Business Advisory

Our Business Advisory gives expert guidance so your business can reach its potential

Business
Valuation

Business valuation requires an understanding of your business, an understanding of the market, and an accurate understanding of what is being valued.

Cloud Accounting software is terrific for some users and not so for others. Find out what the best fit for your business would be.

Interim
CFO

If you are in the process of recruiting new staff, we can help support your company through this.

International
Services

We help you consider all aspects when operating in a foreign country.

Regular
Accounting

We offer a full service of maintaining all accounting records, or can create a tailored solution that is right for you.

Remuneration Services

Whether you are an employer or an employee, we can assist in making sure that your remuneration arrangements are effective.

Strategic
Planning

Look forward with tools that will help you in the future.

Succession
Planning

You shouldn’t just think about it when you are approaching 60.

Taxation
Consulting

Here to help you with those things that crop up and are out of the ordinary.

Innovative advice to enable you to run your business

Being a business owner is a rewarding opportunity. However, along with the demands of operating a business, come complex and seemingly never-ending obligations that are difficult to navigate.

As a business owner you have the critical responsibility to meet your financial and tax obligations, while importantly planning for your future, by ensuring your business is sustainable and most of all profitable.

Saward Dawson Business Advisory team has the experience and full service offering to go beyond simply meeting your obligatory compliance issues. We are able to assist with strategies to unlock your business’ potential, enabling you to concentrate on what you do best, run your business.

Business Valuation

Your business may require a valuation for many different reasons:

  • Transfer of equity between current owners
  • Admission of a new owner
  • Assessment of the adequacy of cross-insurance arrangements
  • Assessment of value for family law purposes
  • Establishment of fair value in a business restructure.

Understanding is the key.

The preparation of a business valuation requires an understanding of your business, an understanding of the market, and an accurate understanding of what is being valued (shares, plant & equipment and goodwill, what about working capital?)

Attending to a business valuation requires considerable skill. We have substantial experience in this area. Complemented by our experience in representing vendors and purchasers, in the sale or purchase of businesses.

We are equipped and ready to assist!

For more information please contact Bruce Saward.

Related Insights

What is my business worth?

Cloud Accounting and Add-ons

With the advancement of technology, accounting should not be tiresome. You should not need to worry about losing your accounting file, or not being able to work from home because the accounting file is saved in the office. Cloud accounting software takes away these worries and more.

So what is cloud accounting?  It is an accounting package where the data is stored on the provider’s secure servers. All you need to access your accounting data is an electronic device with an internet connection.

How can cloud accounting benefit me and my business?

  • Fast and secure access to your financial information, anytime, anywhere
  • Free up time to do the things you love by leveraging the automation capabilities of the cloud software
  • Collaborate online with your team and your trusted advisors
  • Go paperless with the use of data-extraction software to go along with your cloud accounting system
  • Forget about having to install version upgrades or back up the accounting file – all of these happen automatically and in the background

We are certified experts in cloud-based accounting systems such as Xero [insert link here] and Quickbooks Online [insert link here], as well as other cloud accounting packages.

Going beyond cloud accounting systems, we also assist our clients with building an ecosystem of connected cloud applications to automate the various business functions and unlock clarity on key financial information.  Here are some examples:

  • Hubdoc – extracts information from bills and receipts and records in the accounting system
  • ApprovalMax – enhances the approval process for accounts payable and accounts receivable and allows for multiple approval levels
  • Futrli – delivers cashflow reporting and budgeting, and utilises AI and machine learning to analyse your financial data
  • KeyPay – combines rosters, timesheets, leave management, reporting and payroll
  • Practice Ignition – automates the process of creating, sending and recording service proposals and also allows for automated direct debit

Say goodbye to your traditional accounting software that takes up too much of your valued time, speak to us today to get your business onto the cloud.

For more information please contact Matthew Stokes.

Interim CFO

If you are in the process of recruiting new staff, we can help support your company through this.

International Services

Conducting business in your home country can be challenging enough, but establishing and operating a business in a foreign country opens up a whole new world of things to consider. Saward Dawson will help you navigate your way through local tax and employment requirements and ensure your Australian operations are governed well.

Our services include:

  • Registration of foreign companies or incorporation of a local subsidiary
  • Taxation advice about whether it is best to operate as a branch of a foreign company or as a local company
  • Attending to ABN, GST, income tax, payroll tax, WorkSafe and other registrations required to do business in Australia
  • Processing of payroll
  • Attending to routine accounting if required via cloud accounting so that it is able to be reviewed anywhere, anytime
  • Assisting with your own accounting with monthly or quarterly reviews so that you know that everything is under control
  • Preparation of monthly reporting packs to head office
  • Filing of Business Activity Statements and employment related returns monthly or quarterly as required
  • Company secretarial services to ensure that you comply with all reporting and filing requirements of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC)
  • Income tax preparation and advice
  • Auditing and assurance services either for local compliance or for your own requirements.

We have the experience, resources and capacity to provide targeted or total support for your business in Australia.

For more information please contact Joshua Morse.

Regular Accounting

Now more than ever it is crucial for business to have up to date and accurate financial information. However for many businesses, keeping their accounting records up-to-date is a constant chore. The latest technologies available both in desktop and cloud based accounting systems make staying up-to-date much easier than ever before.

At any level

At Saward Dawson we can assist clients at whatever level they require. We can offer a full service of maintaining all accounting records for you or a tailored solution that is right for you.

