Specific ideas to assist you during Covid-19

Specific business information to assist you during Covid-19

With an economic downturn we thought we would bullet point some ideas in this newsletter which could assist businesses during this period:

Firstly, maximise the use of the governments support package and check if your business is eligible for any of the economic package items, such as the wages subsidy or the Covid leave support payments. 

Working Capital and Cashflow

  • Maintain strict discipline on working capital, particularly around collecting receivables and managing stock build up
  • Instill short term cash flow monitoring discipline that allows you to predict cash flow pressures and intervene in a timely manner.
  •  It's very important to minimise the cash you have tied up in stock. Only purchase what you need and if possible consider consignment stock arrangements.
  • Consider discussing with your stock suppliers if they can provide stock at a discount that you can pass onto customers.
  • Be proactive to re negotiate new terms and conditions with suppliers.
  • Review electricity and telephone providers for better deals.
  • Consider having a discussion with your landlord to see if they are able to provide a rent holiday for a period of time.

Tax

  • If you are struggling to make tax payments on time, contact us or the IRD directly to set up payment instalment arrangements.
  • If you already have any IRD instalment arrangement in place which you are now finding difficult to maintain, again contact us or IRD directly to see if you can negotiate to spread the payments over a longer term which will reduce the regular payments you are making.
  • Consider using Tax Traders our tax pooling partner to defer tax payments and purchase at a later date.
  • Think about putting off any asset purchases less than $5,000 between now and 31 March 2020 because from 1 April 2020 assets purchases less than $5,000 can be fully deducted rather than capitalised and depreciated.

Reviewing expenses

  • Review the expenses on your profit and loss on a line by line item to see if any savings / cost reductions can be made.
  • If you review insurances policies for better deals be mindful of what you remove if you are tying to reduce the insurance cost, you may need your insurance during this time and opting out of some policies may be difficult to get back, particularly where you have to provide health information.

Funding

  • With the recent interest rate decrease, consider refinancing your debts to take advantage of this and if necessary extend the term of loans to reduce the current repayments to release cash into your business. If you require access to alternative funding, please contact us.
  • Where the business is significantly impacted, consider minimum operating requirements, including key dependencies of the workforce, vendors, location and technology.

Health

  • If your business is in financial distress it will be personally hard on you and your family. It's important you are aware of and look after your mental health, because the most important thing is that you get through these challenges yourself.
  • Don't be afraid to ask for help if you need it. There will be a lot of people in the same situation at the moment, even worldwide and though no fault of their own.

****************************************************************************************************************************

Please note: The above E-newsletter notes and the related articles on our website are of a general nature and therefore we urge clients who may be affected by these changes to contact us to discuss your specific circumstances before making any changes or drawing any conclusions.

If you do not wish to receive these E-newsletters please use the unsubscribe option below.

Share by: