Helping small business succeed

Bellarine Business Advisors owner Helen Butteriss focuses on helping small business succeed with one-on-one personalised service, without charging on an hourly basis.

Times are changing for small business owners and their role in managing their financial affairs.

With a surge of cloud-based accounting products such as Xero, QuickBooks Intuit and the add-ons (for example receipt bank, square, vend and workflow max, the integration and direct bank feeds) the time taken for the owner to manage their affairs has been significantly reduced.

At Bellarine Business Advisors, Ms Butteriss identified a need to educate small businesses to understand their financial affairs with real-time information on a daily basis in a time-effective way.

“It’s not about reducing bookkeeping and accounting costs , it’s about working smarter in your business which in turn will provide greater financial success,” Ms Butteriss said.

“I would rather your accounting dollars be spent on growing your business, not on compliance costs and bookkeeping.”

The five steps for financial success for small business are:

1. Understand your business financial information in real time
2. Have a business plan
3. Set a budget
4. Be accountable
5. Don’t bury your head in the sand

Ms Butteriss said a recent client of Bellarine Business Advisors came to her to discuss their business.

Working with the client, she identified he had no idea what his business financial situation was.

He expressed concern with his bookkeeper who did everything from payroll to paying bills and didn’t provide him with information to understand his performance and was charging in the vicinity of $1,000 per month.

Ms Butteriss’ plan of action was to educate the client by showing him how to do these functions himself in a timely non-stressful manner.

By linking his point of sale system to Xero, adding on receipt bank and having his employees access to timesheets, his input time was non-existent.

His file is set up so all he has to do is approve items with a click of the button.

“We now have a relationship where he spends those dollars on successfully growing his business,” she said.