brain yeah so next up is liabilities um it's not a fun one it's the accounting term for money that your business owes such as loans unpaid bills or even taxes they're a liability it's important to Monitor and manage your liabilities to maintain healthy finances and avoid potential cash flow issues there's that word again it's important to remember that as a sole Trader you are directly responsible for any liabilities that arise from your business and that's one of the downsides of being a sole Trader is that if something goes pear-shaped you're really in the middle of that yeah you're personally responsible for trainer yeah yeah that's definitely a big thing to be aware of for sure um what's next all right well next up we have income and expenses we'll put these both into uh one little group income is the money that your business brings in from its activities hence income such as item sales or Services provided to participants and expenses are the costs that your business has to operate such as rent power fuel all of these things uh yeah expenses and tracking and categorizing your income and expenses is really important for understanding your business's position and being aware of what tax you'll need to pay at the end of the financial year yeah great so I've left the big one to last this is the this is the one that uh even when I started learning about bookkeeping my brain had uh not a lot of fun time trying to figure out and that's that's account reconciliation yeah even even in uh Aki so inoki we try and like make things as simple as we can and use plain plain language wherever we can we couldn't find a way to make this plain language because it's just such a simple way to say it there isn't no yeah um yeah Matt yeah yeah call it matchy matchy and if it watches everyone complains that they can't find it but um so account reconciliation is when you compare your financial records so maybe you are using an accounting software like hockey or using spreadsheets or even some plain old pen and paper and you're comparing those financial records that you have to your bank statements and making sure that they match so regularly doing a Reconciliation make sure that there aren't any discrepancies or errors and it keeps your records accurate so yeah when we talk about reconciliation and account reconciliation or bank reconciliation this is what we're talking about yeah right yeah cool so I'm sure there's plenty of those that are already common knowledge to um participant of people that are here today but um yeah some like account reconciliation may require a little bit of clarification um and I'm sure the more you hear these words in your regular business happenings the more familiar and comfortable you become with them and using them and understanding what they entail um within your business context so um so moving on to actually operating as a sole Trader Bane um how do you start with your best foot forward how do we go about doing that I mean the first thing you're going to want to do honestly if you haven't already is uh is up on the screen it's it's it's open a bank account so keeping your business and personal finances separate that really makes your bookkeeping tasks simpler but it also helps you maintain accurate Financial records and makes tax way less complicated when you need to focus on that to be completely Frank if you don't have a business bank account and you're not making sure that you're that all of your sole Trader um finances are going through that like when you need to fill up your car that you've used just for work and all that sort of stuff like if you haven't done that your finances are probably so complicated at the end that you probably need it you would need almost you know five times the amount of time that it would need if it was just in one or two business bank accounts yeah so um so yeah opening a dedicated business account is is a big thing um and you should only use it for business related spending right yeah yeah so keeping your business income and expenses separate from your personal spending is how you easily keep track of your business success and manage your cash flow um one of the things you even do from that is when you need to pay yourself money you you pay yourself directly from that business bank account as well so yeah you're also yes no yeah um you'll also need to track uh expenses that you're incurring while you're running a business I mentioned um I mentioned uh fuel is one of them but you'd also want to keep track of travel time to and from a participant as that can be claimed back on tax um and that'll help you manage your business expenses more effectively and enable you to easily identify tax deductible costs also make sure you hold on to receipts invoices and other paperwork related to your business expenses for tax tax purposes great Okay so even when you're a sole Trader and it may just be you working in the business there's a business you and then there's a personal you and their bank accounts and spending need to be separate so it doesn't become confusing at tax time or pretty much any other time where you're going through your bookkeeping processes it just makes everything simpler sounds good um so we talked about yeah so we've talked about what sole creators need to be aware of and how to understand things better but then how do they apply this knowledge to their day-to-day business right so I mean the way that you apply it is by setting up a routine right so when we talk about bookkeeping I mean one of the best ways to think about it is like a routine series of tasks that you do to keep everything working and in Tip-Top shape um so it's really important for managing your business finances it's it'll help you stay organized and and hopefully not become overwhelmed or put off dealing with tax or paying bills or sending invoices so part of business really that's just yeah a deal yeah yeah um so I mean what we suggest um is setting aside of regular time for bookkeeping tasks whether it's daily weekly or monthly when I was a sole Trader for me it was fortnightly um and then when I started getting more and more work I brought that down to weekly so dedicating specific time to managing your finances will help you stay on top of your financial obligations and prevent tasks from piling up and you've got to be consistent about it you don't want to just sort of be like oh yeah I'll get to it tomorrow or keeping that consistency is is really really vital to making sure that