Often clients are happy to stay on top of billing their customers, collecting their debts and paying their accounts but want someone to take responsibility for the other aspects of their accounting.

Some clients are happy keeping up-to-date with data entry but like an experienced accountant to look over their accounts monthly or quarterly.

We can tailor a cost-effective solution that works for you. Whether you require data entry level assistance, a regular review and reconciliation of your records or a high level CFO for a short time (e.g. preparation of annual budgets or preparation of Board reports) we can accommodate your needs.

For more information please contact Joshua Morse.

Commercial Audit

Remuneration Services

Whether you are an employer or an employee, we can assist in making sure that your remuneration arrangements are effective.

Employers

We focus on the essential to deliver what you need and can have complete confidence in.  This enables you to have assurance that your employer obligations are right.

Areas that we can assist with include:

  • Advising on salary packaging effectiveness, implementation and risk areas.
  • Making sense of the exemptions and concessions available for not-for-profit employers.
  • Reviewing remuneration arrangements of staff.
  • Advising on termination payments.
  • Ensuring that salary packaging arrangements comply with fringe benefits tax (FBT) and income tax laws.
  • Making sure that FBT, PAYG withholding tax, superannuation, payroll tax and WorkCover responsibilities are complied with.
  • Recommending what corrective action is required where obligations have not been met.

Employees

If remuneration is something that is too hard to understand, please talk to us

Areas that we can assist with include:

  • Structuring your remuneration in a tax-effective manner.
  • Packaging and financing of an employer-provided car.
  • Ascertaining whether you are better off as a result of salary packaging.

For more information please contact Murray Nicholls.

Strategic Planning

Undoubtedly, there are some businesses that succeed despite the absence of planning and preparation, but this is the exception rather than the rule. Careful and strategic planning will enable a business to optimise its potential and reduce the risks of doing business.

Whether you are starting a new business venture or expanding your current business, then some strategic planning will set you on the right path. Saward Dawson can assist you in this process by steering you through the business planning process. We can help all the way with:

  • SWOT analysis
  • Establishing realistic goals and targets
  • Understanding your business drivers and how they impact on the business
  • Establishing breakeven points and calculating internal rates of return
  • Review of business performance and opportunities to improve profit and cash flow outcomes
  • Financial modelling including preparing 3 way forecasts that will let you see the profit, cash flow and balance sheet impacts of different scenarios
  • Working out the required capital needs, now and into the future
  • Pulling it all together into a formal business plan that can be used to support finance applications or equity raising
  • Assisting with raising finance.

We are well equipped to assist you in looking forward and thinking strategically so that you optimise the opportunities ahead and have the tools that will help you in the future.

For more information please contact Matthew Stokes.

Succession Planning

Congratulations on having built a successful business. But how will you fully release the value of that business for the benefit of your family?

Succession planning sounds like the sort of thing you do when you are approaching 60 but in reality you should be thinking about this much earlier. It is as much about risk management as it is about ultimate retirement!

Succession planning is really about making yourself dispensable in your business or at the very least, reducing the reliance on you. If the future of your business is totally dependent on you, then its value may well be lost or substantially diminished if something unfortunate were to happen to you and your well-being. Effective succession planning must therefore include considering the unexpected as well as planned events.

Protect and release

Succession planning is about ensuring that the value of your business is protected and is capable of being released at some point. It will consider issues such as:

  • Dependence on particular individuals (not just the business owner)
  • Documented systems and procedures
  • The quality of your customers, contracts and restraints on key employees
  • What steps should be taken to prepare your business for sale?
  • How are you developing your team?
  • Can the business run without you now?
  • How can you optimise the value of your business?
  • Who are potential purchasers of the business?
  • What role does insurance play in protecting your family?
  • What would a due diligence investigation of your business reveal?
  • Do you need to sell to achieve flexibility as you grow old or can the business be self sustaining?

Our view is that the best succession strategy is to ensure that the business is addressing all of the above issues now, not just when a potential purchaser appears or when you reach the point where you want to sell.

One of the things that we have found over the years is that cashing out the value of the business may not be the best financial decision and that with fewer and more discerning purchasers in the market, more and more businesses will continue with managers in control and owners being more passively involved.

We can assist in charting the right succession course for your business. It is never too soon to start this process.

For more information please contact Bruce Saward.

Taxation Consulting

Taxation can become complicated. For routine transactions, things are usually straight forward. However, you need someone to turn to when something out of the ordinary arises. When something crops up in business like an international transaction, a one-off deal, an unusual sale or purchase, the sale or purchase of a business, or a myriad of other out of the ordinary things, you need specialist advice.

Something out of the ordinary

Saward Dawson has a team of specialists with experience in dealing with out of the ordinary. Our expertise includes:

  • Specialist Capital Gains Tax advice including the CGT small business Concessions
  • Intellectual property
  • International transactions
  • Purchase and sale of business
  • Division 7A private company loans
  • Business restructuring and tax consolidations
  • Deceased estates
  • Property development including GST implications
  • Tax issues affecting charities and not-for-profits
  • GST
  • Fringe Benefits Tax
  • Not-for-profit tax concessions, including income tax exemption and Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) endorsement
  • Principle of mutuality for member based organisations

Whether you regularly need to draw on our specialist tax advice or you want the peace of mind of knowing that when something out of the ordinary arises, you can rely on Saward Dawson to help you understand and address the tax outcomes.

For more information please contact Cathy Braun.

Do you need assistance with your business requirements?

We are specialists in Business services and would love to see how we can help you and your business.

Meet the Business Advisory Team

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