Tag: Sage

With many people still working from home, prioritising a heavy workload has become more of a challenge for employees and managers than it was before COVID-19. Our new remote working reality means many people are juggling large work volumes with new challenges such as disrupted school schedules, the need to self-quarantine, or colleagues taking time off due to illness.

Up until a few years ago, digital transformation was not high on the agenda for most finance chiefs. Though they recognised that IT was important, most CFOs thought of digital as a technology play, a channel strategy or a customer experience concern.

Young entrepreneurs can uncover opportunities to build and grow their businesses. As President Ramaphosa noted in a recent newsletter to the nation, young entrepreneurs are finding the 'silver lining to the dark COVID-19 cloud'.

During August, many South Africans received auto-assessments for their 2019/20 personal income tax returns from SARS. The admin for the tax year is behind the taxpayers that accepted, or amended and submitted, this assessment and settled any tax still owing to SARS.

You may owe SARS money next year if you receive a travel allowance and aren’t travelling for business because of COVID-19. Most employees have travelled less for business this year than they would in the pre-COVID-19 world.

At a time when many small businesses in South Africa are already struggling as a result of the recession, the global COVID-19 crisis is a bolt out of the blue. It is an event that has caught even the best prepared businesses by surprise, and it is a genuine existential threat for many of the small businesses we deal with in our daily lives.

Automation can help businesses decrease the R7.2 billion lost to admin. We’re racing towards the end of another tax year and we have heard about the Finance Minister’s proposed changes for the 2020/21 tax year. Not too long after Minister Tito Mboweni unveils changes to PAYE and other taxes during his budget speech on 26 February, the season for Employer Annual Reconciliations will open.

Thanks to automated software, we have a wealth of real-time business data right at our fingertips. The result is that it’s all too easy for a medium business or scale-up to become too obsessed with the wrong metrics, and often at the expense of measuring and managing the things that really matter.

You, as the taxpayer, are responsible for declaring the correct information to SARS and will face the consequences if you don’t. Ensure that your tax practitioner declares all income by providing all the correct information to him or her.

According to QuickBooks, there are already more than 700 apps that are assisting accountants to automate processes and reduce their workload. Gone are the days where accountants can be mere number crunchers, who collate and check data and allocate it to the correct cost centre. The future accountant will have transformed her/himself into a financial advisor, adding value to businesses by offering strategic advice, consulting and financial planning.