you don't get overwhelmed [Music] um yeah um you you might be uh thinking the bookkeeping is is a complicated beast and I mean that's fair it sounds really daunting but what it really boils down to us some of the things that I've already mentioned previously right so like let's think about it from um from a basic standpoint first you you're going to want to check that like your invoices have been paid okay have my invoices been paid the ones that are due have I received money for them yep cool mark them off drop them as paid next is okay well the ones that haven't been paid do are they overdue now well if yes then maybe I need to send them a reminder so I'll do that next um then it's like double checking that doing that account reconciliation thing where it's just like making sure that that what I've got in front of me in terms of invoices and what I've got in front of me in terms of receipts actually matches what's going on in my bank account because because sometimes look no one's perfect you're probably going to have a situation where you accidentally pay for something that's a business expense using your personal account or maybe even the other way around and there are ways to fix this you've just got to mark them down yeah um and you know that's pretty much it you know make sure that that is bookkeeping it's just yeah doing those few things but doing them consistently that gets you um to a point of having really managed finances yeah awesome now you can automate a lot of this wherever possible so you can use bookkeeping software like hockey um which can save you time and it'll also reduce the risk of Errors because you know things like hockey will will highlight any errors where they've come out um software programs can import automatically import Bank transactions which is makes life way easier yeah um you know generate invoices and reconcile the accounts for you you know they'll they'll look at your invoices and they'll look at your accounts and they'll be like cool these things match yeah that's the same amount this must be this must be matching and then all you need to do on your end is just click yes that matches yes that matches and it's all sorted for you um so another part of your bookkeeping routine and this is like can be kind of like frustrating but it's making sure to review your financial statements regularly so um we consider statements like this such as profit and loss statement um and balance sheets and these are things that are usually reviewed in a software so they're not something that you'll probably do a whole lot if you're doing things manually but when it's all automated then the software can provide you a profit and loss or a balance sheet straight away um and that'll really identify any issues that are coming up any areas for improvement um and yeah so those are things you can do it an overall picture of how your business is going and you can track and see any trends that are happening or whatever depending on how long you've been using the software for and all that sort of thing yeah absolutely gives you an overall theme yeah so in addition to reviewing your financial statements um keep a close eye on your cash flow regularly monitoring your cash flow helps ensure that you have enough funds to cover your expenses uh invest in growth opportunities and respond to any unexpected Financial challenges because that's life that's life it happens there's going to be times where a bunch of your regular clients uh sorry uh participants uh have uh you know something's come up in their life and they can't have you over this week or whatever and suddenly you're down a bunch of money that you're expecting to have um and and this is just the nature of the Beast and making sure that you're able to stay on top of that is one of the great challenges of being a sole Trader um and then finally establish a system for organizing and storing your financial records remember we've got to keep these for five to seven years so you really want to keep them um where where you can and where you know where they are and those boxes will pile up yeah absolutely um so good record keeping practices are crucial for staying compliant with tax regulation so making informed financial decisions create whatever system works for you whether it's digital or physical but just be diligent about maintaining it and when I talk about a system what I mean is like let's say you've got a box maybe you have like uh when I was doing mine I had I had like a folder for every month um I was doing things a little bit more analog um so I wasn't using programs and stuff like that back then um at least not when I was first starting out and I just kept everything in in a monthly folder and that meant that if there was any attire any time where I needed to look back into the past I could easily do so you know I had someone uh had someone come up to me and be like oh I paid for that invoice back in you know April last year and it was like well no you didn't but let me just double check my records and I can do that because I've kept them in a nice organized orderly um pile so yeah it was that's that's how you make it make life easy for you um we've just had a question come up um what are financial statements is that like bank statements or yeah yeah so so a financial thing it's really just a bank statement um but you can also think of it um as your like so when we talked about we also sort of mentioned profit and loss statements and balance sheets so those are more complex um uh statements that are provided usually by software so profit and loss is basically showing as as it states what your business profit is and how much loss it has and then you're able to sort of see those as trending charts and then make um a decision like oh wow you know um over the last three months my loss has really increased but my profit has stayed about the same maybe I or is going down maybe there's something that I need to do um to fix in my business or maybe you know as is the case right now uh maybe inflation just sucks and um we're all paying more for Less so um but it's it gives you an overall picture of the position absolutely in fact if you have a look in the background that that little cash flow graph there that yeah that could be considered um you know a financial statement of some description so yeah cool all right um awesome so is that that's all we've got to go through in terms of um applying that on their day-to-day basis Within bookkeeping yeah yeah