Weekly Digest – 15 May 2020

Hello again and welcome to a much quieter, but no less important, edition of of our Weekly Digest! We hope you are staying healthy, fit and well.

The big news, and this week’s Good News, was the government’s three-step plan to relax coronavirus restrictions. It’s great news for our country and our economy – well done to everyone for playing a part in “flattening the curve!”

This week we talk briefly about the plans to reduce restrictions across Australia, we provide a brief JobKeeper update and ask to you STAY ALERT for an ATO notified JobKeeper Phone Scam. We also remind you to stay focused on the future with your updated business plan and cash “war chest”, and adapted ways to deliver your services.

 

Plans to Reduce Restrictions

The government has announced a three-step plan for a COVID-safe Australia (download it here). Each state will use this framework to then independently implement their own three-step plan, at their own pace, based on their respective COVID-19 conditions. State government websites have the latest information on their three-step roadmap, and the time frames for each.

The coming weeks should see more businesses allowed to open across Australia, which is great news for all of us. To those that aren’t allowed to open yet – hang in there – but let us know if you want to chat about your cashflow.

 

JobKeeper

You may have heard rumours this week of further adjustments to the JobKeeper scheme, including the possibility of bringing forward the end date of the scheme to 30 June 2020. However, we can confirm this has definitely not been confirmed and, in our opinion, would be political suicide for a government that is doing a great job in the current curcumstances (again, our opinion).

We will of course keep you informed of any changes – but for now it is BAU with the next reporting deadline being the 7th June 2020, for May JobKeeper claims. We would remind all our clients that prepare the own payrolls that they need to continue paying eligible employees the minimum $1,500 per fortnight for each JobKeeper payroll period.

The ATO’s website has a timeline of JobKeeper updates to date. We thank you for your continued patience as there have been many changes to this scheme which, at times, has been challenging for everyone to keep on top of.

 

STAY ALERT – JobKeeper Phone Scam!

The ATO has sent out warnings of scammers pretending to be from the ATO calling members of the public and asking them to provide their bank account details. They are telling them that their employer has registered them for the JobKeeper Payment, but that the ATO needs their bank account details to deposit the funds into their account.

Do not provide the information requested. Employees that are eligible for JobKeeper payments will be paid by their employer and the ATO will reimburse their employer for these payments. The ATO does not need the bank account details of individual employees.

If you are not sure whether an ATO call is legitimate, hang up and phone the ATO on 1800 008 540 to check. Alternatively, please contact your Mukiwa consultant.

Scammers are constantly developing new ways to steal from the community, and will often try to take advantage of people when they are most vulnerable. You can keep up-to-date with the latest ATO alerts here.

You can help stop scammers in their tracks by warning your friends and family to stay alert.

 

What’s Your Plan?

While some business owners can hopefully see the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, it’s unlikely that everything will go back to normal even once businesses are open again. We strongly encourage you to use this time to create a plan for the months ahead, as none of us know exactly what will happen. We know that writing a business plan can feel like a big effort – so we have created a template to make it easier. Please get in touch if you’d like to talk about your plan – especially when it comes to crunching the numbers (P&Ls, cashflows etc).

Early on in our COVID-19 updates we spoke about building a “war chest” –  the financial reserve your business should build up so you can take advantage of an opportunity, or cover unexpected costs or emergencies. Our latest blog post highlights just a couple of  ways you can build or preserve your cash “war chest” during a crisis.

However, no two businesses are the same and so what works for one, will not necessarily work for the other. If you would like to talk to us about initiatives you can implement in your business, please reach out to us.

 

Stay Nimble & Adapt

We know the last few months have been a struggle as everyone has been affected in some way or another. All we can do however is keep improving, adapting and refining our approach to how we operate our businesses (and personal lives!). We love to see entrepreneurs who have moved services online or found a different way to keep helping their customers. Business owners with resilience and openness-to-change are the ones that will get through this.

 

Here to help

We’re committed to helping you through the next few months (and beyond!). If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We are all in this together!

From everyone here at Mukiwa – have a great weekend and we’ll be back next week.