I hope you find my writing and business tips and observations useful. My business and blog are dedicated to helping businesses communicate clearly and reach their potential.
Read, and enjoy!Tash
Keep ideas flowing
Have you ever read something and found a jump in ideas that distracts you?
I find it really annoying when the ideas don’t flow in a piece of writing – the change of topics or tense or perception may not seem major but if it makes me have to reread something to understand what happened, I tend to lose interest in the whole thing.
I came across the following example of this on a website where it is promoting cheap ‘reports’ to help small business people; the errors give me the impression of low quality pdfs rather than informative reports – what do you think from their description?
Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! The main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums. There are a lot of different reasons for the lack of contact details.
This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on you site as well as options for phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.
A range of contact options are available
Yes, there are various reasons for not including contact details but how is that relevant when you are telling me how annoyed you were at not seeing any contact details! It also has no relevance to the next paragraph so makes the whole thing very disjointed.
I suspect they are attempting to not offend people without contact details rather than standing strong with their own argument. However, it has backfired with poor writing and an indication of weakness that detracts from their ‘expert’ stand in the report.
Here’s an alternative version that won’t offend, sound weak or be hard to read*:
Too often I visit the site of a business mum to find there is only a contact form! I understand they may have their own reason for not including contact details, but the main reason I visit the site is to see where they are located as, where possible, I prefer supporting local business mums.
This weeks *** report will look at five different contact methods you may want to put on your site, as well as some low-risk options for showing phone numbers, fax numbers, postal address and email address.
Having said poor flow of ideas is distracting, my next blog post will include some tips on how to maintain the flow…
*My changes are in blue to improve the flow plus some necessary improvements to the second paragraph so it makes sense. I didn’t totally rewrite it as I would for myself or a client!
2010-11 is almost here!
Do you think it is time to prepare for a new financial year – or are you going to wait until July to work on your tax and accounting obligations?
I always plan to be organised so I can submit a tax return in early July, but it is never quite that smooth in reality. My bookkeeper needs time to enter all the data from June, I need my super fund to send me a deduction letter and so on.
However, I really do look at my accounts now so I can maximise this financial year – thinking of deductions in July won’t help much!
Here are some of my tips on keeping accounting issues under control in June/July:
- have regular data entry for expenses throughout the year- or get a bookkeeper!
- keep a document going all year to note down anything that may go into your annual report (i.e. note down any significant changes or events so you don’t have to remember them when you starting writing the report) This will also help a lot if you outsource the report writing
- if website pages/attachments need to be updated for 1 July (e.g. for legislation or price changes), prepare them in advance – even if data is unavailable until late June, you can have everything else ready to go
- book your accountant/tax agent early so you can choose a date that suits you
- get someone to help you if you are stuck entering a lot of data (e.g. for new depreciable items or household accounts if you are home-based) – it’s much quicker if one person reads out the data while the other types it
- check your online bank access – many will show the year’s interest instead of adding up each month’s or waiting for a printed statement
- review your payroll records now so you have all the information when sending out PAYG statements
- automate any regular payments – this can be useful all year, but taking the time in April/May to schedule payment of memberships and subscriptions due in June can save time and the stress of forgetting
- prepare communications in advance (blog posts, newsletter information) so those tasks are out of the way for a month or so
- have a good account filing system as well as your actual accounts – I use a display folder with a plastic envelope per month plus some extras (‘to be entered’, ‘pending’, etc) – and avoid changing it at this time of year
How else do you make your accounting and tax tasks quicker or easier?
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