cool right so I'm just thinking one of the biggest issues that comes up within our um Community both from service providers and participants is that invoices don't get paid on time um and a lot of the time when we investigate why or when they investigate why it comes down to the invoices not being ndis can client so what can sole Traders what do they need to be aware of in when it comes to making and sending ndis compliant invoices sure let me uh let me just jump forward just a little bit here we go here's a here's an example of not an ndis compliant invoice but still an invoice and we'll go we'll go over some parts of it um just to make sure that you are being compliant um so first like when it comes to your invoices you need to make sure you include all the necessary information um it's my cursor on the screen or is it just the window oh awesome excellent um so you're going to want you know you don't need a logo necessarily but it you know it's professional it makes it look nice yeah um and when you're dealing with uh when you're dealing with other businesses you're like having a little logo can just make it a little bit more yeah yeah absolutely um but over here you know we have our business name we have our ABN and contact details so they're all there um over here we have a unique um invoice number for tracking and reference purposes um we've got down here a clear description of the goods or services provided now when you're doing that for an ndis complaint invoice you're going to want to make sure that you're having the line items for those goods and services right because that's really important is to make sure you've you've nailed those line items and got them on the invoice um and I'll take it uh would that be part of the description on this particular invoice uh on this particular invoice you would probably make it yeah as part of the description so it would be probably here where it just says okay instead it would probably um instead it would probably have the line item Services yeah and then and then Dash and then the number and then and then down here in this is what we would call like the the more description part that you can sort of add bits if you need to so um and Aki for instance has the ability to quickly create ndis suitable invoices with next in our hassle so we've got all your line items already baked into the software so it's ready to go like once you just find the the line item that's the one that's applicable applicable for you you just put it in there and Bam um um and you know sometimes um with your ndis invoices you'll need to use the same line item twice but for two different things and we have a field where you can change like the description for that part as well cool um so the last sort of things you'll need to do is make sure that you've got like the invoice date as well as a payment to Due Date um although I don't know that this one it has an amount due but because because it's uh empty period yeah it has a billing period because this is a subscription thing it's a little bit um a little bit more fancy so this is this is me using um just one of the the invoices direct from hockey so um but yeah making sure that you have your total amount due including any taxes so this is you know it's a GST at 10 but of course ten percent of zero zero and and that is pretty much how your entire invoice should look like um so this is an automatically generated invoice from so as long as your business information is all plugged into Aki um your line items are correct when you go in and generate an invoice within the software itself for a particular participant then the resultant um invoice will be a compliant advice absolutely yeah and one of the things that we've also um like like I don't want to hide button how hockey is is really amazing but we have truly built it for sole Traders and one of the things that we have is the ability for you know if you're one of those people who wants to offer flexible payment options to participants you know especially those who self-manage such as letting them pay via credit card or even mobile payments and stuff like that um we have Integrations that enable customers to pay an invoice directly so you know on here this is is not an example of one that has it but they could be a little pay now button just here you just click that as a participant and you'll be taken to a payment screen so we use um stripe we partner with them to add all those payments and setting it up is is pretty straightforward yeah um one of the last things I just want to tackle is um making sure that you have a clear payment policy in place and stated in your service agreements yeah and put that on your invoices as well yeah just outline your payment terms such as the due dates what payment method you accept any late fees or penalties for overdue payments you've set up in your service agreement put them all on the invoice if you can yeah yeah awesome definitely and just being clear and consistent and um having it in multiple places so obviously in the service agreement in original conversations that you have with participants that you're working with and then on your invoices as well so everything's out of the open and um as clear as so yes absolutely 100 amazing so it seems like getting paid on time is really about Clarity having all the information ready to go expect managing expectations in terms of when you need to be paid and having it all on the invoice sending them and giving plan managers or participants who are self-managed options in how they can actually give you your money yeah and to just touch on uh like if you got a good software that understands how ndis works like hockey we've even set it up so that way it can automatically forward to a plan manager if you're dealing with a plan managed participant right so you create the invoice and it sends it twice it sends it once to the participant and wants to the plan manager so that way they both got it and it's ready to go cool awesome yeah so for their records and for the plan manager to actually action it and as long as that didn't you communicated to the participant that they're not responsible for that and it's directly to the plant manager as well awesome absolutely amazing so that's huge content Bane thank you for taking us through all of those aspects a lot worse more than happy to answer any questions there's any questions that have come up um let's have a look in the the chat um one of them early on was what's the difference