Bricks & Clicks – Part Two

If you’ve read our last blog post, you’ll know that a few weeks ago, one of our Directors, Jason, had the opportunity to be featured on Kochie’s new show Bricks & Clicks

Accounting tips from Jason

The show follows the new Bricks & Clicks course which aims to help retail store owners sharpen their skills on everything from payment options to websites and marketing.

He was there as an expert, to chat to bricks and mortar business owners about taking their businesses online and more specifically, optimising the way they are paid. 

Here are a few of the tips I shared with the Bricks and Clicks team on payments. 

Get someone else to do the juggling for you

Cashflow quickly gets out of hand when business owners go it alone, trying to juggle rent, suppliers, stock, staff, BAS, tax, super, GST and so much more! Using advisors, mentors, accountants, and coaches before it’s too late (or before you even get started) is pivotal to success.

Think online payment options 

To fix cashflow, Xero accounting data shows us that invoices are paid twice as fast when you have an online payment option, think Stripe or PayPal. 

The customer experience needs to be smooth and easy, and when you make it easy for a customer to pay you, you get paid faster! 

Future Advisory was a real-life example of this, we were doing jobs and sending invoices expecting our clients to then login to their bank and punch in our BSB and account number. Once we added Stripe to our invoices, we had clients paying us instantly!

bricks and clicks 157605630267116270831 Bricks & Clicks – Part Two

Embrace the digital age

Another fact I found interesting during my Bricks and Clicks experience was researching the fact that more than 50% of Australian business owners don’t value digital tools for their business. 

Xero’s small business insights show businesses that are connected to multiple apps as well as Xero have greater growth in revenue, profit and employees numbers than those businesses that don’t have any connected apps. Which tells us that businesses using tech are growing faster than those that don’t! 

Get streamlined

I urged the business owners to consider the systems and procedures in their business. Are they documented? If the business owner couldn’t go to work for 30+ days, would everyone else know how to run the business? 

In relation to payments, it’s important to have strict policies on how you engage with your customers so that the business owner is protected. There is nothing worse than doing a job and not getting paid.

Know what works online

Think marketing, SEO, EDM’s, market research and customer surveys. For those still in bricks & mortar about to embark on the bricks and clicks journey, begin with the end in mind and don’t expect to turn the online store on and have the sales flood in.

It’s a long term play and a big play at that. Be prepared and do the research needed. Remember that you’re going from competing with businesses in your local suburb to competing with the rest of the world!

Make valuable connections 

I was asked to end my presentation with the best advice I’d ever been given, which was ‘Don’t go it alone.’ If someone has ‘been there done that’ experience, talk to them! Even if it’s just over a coffee. 

Before was born, I had countless conversations with accounting firm owners to ensure we were on the right path with our intentions for . Part of the feedback from the people I spoke to was to understand our WHY. For retailers going online, you need to know why, and believe it. Live it and breathe it.