Business owners of private companies often borrow money from their own companies for all sorts of reasons.
Buying property off the plan is exciting as it means you get to own a brand-new home, but make sure you know what’s involved. Start by asking these five questions:
The home loan market is constantly changing, with new and attractive deals coming up all the time. Refinancing can help you secure a more competitive interest rate, access the equity in your home, add features (such as an offset account) or consolidate your debts, but there are some important questions to consider before you get the ball rolling.
After waiting for what seems like an eternity, the government has finally put to Parliament its proposed legislation around two of its proposed schemes.
It goes without saying that every parent wants the best for their children. For most if not all of us, this means we believe their education is a priority.
The Australian Taxation Office (ATO) is committed to educating taxpayers on how to protect themselves against tax scams and identity theft
Your ability to earn an income is one of your greatest assets, and yet only 31% of those who are self-employed and 6% of employees have income protection insurance [1].
In Australia, there are a number of ways to structure your home loan repayments. Finding the best option may save you time and money on your mortgage. Here is some information to help you choose the repayment structure that works best for you.
Finding the perfect property isn’t always easy. Despite the number of homes for sale, the unpredictable nature of the market can make house hunting exhausting.
They say that life is what happens when you’re making other plans, and one thing is for sure, without a crystal ball we have no way of knowing what lies ahead.
Below is a list of tips from the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) that should help rental property owners avoid what it has found are the 10 most common tax errors made by rental property investors. The ATO says that avoiding these tax mistakes will save many taxpayers both time and money.
As you may know, we have been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to develop a service offering that will allow us to better meet the growing and changing needs of our clients.
Financially speaking there’s a lot going on. Superannuation and aged care pension rules have changed. We’re living longer, but not necessarily without disease or disability. Add to these the rising costs of education and home ownership and it’s pretty clear…our money needs to stretch further than ever, and the lowest interest rates since the 1960s are not helping.
It’s often said that Australians are more likely to divorce their spouse than switch banks. But with plenty of competition in the home loan sector, refinancing can be a good move.
Money management can take on a number of different forms, but not everyone understands what they need, or the true benefits of getting expert help where it matters. In fact, a lack of understanding the world of financial services is one of the biggest barriers to every day Australians getting the right help. Here’s a simplified version for you.
Small businesses just had a big win in the 2016-17 Federal Budget. The government is essentially introducing new initiatives to help SMEs spend more and grow bigger. But you have to know how to take advantage of these tax advantages in order to truly see the benefits. Here are some key things you should know.
Small businesses just had a big win in the 2016-17 Federal Budget. The government is essentially introducing new initiatives to help SMEs spend more and grow bigger. But you have to know how to take advantage of these tax advantages in order to truly see the benefits. Here are some key things you should know.
Want to figure out whether you’ll be a millionaire? A good place to start is the color of your skin.
Bloomberg News asked economists at the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis a question: Would it be possible to calculate the odds of being a millionaire for anyone in the U.S., based on age, education and race? Having already done extensive work in this area, bank researchers William Emmons, Bryan Noeth and Lowell Ricketts agreed to help.
Unfortunately, personal finance has not yet become a required subject in high school or college, so you might be fairly clueless about how to manage your money when you're out in the real world for the first time. If you think that understanding personal finance is way above your head, though, you're wrong. All it takes to get started on the right path is the willingness to do a little reading - you don't even need to be particularly good at math.
Ventana Research is the most authoritative and respected benchmark business technology research and advisory services firm. We provide insight and expert guidance on mainstream and disruptive technologies through a unique set of research-based offerings including benchmark research and technology evaluation assessments, education workshops and our research and advisory services, Ventana On-Demand.
Our research shows that dedicated applications are superior to spreadsheets in terms of how well they perform and how satisfied their users are with the planning process. Organizations that use such software get better results: 87 percent of companies that said their software performs very well also said they have a process for creating finance analytics that works well or very well.
We find limited use of in-depth contingency planning that enables executives and managers to understand both the operational and financial consequences of specific choices they make or the impacts of external conditions such as changes in a competitor’s strategy or in the economy.
Not well. Our research shows that most get the basics right and are able to perform standard financial analysis but make limited use of advanced analytics. For example, predictive analytics is valuable for multiple purposes across multiple roles. Using statistical models, analysts can derive new insights into business drivers directly from data or create more reliable baseline forecasts. It can help identify strong correlations that can improve forecast accuracy or understanding of where there is a lack of predictability in the business and therefore greater risk in planning successful outcomes.
Use a balanced approach, understanding where spreadsheets can be useful and where you should avoid them. It’s not practical to try to get rid of spreadsheets altogether. But establish an ongoing review of where they are used in planning and budgeting and a process for identifying the ones that must be replaced because they undermine accuracy and reliability.
The research we’ve done suggests that an integrated process works better for everyone. It cuts the workloads of the participants in the planning process. It makes it simpler for FP&A organizations to manage the process, perform analyses and create reports. And it can shorten planning and forecasting cycles.
Companies increasingly recognize they need a central, easy-to use environment for all forms of company planning, not just financial planning. Dedicated planning applications provide that environment. One technology trend that supports this environment is cloud computing, which makes it easier for people to participate and remain connected to planning processes regardless of where they are. In-memory processing isn’t really new, but software vendors are making increasing use of it to enable more interactive and immediate planning.
One is simply to manage the process well. Only about half of the people in companies we recently benchmarked said that their planning processes are managed well. A contributing factor to this is that, according to midlevel managers, executives don’t communicate their strategy and objectives well. About one-fourth of executives said they communicate these very well, compared to just 7 percent of managers.
Three trends in particular are worth noting. One is “finance transformation” – the idea that finance departments need to shift the balance of the work they do from repetitive mechanical tasks to more valuable analysis. In that way, they increase their strategic value to the rest of the company. The second is the shift toward greater integration of financial and operating planning. Companies do a lot of planning, much of it in silos.
Every investor goes in with dreams of a pot of gold, but there is a fundamental difference between investor types – one looks to line their pockets with investment returns along the way, and the other has the patience to wait until the end of the rainbow to reap the rewards.