I don’t think there have been any real changes – just price increases! A lot of Home and Contents policies still offer cover for a home-based business, but you’ll need to check exactly what they cover to know whether it’s relevant to your circumstances. All the best!

Yep, precisely – must be easy from a consumer perspective.
Wise is something that can be super handy for the backend, rather than getting end users to pay directly to your account. For most businesses there are going to be some type of expenses and this is where Wise can be very useful. For me I mostly use them for larger B2B payments (both…[Read more]

Hi Ana,

All excellent advice from Paul, so I don’t have a great deal to add. I do a bit of trade internationally (inc with US-based clients) and, like Paul, I’ve always just paid my taxes here. I do operate through a Company and Trust structure because it suited my personal circumstances at the time. However, the simpler your structure, the…[Read more]

It’s going to depend on the individual insurer really. A lot of insurers now include cover for a home business. But I’m sure if you check the T’s and C’s that will be a home office-based business, not a cooking business. I agree that a Broker would be the way to go and they should be familiar with the options.

I would say local fulfillment has a lot of positives – you’ll negotiate a better rate on the product itself as well as the bulk shipping. And you’ll provide a much better experience for the end user with fast shipping times. BUT, can you afford to pay for the bulk order, and the risk that the stock might be sitting there a while?

In a word – no, I don’t really see any specific solution sorry. I would say Paul has given some excellent suggestions. My favourite: “Be helpful to them, not all “salesy”,” And he makes a great point that there would be much more low-hanging fruit than myself. I dislike change, while there are plenty of small business owners who actually like try…[Read more]

Given that you “will be selling almost exclusively to Australian customers on-line and “Australian Made” is going to be a selling point” I would say it’s a no-brainer to go with the .com.au. People consider a .com.au to be an ‘Australian website’, whereas a .com focussed on selling to Aussies can be a bit confusing.

I agree Mario. Time is one of the major factors. Most small businesses have tried and tested methods of doing things already. They work. Owners (like myself) are well aware that there are ‘better’ ways of doing things, but they can’t afford the time and disruption to business while this ‘better’ way is implemented. Quite simply, it is easier to…[Read more]

Thanks. I think I looked at Payroller but can’t remember what happened with that. I ended up using ClockOn. Needed to do a bit more work setting it up than I had hoped (I just needed to report figures and didn’t care about having the software calculate it all for me, but there was no choice). But once it was setup it does the job well.

Just setup a Namecheap account in the name of the Company. Then you will do what’s usually known as a ‘Push’ (change of ownership) from the old account to the new one. Check this support article – https://www.namecheap.com/support/knowledgebase/article.aspx/1187/8/how-can-i-move-a-domain-from-one-namecheap-account-to-another/ or engage their…[Read more]

Ah, no worries. Thanks for that. Will give it some thought.

There are heaps of them Tony. I’d say best for someone starting out like yourself would be Leader Computers and XIT Distribution. Leader also build their own computers and have a service agent program which might be of interest to you.

Thanks. Sorry for the late reply. I thought I was supposed to receive email notifications of responses, but that hasn’t occurred…
Anyway, Xero isn’t really what I’m after. I’m not looking to change my accounting software, I just need to fulfil the STP reporting requirements. There are several free options for that – I was thinking with all the…[Read more]