Dynamic Business

Make 2013 a golden year for your business by setting some solid financial resolutions. Here are eight great strategies to consider.

When the Reserve Bank cut interest rates, home owners arm-wrestled the banks into passing on the cut. But, as Rohan Gamble finds, small businesses aren’t as lucky:

“Small businesses aren’t just missing out on full rate cuts, business lenders are taking almost double the amount of time to implement the rate reductions.”

Rohan Gamble weighs up Australian business bank packages with their UK counterparts.

“You’d like to think a more robust economy that isn’t teetering on a gut-wrenching debt precipice would fare pretty well in the financial services stakes – especially now that the taxpayer is guaranteeing savings and all that.”

It’s tough, running a small business, knowing you’ve got a great product, but not knowing how to let everyone else in on the secret!

Choosing a bank has always been as much about convenience as getting a good deal. For decades, it’s simply been easier to throw our lot in with a big bank than to research the challengers and shift our accounts.

Credit card holders have long been seduced by the lure of a free toaster, frequent flyer miles or cash back — and small businesses are no exception, with many using personal credit cards for regular business expenses.

There are three things for small business to take away from the government’s tax reforms:

Last time round I discussed the strange and unfavourable interest rates for business savings accounts, after discovering that they’re roughly 1% below personal savings accounts on average. But when it comes to different conditions for business savers, that’s just the beginning.

You may have noticed a savings account war being waged, in recent weeks, in the streets of Bankland. Fights have broken out over the highest “special” rates, the most user-friendly conditions, and even – to a lesser extent – over the base rates. It’s good news for savers — but is it good news for small business?

Depending on who you ask, the financial crisis is a) over; b) easing; or c) lingering like a hangover, soon to be written off with a smile as ‘that time we all got drunk on credit’. But if a) or b) turn out to be the right call, it’s not all good news. Because time [...]

As your small business chugs along, one of the key things to keep in mind is: How many hands are in your pocket? With so many technology-related expenses, there may well be a few. Where middle men were once the cost of doing business – hooking up your phone lines, for example – many vital [...]

Once upon a time, before you’d made your first sale or contacted your first client, there were some big ticket costs heading your way as soon as you turned on your office computer. Starting a small business is as much about establishing a revenue stream as it is about minimising costs, and software is a [...]

When you’re starting out, the next best thing to ‘free’ is ‘freelance’. So once every family member with a shred of talent has been exploited (think painting the office or inventing company names), it’s time to mine the freelance quarry.

Even better news on bank fees! Well it gets better! Yesterday I blogged on the widespread reduction of several types of bank fees. Today NAB has come out with an even more aggressive move, scrapping the most important fee of all, the monthly account fee on its main personal bank accounts (from Jan 2010). And [...]

Well it isn’t the sort of headline we’ve become accustomed to reading over the years, but it’s true, banks are reducing their banking fees, and most of the changes are taking effect from this month.

We’ve got auditors in the office this week going through all our accounts. Now having auditors in isn’t really the sort of thing that sparks images of fun times, but I did enjoy one particular moment.

It’s time to pull out your calculator and do some simple sums on any lending facilities you have. And the sum to do is to take your current interest rate, add 2 percent, and see if you can cope with the adjusted repayment amount. Because that’s where we are headed.

Right now we’re seeing a lot of headlines asking “is it really over?”, as economists call an end to the worst of the financial crisis.