Tips for maintaining a strong cash flow.

By Cavel Koert | SAIPA

Key Relationship Manager

Cavel has a National Higher Certificate and National Diploma in Accounting and a BTech in Internal Auditing. She is also part of SAIPA.

• Increase sales – More sales are the preferred strategy to grow the business, it provides more benefits rather than liquidating assets or taking loans.
• Collect client payments as quickly as possible – Invoice clients promptly and send statements early. Verify with the client that invoices were received and follow up on late payments. Offer discounts to clients that pay early.
• Adjust inventory – Inventory that does not sell has a negative impact on cash flow, try and move outdated stock by selling at a reduced price and do not restock the items.
• Trim expenses – Eliminating unnecessary expenses will boost cash flow. Try managing expenses and consider ways to conserve cash flow.
• Prioritize payments – Stick to payment arrangement dates as agreed with suppliers to avoid interest on late payments. Try and spread payment dates so the most important invoices are paid first. Try if necessary to negotiate payment terms with your suppliers.
• Make your money work – Build up a reserve fund for emergencies that would be sufficient for six months of business expenses, make short-term investments, and pay off debts faster to reduce interest and shorten loan terms.

Are you FICA ready?

By Lorette Terry

Secretarial Manager

We are noticing that the banks are on a drive to comply with the Financial Intelligence Centre Act (FICA) and we want to ensure that your registered information does not fall short.

The company secretarial team, Lorette and Nikki, is currently working on updating address details with CIPC.

If you know that there was a change to any of the following since the last time any registration was lodged with CIPC, please contact Lorette here with the current information:

• Registered office and postal address of your business – this must be the actual physical business address or the physical and postal address that you are most likely to receive mail and not that of the accountant as it used to be done before May 2011.

• Your own physical or postal address as director of the company or member of the Close Corporation

Once received, we shall prepare the necessary for your approval and register the updated information.

How to get SARS to issue a completion letter for your income tax return review.

By Laverne Geswint | SAIT

General Tax Practitioner South Africa

• When claiming any deductions in your income tax returns such as medical aid credits, and retirement annuity contributions, always send us copies of the tax documents for our records.
• If you are claiming any expenses, such as business related expenses, medical aid expenses paid out of pocket, rental expenses, home office expenses, repairs and maintenance expenses etc please include a breakdown of all payments made which includes who the payment was for, the date of payment, the amount of payment and the total payments made for the tax year.
• SARS also require the proof of payments made for these expenses claimed.
• SARS want copies of all investment income tax certificates, also referred to as IT3b’s and copies of all capital gains transactions for the tax year, also known as an IT3c tax certificate.
• If you sold a property during the tax year, we need the details so we can declare it on your tax return. Please provide us with date of sale, the statement from the conveyancing attorneys for the sale and the purchase agreement when you bought the property. We also need to know if there were any improvements done to the property. There are other costs which can be included in the base cost. Please speak to us about this.

Tips for submission of employers EMP501 recon (2022-08).

By Cornel Gouws | CA (SA)

Key Relationship Manager

• Filing season provisionally opens 19 Sept 2022, do your prep work before then
• Verify your PAYE, UIF, SDL numbers and company info
• Ensure employees information is correct, including names, ID or passport numbers, income tax reference numbers
• Check all remuneration data (earnings, deductions, employer contributions, IRP5 codes)
• Reconcile 6 month (March – Aug 2022) summary with declared EMP201 values (taking into account ETI)
• Create a CSV file of similar from your payroll for import and submission on E@syFile Employer
• Submission deadline is 31 October 2022
• Good luck! 😊