between bookkeeping and accounting oh good question um so there's actually like a decent amount of overlap between bookkeeping and accounting so in some ways you could consider them the same thing um but there are some differences like for instance a accounting is uh so I mean you could consider accounting to be something that's giving you Financial Insights based on the information that you've gained from bookkeeping data so like bookkeeping is is keeping the data and getting the data all ready and all your ducks in a row to do your tax and all that sort of stuff um whereas accounting can be um making sure that's submitted to the ATO that's that's more of an accounting thing than a bookkeeping thing although some some bookkeeping software can do that um the other thing is is like I said providing those insights uh based on that information to be like hey did you notice that you could have been uh having these deductions here that you're not taking part of I can tell you're not taking part of it because I can see all your data and there's nothing in there about these deductions um that's that's more of an accounting thing yeah for sure um I wanted to ask a question in terms of the functionality of Aki in terms of um uh how hard is it to modify the GST component so say as you said maybe you're working with people that are outside the ndis as well as ndis participants so um creating an invoice for someone say your regulars are participants so then that all of that is um GST free but then is it easy enough to then modify so that GST is included for like outside India yeah sure I can I can come up with a couple of ways to go around that so your first thing is when you create an ndis um participant as a customer type so we've got customer types and if you set up a customer type as an ndis participant it's going to give you access to those ndis line items when you put them on an invoice and it's going to basically default to GST free right but there is a setting a toggleable setting in there or GST being charged from a specific line item so that's that's an option literally just to flick this just a little flick flick the switch yep ready to go in the in the settings option of that particular invoice the other thing that you do is you can have a mixture of ndis clients and non-ndis clients so when you go to make an invoice for a non-ndis client it will charge GST by default yeah unless unless you've set it up otherwise because you can set an up to to not charge GST for those people as well remember you don't need to be charging uh GST onto your password for sure yeah for sure um awesome cool um we've just had a couple of comments that um logos are very helpful to participants so they can actually reference who the Bill's from so yeah that's definitely um an accessibility um uh Point as well in terms of invoicing so thank you Lindell for bringing that up yeah I mean when so I'm a I'm a participant as well um and when I get myself manage so when I get uh invoices it's nice to be able to like yeah I see it in the I see it in the email title or whatever um but it's really nice to be able to see that logo straight away and be like oh right that's from you know XYZ cool yep got it I remember that and and pay it um so yeah 100 very much Aaron we gonna come in and sorry I didn't want to interrupt in those questions um I just had a question again of something that Lindell mentioned which was that you can get really good metal storage cabinets for all the paperwork that you're needing to store if you've got it in you know hard copies now you mentioned earlier that things like Oki could potentially be a deduction at tax time what about things like storage cabinets and stuff like that is that able to be deducted at tax so so that's a that's a good question um I would consider that a business expense and I imagine most accountants would say the exact same thing um it is something that you need to manage your business successfully right um so it's it's a it's a requirement that you keep those documents and you keep them well sorted so there's there is no reason that that couldn't be an expense that you can deduct so um oh and and there's someone who is an accountant who is who is who can probably hopefully back me up on that and tell me that I'm not completely talking out of my backside um and yes I'm sure um Gill yes will definitely be able to make that happen after the fact um this whole webinar will be available as a replay uh in just a couple of days we'll post it within the community and directly to your email as well so you won't miss out on anything so it will be great um and there'll be some resources that I think will be really helpful for you as well 100 yeah I've had a couple of questions that came through the community as well I don't think we have any more in the chat just now so I might just pop these ones to you Bane sure not a problem going back to the tax that we were talking about earlier and how you need to make sure you're putting enough aside there was the you know pay as you go thing yep what happens if a provider is like their income is really up and down like they might make a heap in one month and then work really slows down the next month it's really inconsistent they don't have any idea how much they're going to earn at the end of the year what's the best way to work out how much to put aside okay I can definitely answer that because my business when when I was self-employed was was doing exactly that I I some months I was slammed you know I had had absolutely everything to do and then other mods were quiet um the way that I managed to do it was um I I'm a bit of a math nerd so I'm going to try and I'm going to try and do this without the math nerdy stuff the way I did it was I went and took three months of my income so a quarter um and then just said okay what what would that quarter look like if that was exactly how my entire year looked and then when okay what tax would I have for that year there's calculators on the internet you can just just type in you know tax calculator and and off you go um and uh it would be like okay that's how much tax it was I would be like all right I'm just going to set aside that amount yeah for tax time yeah um I had two I had two business accounts one one is a transactional business account and one is effectively a Savings business account yeah and it would just sit in the savings account and it would accrue interest and all that sort of stuff until tax time had come