Assurance services include an audit, a review, or agreed-upon-procedures. Each of these services may be undertaken by an independent auditor however the assurance afforded to the user differs substantially.
What’s the Purpose of a Financial Report Audit?
A financial report audit will give your organisation enhanced credibility as well as identify any potential or current risks which may be a threat to your business and its efficiency.
How to Prepare for a Financial Audit
How do I prepare for a financial audit for my organisation? What is an audit on my financial statements? Should I be worried about an audit?
Occupational Fraud in All Sizes
Occupational Fraud is much more common in organisations than you may think. Regardless of the size of your business occupational fraud has the same likelihood of happening. This article highlights the findings from the Report to the NAtions and gives you an idea of how your business could also be at risk.
You Know That We Are Living in a “Material” World
Accountants are fun too! We know all the hits. But in this case we are actually talking about what Materiality means in relation to your financial reporting.
Immunising Your Internal Control Environment
Ensure your business controls and processes are up to date and still effective during this period of uncertainty. Some changes will need to be made to effectively meet your reporting obligations
What Is Your Audit Flavour?
Internal audit offers unique flavours to help your organisation achieve its objectives. Large or small, Company or Association, an Internal Audit is beneficial to evaluate and improve the effectiveness of risk management, control and governance processes. It can sound bland, but the outcomes can be an exciting step towards improving your business.
Depreciation for Small Businesses
With the Governments announcement of the increase of the Instant Asset Tax Write Off to $30,000, it is important to remember the rules for small business depreciation of assets. Thankfully, simplified depreciation rules are available for small businesses to use, making calculating your depreciation deduction that little bit easier.
SPOTLIGHT REPORTING – A SOFTWARE “SPOTLIGHT”
SPOTLIGHT REPORTING – A SOFTWARE “SPOTLIGHT”
Spotlight Reporting is a fantastic tool that allows businesses to really see their business performance like never before. The reports are more than just pretty, they empower business owners with the knowledge they need to make better decisions.
Here are 5 reasons why Spotlight Reporting can be great for your business.
1. Achieve your goals
Coming up to financial year end can be a real frenzy and once you receive your financials do you really know how well you’ve tracked compared to last year? Did you achieve the goals you set for your business? Here’s where Spotlight can make a difference, Spotlight’s Action Plan page helps you focus on areas that drive your business. These plans are highly customisable, and individual users can be assigned to each action to keep your team motivated and accountable all year round.
2. Monitor Cash flow
Cash flow is easily one the most common yet complicated concerns of business owners. Why not ease your concerns by monitoring cash flow using Spotlight’s Cash Flow Analysis tool? The system generates charts to help users visualise cash ins and outs and monitor liquidity. Spotlight also transforms your Profit and Loss (P&L) and Balance Sheet (BS) into easily indefinable business signals by using universal traffic light indicators. This helps you see how your business performance is tracking compared to last month, last year or to your budgeted figures at a glance.
Once you have this data the Spotlight Forecasting tool then allows you to plan and scope future projects, secure additional funding or assist you with making better decisions based on these forecasts.
3. Actually measure your KPIs
KPIs can be difficult to monitor, particularly non-financial KPIs. Spotlight can help your business track, monitor and present visuals to manage your firms KPIs for better outcomes. Spotlight already contains 100s of pre-built charts, industry specific metrics and financial and non-financial KPIs, so if you’re not sure which KPIs your business should focus on, take a hint from Spotlight.
Spotlight’s customisable reports allow you to create your very own templates that you can save and reuse each month or quarter. No more spreadsheets with broken cells or uninspiring charts! Create a mix of financial and non-financial metrics to truly analyse your business.
You might be interested to know that our Business Advisors have already created custom reports for certain industries.
4. Real time data with integrations
If you’re wondering how on earth you will have the time to collect all this data for these reports, stop worrying. If you’re currently using a cloud-based accounting leger such as Xero, MYOB AccountRight Live or Intuit QuickBooks Spotlight already has a direct integration with these ledgers. This means that the accounting data required for your financial KPIs are covered and they automatically feed through to Spotlight. If you already capture data for non-financial KPIs you can still upload your data to Spotlight to create custom KPIs.
5. Consolidation
Finally, do you have a number of entities that you need visibility over? Spotlights allows you to consolidate the P&L and BS for multiple entities into one consolidated report. If you have multiple related entities and are struggling with consolidated reports through multiple spreadsheets this function can shave hours off this difficult process.
Bishop Collins Advisors are already well versed in Spotlight, if you are interested in updating your reporting system or are in need of upgraded reports, feel free to book in some time to speak with one of our Advisors.
The “Google Home” of Auditing Technology
Author Cecille Capucao CA
Client Manager Audit and Assurance Services.
A good friend gave me a Google Mini as a Christmas present. Using voice commands, I can ask it to play music, stream media on my TV, answer questions and add grocery items to my shopping list! How cool is that!
I reflected on the advancements in technology over the past decade and how these have impacted on how we do business and even run our businesses.
It blows my mind that technology can now be harnessed to improve my own decision making skills and identifying where risks lie in my business!
It’s called ‘Data Analytics’ and although it doesn’t sound as radical as Google Mini or “Hey Siri”, it packs some powerful punch in regards to assisting in the success of your business. Data Analytics is the thorough analysis of large amounts of information to identify trends and assist you in drawing meaningful conclusions.
It sounds boring I know, but what it means is Data Analytics is like the “google Mini” for your business. Technology that analyses all the relevant fields of information to assist you in your business success. This information influences you to make better business decisions and identify the areas where there is potential risk. Now it’s more interesting isn’t it!
This detailed analysis will also encourage innovation, so your business can remain competitive and assist in developing measured strategies to mitigate risk.
Key areas Data Analytics has helped business includes:
- Identifying business insights;
- Improving financial performance;
- Detecting potential fraud;
- Recognising transaction errors and anomalies; and
- Pinpointing ineffective controls.
Bishop Collins offers qualified professionals who can assist you in undertaking Data Analytics as well as a broad range of internal Audit and Assurance services, to improve your business outcomes and identify and address concerns you believe are most important to your short and long-term success.