and then I could just pay it off and usually usually I was out by you know a couple of hundred dollars uh here or there you know yeah um so it wasn't that big a deal wasn't even you didn't end it no um one of the other tips one of the other tips that I can say is is maybe maybe let's let's use a different hypothetical where normally you have a pretty average sort of week and um you're not using pay as you go you're just you're just doing uh doing what you can to to keep up to date with it um and then suddenly you have like something where it's double or triple what you're used to for that month I would just make sure to um to keep uh a little bit extra aside for that be like okay what would I normally keep okay well I had three times the amount of work so what is three times that number you're probably still going like if you end up in a new income tax bracket you could be a little bit short at the end of the year because of that but it won't be huge it really won't so and ultimately the tax office is generally pretty good as long as you keep communicating with them in terms of what your situation is absolutely yeah so yeah the best thing you can do is keep that conversation happening with them because they they want everyone to continue paying taxes yes they do lindel's just pointed out in the chat that there's some people that have seasonal work so like mowing might have lots in the summer but little in winter so I suppose in those cases that's when that becomes even more important on the that time when you're getting a lot of work to make sure that you're putting enough aside to cover the whole year um and sort of balance it out that way I guess yeah absolutely yeah we just got another question in the chat here um assuming okay can keep a record of all my invoices to my client are there other notes not visible to the client that I can keep about them hmm good question um there there are some customer notes here but it's not really accessible so you know what I'm going to do Lisa is so if everyone playing along at home Aki is is a relatively new software where we're just out of the gate but we've been doing really really well at least I feel look I I know I'm biased but uh but I feel um we've been doing really well and trying to hit it out of the park as much as we can um and one of the ways that we do that is when someone has a suggestion for a good idea you know I make sure that we take note of it and we try and implement it as best we can so um I would have to get back to you on that one Lisa but I'm pretty sure that while we do have the functionality for it it's not easily accessible and we could do better so um so what I would like is for us to do better in that regard and so I will make sure that um busy busy developers who already have far too much work to do um I was just wondering um after we finish this webinar if people are interested to actually have a look at the capabilities and the functionality of Aki is there a way that they can actually do that themselves without handing over too much information or well I mean credit card details the first thing that I would say is that um right now uh until the end of the financial year I'm just going to drop the link in chat um we have uh a six-month free promotion and that's just because we're launching and we realize we're new out of the gate um so we want to give you as much time as possible to make an informed decision about us um and it's truly free you don't need to put your credit card in it's it's just you sign up you put your email in your first name your email that's it um and and you've got six months of financial sorting for you know for you to do as as much as you want there's no limitations in the software or anything like that um so you can use it exactly how you you wouldn't and see if it's a right fit for you and one of the things I would suggest is if you do use the software and you find that it's not quite the right fit like maybe there's something that you would love it to do and it's just not doing well I'm the community manager we have a community there jump on drop us a line or if you're not feeling comfortable about using our community we have a sponsored section in the Kenora Forum jump on that and and be like hey pain I was using this all the things that are wrong for it like hey man I was using the software and I found that it didn't do this like yeah cool let me know and I will do what I can to make sure that um assuming it's something that that is is something that we can fix or something that is is is a good benefit to multiple people we will do what we can to get it built so yeah amazing after that six months then Bane um what is the the cost subscription cost you you you would ask me that uh no it's it's I'm like my brain just had a short circuit there for a second no it's it's 18 a month after that awesome and remember that's a business expense so yeah you know it's it comes out of your your business expenses so yes text deductible you're not you're not texting you're not yes you're not yeah awesome all right well I think if there's no other questions we may have reached the end of our webinar for today cool thank you very much I hope I helped a bunch of you thank you very much Bane um just wanted to let everyone know we'll be sending an email out to everyone uh who showed up today or who registered and will be posting the video within the hockey channel smart cash flow for sole Traders on canora um and it will also have all of the the links to the resources that we spoke about today as well as some extra resources from Aki to um to help you with your business bookkeeping please share it with anyone that you think will benefit from it um and any further con any further questions that you have about the content that we've discussed today feel free feel free to throw it into the um the Aki Channel as well and Bane is very active within the community he will answer your questions and we'll jump in as needed um theories um we'd also like to extend um the invitation to all service providers within the ndis if you have any feedback or if you want to share your experiences um running a business within the ndis good or bad you've got a supportive community at canora that are here to walk with you and to to listen to your stories um that's the end of our webinar today I'm Yvette that was Aaron on the chat and this is Bane thank you again for joining us today and we hope to see you in Kenora soon thanks for joining us have a great day